Leena Razzaq

Computer Science Department

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

I finished my Ph.D. in Computer Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. My advisor is Dr. Neil T. Heffernan. I received my M.S. in Computer Science from WPI in 2004 and my B.S. in CS from WPI in 2002.

My research focuses on improving student learning from educational technologies. I am most interested in the areas of intelligent tutoring systems, human-computer interaction and user modeling. My Ph.D. dissertation is focused on adapting tutoring strategies to students of differing abilities.

I have been a primary member of the ASSISTment Project which is a web-based tutoring system that assesses while it tutors. My role in this project is Content Director, where I have been in charge of designing how problems are tutored to students. This can involve writing question text, drawing images and animations and designing tutor strategies. I was also in charge of approving content that other group members have designed. I spend a large amount of time in middle schools and high schools in the Worcester area, helping teachers use the system in their classrooms and running randomized controlled studies to determine the best tutoring practices. I have helped to advise many undergraduate students who have completed projects with the ASSISTment Project. Working on the ASSISTment Project is an interdisciplinary endeavor and I have collaborated with researchers in the fields of Computer Science, Cognitive Psychology, Education, Mathematics and Psychometrics. This project is US Department of Education and National Science Foundation funded research.

Education

• Ph.D. in Computer Science. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA. 2009. GPA: 3.76
  • Dissertation committee:
    • Neil T. Heffernan, Associate Professor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
    • David Brown, Professor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
    • Robert Lindeman, Associate Professor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
    • Beverly Park Woolf, Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
• M.S. in Computer Science, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Feb, 2004. GPA: 3.6
• B.S. in Computer Science, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. May, 2002 . GPA: 3.7. Highest Honors.

Research and Projects

• Can we adapt the tutoring in educational technologies to students of differing abilities? Tutoring systems often rely on interactive tutored problem solving to help students learn math, which requires students to work through problems step-by-step while the system provides help and feedback. This approach has been shown to be effective in improving student performance in numerous studies. However, tutored problem solving may not be the most effective approach for all students. In previous studies, we found that tutored problem solving was more effective than less interactive approaches, such as simply presenting a worked out solution, for students who were not proficient in math. More proficient students benefited more from seeing solutions rather than going through all of the steps. This information can be used to adapt instruction to a student's proficiency. This work is published in Publications C8, C6 and C5.


• Current research in learning technologies has found both interactive tutored problem solving and presenting worked examples to be effective in helping students learn math and science. However, which information presentation method is more effective is still being debated among the cognitive science and intelligent tutoring societies and there is no widely accepted answer. This work compares the relative effectiveness between these two strategies when they are used as a feedback mechanism. While our results showed significant learning in both conditions, they are more in favor of the tutored problem solving condition as it showed significantly higher learning. This work is presented in Publication C9.


• Do students learn better from traditional paper-and-pencil homework or web-based homework? This study compared learning for fifth grade students in two math homework conditions. The paper-and-pencil condition represented traditional homework, with review of problems in class the following day. The Web-based homework condition provided immediate feedback in the form of hints on demand and step-by-step scaffolding. Students learned significantly more when given computer feedback than when doing traditional paper-and-pencil homework, with an effect size of 0.61. The implications of this study are that, given the large effect size, it may be worth the cost and effort to give Web-based homework when students have access to the needed equipment, such as in schools that have implemented one-to-one computing programs. This work is published in Publication J3.

• The ASSISTment System forces students to work through problems step-by-step when they get them wrong on the first try. We call these steps "scaffolds". Our survey indicated that some students found being forced to do scaffolding frustrating and time-consuming. We were not sure if all of the time we invested into designing scaffolding questions was worth it. We conducted an experiment to see if students learned more if they were given the scaffolds, which ASK students for information, compared with being given hints that TELL them the same information. Our results show that students that were given the scaffolds performed better although the results were more significant for difficult problems. This work is published in Publication C4.

• I worked for two years on the Partnerships Implementing Engineering Education (PIEE) project. Together with teachers in the Worcester Public Schools, our team created and helped deliver lesson plans and hands-on engineering projects, incorporating engineering into the K-6 curriculum. A collection of engineering lessons, organized by grade level and by Massachusetts Engineering/Technology framework learning standards for each lesson can be found at http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/PIEE/Resources/lessons.html Funding for this three-year project was provided by the National Science Foundation. Some of our ideas about teaching engineering to kindergarteners are presented in Publication C3.

• I created an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) that incorporates dialog between the student and the ITS to tutor middle school children. This involved studying effective techniques used by an experienced math tutor and imitating them in the ITS. In addition to modeling student behavior and common mistakes in solving linear equations, E-tutor models effective human tutors' responses to these mistakes. For more information on my thesis click here. This work is published in Publication C1.

Publications

Book Chapters

• B1. Razzaq, Heffernan, Koedinger, Feng, Nuzzo-Jones, Junker, Macasek, Rasmussen, Turner & Walonoski (2007). Blending Assessment and Instructional Assistance. In Nadia Nedjah, Luiza deMacedo Mourelle, Mario Neto Borges and Nival Nunesde Almeida (Eds). Intelligent Educational Machines within the Intelligent Systems Engineering Book Series. 23-49 Springer Berlin / Heidelberg. pdf

Journal Papers

• J4. Razzaq, L., Parvarczki, J., Almeida, S.F., Vartak, M., Feng, M., Heffernan, N.T. and Koedinger, K. (2009). The ASSISTment builder: Supporting the Life-cycle of ITS Content Creation. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies Special Issue on Real-World Applications of Intelligent Tutoring Systems. 2(2) 157-166. pdf
• J3. Mendicino, M., Razzaq, L. & Heffernan, N. T. (2009) Comparison of Traditional Homework with Computer Supported Homework. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 41(3), 331-359. pdf
• J2. Heffernan, N. T., Koedinger, K. R. & Razzaq, L. (2008) Expanding the model-tracing architecture: A 3rd generation intelligent tutor for Algebra symbolization. The International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. 18(2). pp. 153-178. IOS Press. pdf
• J1. Razzaq, L., Heffernan, N., Feng, M., Pardos Z. (2007). Developing Fine-Grained Transfer Models in the ASSISTment System. Journal of Technology, Instruction, Cognition, and Learning, 5(3), 289-304. pdf

Peer Reviewed Conference Papers

• C9. Shrestha, P., Maharjan, A., Wei, X., Razzaq, L., Heffernan, N.T., Heffernan, C. (2009) Are Worked Examples an Effective Feedback Mechanism During Problem Solving? In N.A. Taatgen & H. van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Cognitive Science Society. pdf
• C8. Razzaq, L., Heffernan, N.T. (2009) To Tutor or Not to Tutor: That is the Question. In Dimitrova, Mizoguchi, du Boulay and Graesser (Eds.) Proceedings of the Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education. pp. 457-464. Honorable Mention for Best Student Paper pdf
• C7. Razzaq, L., Mendicino, M. & Heffernan, N. (2008) Comparing classroom problem-solving with no feedback to web-based homework assistance. In Woolf, Aimeur, Nkambou and Lajoie (Eds.) Proceeding of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems. pp. 426 - 437. Springer-Verlag: Berlin. pdf
• C6. Razzaq, L., Heffernan, N.T., Towards Designing a User-Adaptive Web-Based E-Learning System, In Mary Czerwinski, Arnold M. Lund, Desney S. Tan (Eds.): Extended Abstracts Proceedings of the 2008 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2008, (pp. 3525-3530). Florence, Italy: ACM 2008. pdf
• C5. Razzaq, L., Heffernan, N. T., Lindeman, R. W. (2007) What level of tutor interaction is best? In Luckin & Koedinger (Eds) Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education. IOS Press. pp. 222-229. pdf
• C4. Razzaq, L., Heffernan, N.T. (2006). Scaffolding vs. hints in the Assistment System. In Ikeda, Ashley & Chan (Eds.). Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems. Springer-Verlag: Berlin. pp. 635-644. 2006. pdf
• C3. K. Bush, J. Gray, M. Holmes, K. Kosinski, J. Orr, L. Razzaq, J. Rulfs (2006) How do you Teach Engineering in Kindergarten and First Grade? Proceedings of the 113th American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, June 18-21, 2006. pdf
• C2. Razzaq, L., Feng, M., Nuzzo-Jones, G., Heffernan, N.T., Koedinger, K. R., Junker, B., Ritter, S., Knight, A., Aniszczyk, C., Choksey, S., Livak, T., Mercado, E., Turner, T.E., Upalekar. R, Walonoski, J.A., Macasek. M.A., Rasmussen, K.P. (2005). The Assistment Project: Blending Assessment and Assisting. In C.K. Looi, G. McCalla, B. Bredeweg, & J. Breuker (Eds.) Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, pp. 555-562. Amsterdam: IOS Press. pdf
• C1. Razzaq, L. & Heffernan, N. T (2004) Tutorial dialog in an equation solving intelligent tutoring system. In J.C. Lester, R.M. Vicari, & F. Parguacu (Eds.) Proceedings of 7th Annual Intelligent Tutoring Systems Conference, Maceio, Brazil. Pages 851-853. Best Poster Award pdf

Teaching

• Colleges of Worcester Consortium Certificate in College Teaching 2009
• NSF PIMSE GK-12 Teaching Fellowship, assisting middle school use of tutoring technology (Worcester, MA) 2008 -
• ASSISTment Project Content Director (designed math tutoring content at www.assistment.org) 2004-2008
• NSF Nicoletti GK-6 Teaching Fellowship, co-taught engineering grades 4, 5 and 6 (Worcester, MA) 2004-2006
• English Language Arts 8th Grade Summer School Teacher (North Brookfield, MA) Summer, 2003
• Teaching Assistant (WPI) 2002-2003

Awards and Honors

• Honorable Mention for Best Student Paper - AIED, 2009
• NSF PIMSE GK-12 Teaching Fellowship 2008 -
• AAAI Fall Symposium Travel Grant, 2008
• Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) Doctoral Consortium Travel Grant, 2007
• GAANN Fellowship 2006-2008
• NSF Nicoletti GK-6 Teaching Fellowship 2004-2006
• Best Poster Award 7th Annual Intelligent Tutoring Systems Conference, Maceio, Brazil. 2004
• Tau Beta Pi, National Engineering Honor Society 2001
• Society of Women Engineers Award 2000
• Alpha Sigma Lambda, National Honor Society for Continuing Education 1999
• Blanche M. Carnam Scholarship 1997-1999

Leadership and Service

• WPI Computer Science Graduate Council 2007-2009
• WPI Computer Science Graduate Student Organization 2005-2008
• WPI Women in Computer Science 2005-2008
• Reviewer:
  • Cognitive Science Annual Conference 2008, 2009.
  • International Conference of Artificial Intelligence in Education (AI-ED), 2007, 2009
  • International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), 2006, 2008
  • International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM), 2008
  • International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE), 2008
• Volunteer:
  • International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM), 2009