UTD Professor Wins Grant to Study
Artificial Intelligence Testing Methods
RICHARDSON, Texas (Dec. 10, 2001) – Dr. Richard Golden, associate
professor of psychology and cognitive science in the School of Human
Development at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), has been awarded
a grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study artificial
intelligence as a means for testing the reading comprehension of
children at the elementary and junior high school level.
With the award, which is worth nearly $400,000 and falls under the
NSF’s Information Technology Research (ITR) Program, Golden and a team
of researchers will work to develop a Web-based artificial intelligence
system called ARCADE (Automatized Reading Comprehension and Diagnostic
Evaluation). Through ARCADE, children will log on to a Web site and be
asked to read narratives and science texts and type essay-style answers
to questions about the stories. ARCADE will then automatically group
together children with similar thinking styles and provide educators
with suggested teaching strategies designed to improve the quality of
instruction for all children in a particular classroom.
Only about six percent of the proposals submitted to the NSF’s ITR
Program in the area of educational technology were selected for funding.
Golden, who also serves as program head of both the Cognitive Science
Undergraduate Program and the Applied Cognition and Neuroscience
Graduate Program at UTD, said he is interested in the project because
typical standardized comprehension tests focus only on multiple-choice
responses.
“Multiple-choice tests are good at determining some basic-reading
skills but are not very good at assessing the wide range of complex
skills that reflect high-level reading comprehension,” Golden said.
Although alternatives to multiple-choice testing of reading
comprehension currently do exist, they have their drawbacks, Golden
explained. For example, individual assessments, which require reading
specialists to evaluate students on an individual basis, are difficult
to implement, time-consuming, not cost-effective and subjective. Essay
tests also are time-consuming and subjective, and they are not
individually tailored to specific students.
“By combining state-of-the-art theories from the fields of
artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology and education, we hope to
demonstrate that Web-based artificial intelligence could be used to
provide effective objective assessments of high-level reading
comprehension that are not limited by multiple-choice question formats,”
Golden said. “Methodologies such as these will enable educators to
address the unique needs of their students and thereby improve the
overall educational experience.”
“We are excited Dr. Golden received a grant from the NSF to study
alternative intelligence testing methods,” said Dr. Bert S. Moore,
professor and dean of the School of Human Development at UTD. “He is
an outstanding researcher, and we are confident his findings will lead
to greater understanding – and solutions – for making educational
testing more effective for educators and children alike.”
Golden’s research also will help with developing new techniques in
artificial intelligence, psychometric testing (the mathematics behind
standardized tests) and new theoretical ideas in cognitive psychology.
Other leading scientists and educators throughout the country will
participate in the research project as consultants and will help to
assess the effectiveness of the ARCADE system in the classroom. The
project team consists of a systems development and evaluation team
headed by Dr. Golden and an assessment materials development team headed
by Dr. Susan Goldman, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and
Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
About UTD
The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of
Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major
multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor,
enrolls more than 7,000 undergraduate and 5,000 graduate students. The
school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas
state universities in terms of average SAT scores. The university offers
a broad assortment of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree
programs. For additional information about UTD, please visit the
university’s Web site at www.utdallas.edu.