Highly theoretical and not immediately practical, but perhaps the mathematicians among us will find it interesting. "Education of a model student" PDF: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/13/1109863109.full.pdf Abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/13/1109863109.abstract :
> A dilemma faced by teachers, and increasingly by designers of educational > software, is the trade-off between teaching new material and reviewing what > has already been taught. Complicating matters, review is useful only if it is > neither too soon nor too late. Moreover, different students need to review at > different rates. We present a mathematical model that captures these issues > in idealized form. The student’s needs are modeled as constraints on the > schedule according to which educational material and review are spaced over > time. Our results include algorithms to construct schedules that adhere to > various spacing constraints, and bounds on the rate at which new material can > be introduced under these schedules. >From the PDF: > ...[software] could fit a model to the user and then schedule review in a way > that is tailored to the model. > With such educational software in mind, we envision a system in which the > software designer can specify a schedule for the introduction of new > material, together with a schedule by which the review of existing material > is spaced over time. What we find, however, is that the resulting scheduling > problems are mathematically subtle: Existing techniques do not handle > scheduling problems with spacing constraints of this type. _Wired_ coverage: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/algorithmic-education/ -- gwern http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mnemosyne-proj-users" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mnemosyne-proj-users?hl=en.
