Software
Policy World
Policy World is a cognitive tutor embedded in an educational game that teaches students how to reason about public policy using causal diagrams. Policy World is being designed for students in Causation and Social Policy, Technology Consulting in the Community, (a service learning class where computer science students work with local non-profits to develop technology projects), and for anyone interested in learning how use evidence to reason about causal systems. Policy World will be avaiable early 2010.
iLogos
iLogos is an argument diagramming tool currently being used by students in "What Philosophy Is," an introductory Philosophy class at Carnegie Mellon University. Argument maps are diagrams that display the structure of an argument. By combining pictures and words, argument maps help people to create better arguments and analyses. iLogos is a freely-available, cross-platform tool that allows you to easily construct and share argument maps. You can download the original java version of iLogos or contact me if you would like to try the beta of the new actionscript version.
The Causality Lab
The Causality Lab is a virtual environment meant to simulate the science of causal discovery. Instructors (and students) can author exercises that contain a "true" but hidden causal model which students must then discover. Like real scientists, however, the students do not get to see the truth directly. Instead, they must set up experiments, collect data, create hypotheses, and compare the predictions made by their hypotheses to the results of these experiments. In so doing, they will learn why association does not prove causation, why statistical tests are crucial to causal science, and why randomized trials are such a powerful tool in causal discovery.
On-line educational materials
If you would like access to one of the on-line resources from my classes, please contact me.
Programming Usable Interfaces (in actionscript)
These on-line resources for P.U.I. teach students with a semester of programming the skills for prototyping interfaces in Flash. A tutorial introduces interface programming in actionscript in five lessons focusing on core ideas for GUI programming: (a) objects, (b) widgets, (c) events, (d) display lists, (e) model view-controller. Assignments include: (a) make an interface for playing Go, (b) make a voting machine interface, (c) refactor an interface, and (d) creating your own interface.
2D Game Programming (in actionscript)
For students in Educational Game Design with some actionscript experience, these tutorials explain how to make basic 2D game engines for games like: (a) Myst, (b) Pong, (c) Asteroids, (d) Mario brothers, (e) Zelda (d) the Sims.
The Bubble Gum Lecture
The slides and gumball simulator for the lecture on cognitive task analysis.