Category: Uncategorized

ACSHF Forum with Dr. Ricardo Eiris

All are invited to attend a virtual conversation with Dr. Ricardo Eiris, whose research leverages virtual reality to enable STEM students to obtain active learning experiences in remote, dangerous, or too expensive to reach locations.

In this ACSHF Forum, Dr. Eiris will be discussing how virtual reality can be used to deliver virtual field trip experiences to STEM students. Site visits or field trips are a common tool utilized by STEM educators to engage students in active learning, assist traditional lessons, and attain stronger and deeper student learning experiences. However, there are major logistical challenged for educational institutions and teachers to perform these types of experiences. These barriers to implement site visits effectively reduce the number of students that have access to the benefits of such technique. By exploring the intersection of engineering, computer science, and cognitive and learning sciences, Dr. Eiris’ work in virtual site visits aim to overcome the existing barriers for STEM field trips and provide means to expand learning beyond what is possible in the classroom or the field.

Please join Dr. Eiris in exploring the democratization of STEM site visits to enable students to have unlimited access to otherwise impossible opportunities. Some of the specific multidisciplinary topics that will be covered in this forum discussion will be virtual reality, omnidirectional images, virtual humans, collaborative learning, and attentional allocation.

Farewell Dr. Stacy!

Dr. Stacy and students

The Association of Psychology Students hosted a farewell party for Dr. Peter Stacy on December 12. Known for his sweet tooth, students and staff made sure cake, cookies, and hot chocolate were on hand.  Dr. Stacy worked for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections for 30 years prior to joining CLS in 2006. When comparing his 13 years with CLS to his previous career, Dr. Stacy believes his biggest impact has been with the students here at Michigan Tech.

“Dr. Peter Stacy has been one of the most wonderful people I have ever had the privilege to work with. His teaching is amazing; award winning in fact. Our students love him, and he cares very much about our students’ futures. As an adjunct faculty, he worked just as hard as a full-timer! For the past 13 years we have had the honor of working with Peter in his “second career” and will always consider him part of our family.”-Susan Amato-Henderson, Department Chair

Faculty and staff also took the opportunity during the party to recognize the 5 psychology students graduating at the end of the Fall semester.  Graduates were given gift bags with items to commemorate their time here at CLS. Once again, congratulations to the following students:

Elis Brehob
Adam Dodge
Hali Evans
Rose Hildebrandt
Caden Sumner

CLS Faculty Hosts Doctoral Consortium in Barcelona

ACSHF faculty, Dr. Elizabeth Veinott, hosted the 2019 CHI Play Doctoral Consortium workshop for the 2nd year.  This time the CHI Play conference was held in Barcelona, Spain from October 22-25. Dr. Veinott enjoyed working with 11 doctoral students from Universities on  four continents.  CHI Play is an interdisciplinary ACM conference for researchers across all areas of play, games, and human-computer interaction.

CLS Congratulates PhD Candidate Lavanya Rajesh Kumar

The Department of Cognitive and Learning Sciences would like to congratulate PhD student Lavanya Rajesh Kumar for her acceptance into Yale University’s Innovation to Impact Program!
Lavanya was selected for the prestigious program that is focused on entrepreneurship training in substance abuse research. Innovation to Impact at Yale was developed as a national program to provide education, mentorship, and seed funding to innovators. The program is open to scholars interested in both exploring what it takes to bring a product to market and applying creative solutions to combat substance abuse through the use of pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, biomedical devices, app development, behavioral interventions, and public policy. The goal of the program is to help participants translate innovations from the lab to the real world.
Lavanya is currently attending the week long training program to work on her idea to develop an addiction prevention based product.
Click here to learn more about the Innovation to Impact program.

CLS Student Honored at 2019 Graduate Research Colloquium

Department of Cognitive and Learning Sciences Student Catherine (Kay) Tislar was honored at the 11th annual Graduate Research Colloquium put on by the Graduate Student Government. Kay was awarded the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award for excellence in supporting graduate education.

The Graduate Research Colloquium offers graduate students from all departments an opportunity to present their research as well as to receive recognition for their accomplishments. 85 students representing 17 different academic schools participated in this year’s event.

Congratulations to Kay and the rest of the 2019 graduate student award recipients for their outstanding accomplishments.

 

A full list of those honored at the research colloquium can be found here.

 

 

Psychology Student Presents at APS Conference

APS is the leading international organization dedicated to advancing scientific psychology across disciplinary and geographic borders. The 30th Association for Psychological Science (APS) Conference brought together more than 4,000 scientists from disciplines spanning the full spectrum of psychological science, some of whom hailed from our own Michigan Technological University. Attendees gained insights into research and trends from world-renowned psychological scientists, improved their skills, deepened their knowledge, and forged life-long collaborations with colleagues. 
UnderAPS Photo 1graduate psychology major Elizabeth Kelliher (pictured), Madeline Peabody (ACSHF Alumna), and Professor Veinott presented an analysis of group brainstorming idea generation at the 2018 APS Conference in San Francisco, California.
For the poster, Premortem: Evaluating two structured analytic techniques for group brainstorming, Elizabeth analyzed the number of reasons and solutions generated based on traditional brainstorming research measures. Groups using the Premortem generated 58% more unique reasons for plan failure than groups using the Worst-case scenario technique.  This research, which is part of a larger series of experiments, provides quantitative evidence for improving plan evaluation techniques and brainstorming. Great job, Elizabeth!

Highlights of Psych 3001 Research Spring 2015

Color vs ComplexityAssociate Professor of Psychology Shane T. Mueller announces that Volume 3 of the JMUBR (Journal of Midwest Undergraduate Behavioral Research)—an on-line journal dedicated to the research projects conducted by our undergraduates in PSY 3001 – Experimental Methods and Statistics II—has been published. This was research conducted in Spring 2015.

Highlights include:

  • Research that spans disciplines of cognitive, perceptual, social, moral, health, sports, clinical, and personality psychology.
  • A study on how for some types of behaviors, legality is an important factor in whether people judge them as moral.
  • A study of how people categorize and classify naturalistic objects (chairs!)
  • Two studies investigating the interaction of color and memory.
  • A study of the perceptions of how LBGTQ students on campus are viewed, both within and outside the Greek system.
  • A study on how college students balance financial pressures with convenience and health in making decisions about what they eat.
  • A study on the types of factors that may contribute to false memory.
  • A study on the factors that motivate student athletes.
  • A study of bullying and anti-social behavior in online and multiplayer video games.