Ateneo Laboratory for the Learning Sciences

ALLS was pleased to host a summer intern from Philippine Science High School, Eastern Visayas: Mary Josephine Co, or Marjo for short. Marjo is an incoming high school senior. She stayed with ALLS from April to May, 2013.

During her internship, Marjo worked with the Q Sensor in surveying whether or not electrodermal activity and skin temperature could predict a students’ engagement or interest.

About her first days in the lab, Marjo said, “Most of the days, I was just in the lab, familiarizing with the Q Sensor, what it does, what it can be used for, etc.” Using the Q Sensor, she conducted a survey on 75 psychology students.

Marjo explains, “So the experiment went like this: there were 75 psychology students invited to participate. There were videos shown to them, scenes from different movies of different genres (action, horror, comedy, romance, cartoon, drama, sci-fi). After seeing each video, they were asked to rate the video based on their level of engagement or how interesting/exciting they found it. While watching the videos, they were wearing the Q Sensor to keep track of their EDA and temperature. What we were trying to find out is if their ratings corresponded with their recorded EDA and temperature.”

During the Seniors’ Sendoff last March 20, DISCS gave the outstanding thesis
award (innovation category) to the group of Antonio Rafael Umali, Jian Paolo
Ablir, and Miguel Luis Sanchez. The group’s thesis was entitled Controlling
a Robotic Hand Using a Non-Invasive Brain-Computer Interface. DISCS
selected the outstanding theses awardees based on their standings during the
SOSE Awards for Research and Innovation. Of all DISCS entries, the group
had the highest standing.

Miguel Luis Sanchez, Jian Paolo Ablir, Antonio Rafael Umali, Jessica O. Sugay, Jose Alfredo de Vera

The paper entitled Development of an Affect-Sensitive Agent for Aplusix by
Thor Collin Andallaza and Ma. Mercedes Rodrigo was accepted as a short paper
and poster at the Artificial Intelligence in Education Conference 2013 to be
held at the University of Memphis from July 9 to 13.

The abstract of the paper is as follows:

We compared two versions of an affect-sensitive embodied conversational
agent for Aplusix, an intelligent tutoring system for algebra. Version 1 of
the agent was able to detect and respond to user affect, but it responded
too quickly and too frequently. The second version of the agent featured new
student models for detecting and responding to student affective states,
which is less sensitive compared to the first version. We conducted a field
test with students to determine its effect on learning and learning
experience in comparison to using Aplusix alone and Aplusix with the version
1 agent. Results show that version 2 provided significantly fewer
interventions to engaged students, more evaluations of engagement, fewer
evaluations of boredom, and was generally preferred over version 1.

On March 17, 2013, the group of Antonio Rafael Umali, Jian Paolo Ablir, and Miguel Luis Sanchez joined Mind Burst, an exhibit on innovation held at the Mind Museum in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig. The group joined other exhibitors from the Ateneo and other universities. They showecased their thesis work entitled Controlling a Robotic Hand Using a Non-Invasive Brain-Computer Interface

From L-R: Antonio Rafael Umali, Miguel Luis Sanchez, Jian Paolo Ablir