Sumner, Tamara

Research

research overview

Tamara Sumner is the Director of the Institute of Cognitive Science and a Professor in Computer and Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado. She leads an interdisciplinary R&D lab that studies how computational tools – combining cognitive science, machine intelligence, and interactive media – can improve teaching practice, learning outcomes and learner engagement in STEM. The influence of these tools on educators and learners’ cognition and practices are investigated through a combination of co-design, design studies and field studies, conducted in both formal classroom settings and out-of-school programs. We partner with diverse urban school districts, as well as out-of-school programs serving low socioeconomic status youth. Sumner has extensive research publications in human-computer interaction, educational technology, digital libraries, and intelligent systems. Her teaching focuses on cognitive science research methods and user-centered design.

keywords

artificial intelligence in education, learning analytics, open educational resources, educational technology, research administration and management

Publications

selected publications

book
- Characterizing and Predicting the Multifaceted Nature of Quality in Educational Web Resources 2013
chapter
conference proceeding
- Proceedings of the 17th Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (BEA 2022) 2022
- The TalkMoves Dataset: K-12 Mathematics Lesson Transcripts Annotated for Teacher and Student Discursive Moves. 4654-4662. 2022
- DaSH Home: Using Programmable Sensors to Support Student Driven Investigations During Remote Learning. 2022
- Co-Designing Opportunities for Rural Middle School Youth to Engage With STEM Careers and Career Pathways 2022
- Integrating Professional Mentorship with a 3D-Printing Curriculum to Help Rural Youth Forge STEM Career Connections. 2021
- Supporting Teachers to Implement Engineering Design Challenges using Sensor Technologies in a Remote Classroom Environment 2021
- 3DnST: A Framework Towards Understanding Children's Interaction with Tinkercad and Enhancing Spatial Thinking Skills. 257-267. 2021
- Challenges and Unexpected Affordances of Physical Computing Going Remote. 276-282. 2021
- Using AI to Promote Equitable Classroom Discussions: The TalkMoves Application. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. 344-348. 2021
- Using Transformers to Provide Teachers with Personalized Feedback; on their Classroom Discourse: The TalkMoves Application 2021
- Integrating computational thinking into middle school science through co-designed storylines 2020
- HugBot: A soft robot designed to give human-like hugs. 556-561. 2019
- Designing an Informal Learning Curriculum to Develop 3D Modeling Knowledge and Improve Spatial Thinking Skills 2019
- Designing a Middle School Science Curriculum that Integrates Computational Thinking and Sensor Technology. 818-824. 2019
- Automating Analysis and Feedback to Improve Mathematics Teachers' Classroom Discourse. Proceedings of the ... AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. 9721-9728. 2019
- Using deep learning to automatically detect talk moves in teachers'mathematics lessons. 5445-5447. 2018
- Learning Engineering Practices Through Drones: Iterative design of an informal learning curriculum. 1513-1514. 2018
- Equity-focused Implementation of Next Generation Science Standards: Exploring Models of Hope and Possibility 2017
- Using NGSS to Inform and Provide Equitable Instruction, Learning, and Assessments to Diverse Students 2017
- Scientific Modeling: Using learning analytics to examine student practices and classroom variation. 329-338. 2017
- Using Learning Analytics in Iterative Design of a Digital Modeling Tool. 602-603. 2017
- Researchers and practitioners co-designing for expansive science learning and educational equity. 1128-1135. 2016
- Students’ responses to curricular activities as indicator of coherence in project-based science. 855-858. 2016
- Bayesian Supervised Domain Adaptation for Short Text Similarity. 927-936. 2016
- DLS@CU at SemEval-2016 Task 1: Supervised Models of Sentence Similarity. 650-655. 2016
- Equity of Learning Opportunities in the Chicago City of Learning Program. 618-619. 2016
- Exploring Social Influence on the Usage of Resources in an Online Learning Community. 585-586. 2016
- Fast and Easy Short Answer Grading with High Accuracy. 1070-1075. 2016
- Using weak ties to understand resource usage behaviors in an online community of educators. 533-536. 2015
- SGRank: Combining Statistical and Graphical Methods to Improve the State of the Art in Unsupervised Keyphrase Extraction. 117-126. 2015
- A computational approach to understanding and predicting the behavior of educators using an online curriculum planning tool. 487-488. 2014
- Towards Automatic Identification of Core Concepts in Educational Resources. 379-388. 2014
- "CU:Computational assessment of short free text answers - a tool for evaluating students’ understanding." 2014
- Automatic Extraction of Core Learning Goals and Generation of Pedagogical Sequences Through a Collection of Digital Library Resources. 67-76. 2013
- “Identifying science concepts and student misconceptions in an interactive essay writing tutor” 2012
- “Automating Open Educational Resources Assessments: A Machine Learning Generalization Study” 2011
- “Modeling Teacher Ratings of Online Resources: A Human-Machine Approach to Quality” 2011
- Algorithms for Robust Knowledge Extraction in Learning Environments. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. 245-247. 2010
- Conceptual Personalization Technology: Promoting Effective Self-directed, Online Learning. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. 278-+. 2010
- Open Educational Resource Assessments (OPERA). Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. 414-+. 2010
- Improving Conceptual Learning through Customized Knowledge Visualization. 407-410. 2010
- "Factors influencing Earth science educators’ adoption of a Web-based curriculum customization service." 2010
- A Curriculum Customization Service. 479-479. 2009
- A Personalized Learning Environment. 369-369. 2009
- Automatically Characterizing Resource Quality for Educational Digital Libraries. 221-230. 2009
- Topic Model Methods for Automatically Identifying Out-of-Scope Resources. 19-28. 2009
- Automatically Assessing Resource Quality for Educational Digital Libraries. 3-10. 2009
- Personalizing the Selection of Digital Library Resources to Support Intentional Learning. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. 244-+. 2008
- A Latent Semantic Analysis Methodology for the Identification and Creation of Personas. 1501-1510. 2008
- Towards Automatic Conceptual Personalization Tools. 452-+. 2007
- Demonstrating education impact: Challenges in the years ahead. 258-258. 2004
- Digital libraries and educational practice: A case for new models. 170-178. 2004
- Dynamically generating conceptual browsing interfaces for digital libraries. 391-391. 2004
- The concept space interchange protocol. 382-382. 2004
- A model and research agenda for educational community-based digital libraries: The Digital Library for Earth System Education. 26-34. 2003
- Steps towards establishing shared evaluation goalsand procedures in the National Science Digital Library. 407-407. 2003
- Understanding educator perceptions of "quality" in digital libraries. 269-279. 2003
- Internet repositories for collaborative learning: Supporting both students and teachers. 321-328. 1995
- PERSPECTIVE-BASED CRITIQUING - HELPING DESIGNERS COPE WITH CONFLICTS AMONG DESIGN INTENTIONS. 449-466. 1994
- EMBEDDING COMPUTER-BASED CRITICS IN THE CONTEXTS OF DESIGN. 157-164. 1993
journal article
- The Science Student Electronic Exit Ticket (SEET) System. Journal of Learning Analytics. 1-14. 2024
- The Science Student Electronic Exit Ticket (SEET) System: Visualizations to Help Teachers Notice and Reflect on Classroom Inequalities. Journal of Learning Analytics. 2024
- Promoting rich discussions in mathematics classrooms: Using personalized, automated feedback to support reflection and instructional change. Teaching and Teacher Education. 2022
- Reflections on the last decade of MOOC research. Computer Applications in Engineering Education. 648-665. 2021
- A professional development model to integrate computational thinking into middle school science through codesigned storylines. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education. 53-96. 2021
- Developing tasks to assess phenomenon-based science learning: Challenges and lessons learned from building proximal transfer tasks. Science Education. 1367-1395. 2019
- Using Learning Analytics to Understand Scientific Modeling in the Classroom. Frontiers in ICT. 2017
- Using weak ties to understand the resource usage and sharing patterns of a professional learning community. Social Network Analysis and Mining. 2016
- Designing a Deeply Digital Science Curriculum: Supporting Teacher Learning and Implementation with Organizing Technologies. Journal of Science Teacher Education. 61-77. 2016
- Organizing for Teacher Agency in Curricular Co-Design. Journal of the Learning Sciences. 531-564. 2016
- 'Back to Basics for Monolingual Alignment: Exploiting Word Similarity and Contextual Evidence'. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics. 2014
- Characterizing and Predicting the Multifaceted Nature of Quality in Educational Web Resources. The ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems. 2013
- Characterizing and Predicting the Multifaceted Nature of Quality in Educational Web Resources. The ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems. 2013
- Automated approaches to characterizing educational digital library usage: linking computational methods with qualitative analyses. International Journal on Digital Libraries. 51-64. 2012
- How Does Prior Knowledge Impact Students’ Online Learning Behaviors?. International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning. 1-18. 2011
- Self-Directed Learning and the Sensemaking Paradox. Human-Computer Interaction. 123-159. 2011
- Computational foundations for personalizing instruction with digital libraries. International Journal on Digital Libraries. 3-18. 2008
- Connecting digital libraries to eScience: the future of scientific scholarship. International Journal on Digital Libraries. 1-4. 2007
- Multimedia displays for conceptual discovery: information seeking with strand maps. Multimedia Tools and Applications. 236-248. 2006
- Concept Space Interchange Protocol: A protocol for concept map based resource discovery in educational digital libraries. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. 471-476. 2006
- Resource discovery in distributed digital libraries through visual knowledge navigation. Zhejiang University Journal (Science A): applied physics and engineering. 1306-1311. 2005
- Linking learning goals and educational resources through interactive conceptmap visualizations. International Journal on Digital Libraries. 18-24. 2005
- Design-based learning and the participation of women in IT. Frontiers: a journal of women studies. 141-147. 2005
- Developing a computational model of "quality" for educational digital libraries. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. 541-542. 2005
- Does eScience need digital libraries?. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. 475-476. 2005
- REPORT FROM THE TRENCHES: IMPLEMENTING CURRICULUM TO PROMOTE THE PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN IN COMPUTER SCIENCE. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering. 273-294. 2005
- LISA and its in-flight test precursor SMART-2. Nuclear Physics B - Proceedings Supplements. 209-216. 2002
- JIME: an interactive journal for interactive media (Reprinted from First Monday, vol 6, 2001). Learned Publishing. 273-285. 2001
- The digital library for earth system education. Communications of the ACM. 80-81. 2001
- PROMOTING SCHOLARSHIP THROUGH DESIGN. Information, Communication and Society. 597-615. 2000
- Talking about Multimedia: a layered design framework. Learning, Media and Technology. 215-241. 1997
- Supporting evaluation in design. Acta Psychologica. 221-244. 1996
- Integrating working and learning: Two models of computer support. AI and Society: the journal of human-centered systems and machine intelligence. 70-78. 1996
- SHARE GLOBALLY, ADAPT LOCALLY - SOFTWARE ASSISTANCE TO LOCATE AND TAILOR CURRICULUM POSTED TO THE INTERNET. Computers and Education. 237-246. 1995
- AGENTSHEETS - A MEDIUM FOR CREATING DOMAIN ORIENTED VISUAL LANGUAGES. Computer. 17-25. 1995
- Embedding critics in design environments. Knowledge Engineering Review. 285-307. 1993

Teaching

courses taught

CSCI 7772 - Topics in Cognitive Science
Primary Instructor - Fall 2018 / Fall 2019 / Fall 2020 / Fall 2021 / Fall 2022 / Spring 2024 / Fall 2024
Reading of interdisciplinary innovative theories and methodologies of cognitive science. Students participate in the ICS Distinguished Speakers series that hosts internationally recognized cognitive scientists who share and discuss their current research. Session discussions include analysis of leading edge and controversial new approaches in cognitive science. Same as EDUC 7775 and LING 7775 and PHIL 7810 and PSYC 7775 and SLHS 7775.
LING 7775 - Topics in Cognitive Science
Primary Instructor - Fall 2018 / Fall 2019 / Fall 2020 / Fall 2022 / Spring 2024 / Fall 2024
Reading of interdisciplinary innovative theories and methodologies of cognitive science. Students participate in the ICS Distinguished Speakers series that hosts internationally recognized cognitive scientists who share and discuss their current research. Session discussions include analysis of leading edge and controversial new approaches in cognitive science. Same as CSCI 7772 and EDUC 7775 and PHIL 7810 and PSYC 7775 and SLHS 7775.
PHIL 7810 - Topics in Cognitive Science
Primary Instructor - Fall 2019 / Fall 2020 / Spring 2024 / Fall 2024
Reading of interdisciplinary innovative theories and methodologies of cognitive science. Students participate in the ICS Distinguished Speakers series that hosts internationally recognized cognitive scientists who share and discuss their current research. Session discussions include analysis of leading edge and controversial new approaches in cognitive science. Same as CSCI 7772 and EDUC 7775 and LING 7775 and PSYC 7775 and SLHS 7775.
PSYC 7415 - Cognitive Science Research Applications Seminar 1
Primary Instructor - Spring 2024 / Fall 2024
Independent, interdisciplinary research project in cognitive science for advanced graduate students pursuing a joint PhD in an approved core discipline and cognitive science. Research projects integrate at least two areas within the cognitive sciences: psychology, computer science, linguistics, education, philosophy. Students need commitments from two mentors for their project. Recommended prerequisite: EDUC 6505. Same as CSCI 7412 and EDUC 6506 and LING 7415 and PHIL 7415 and SLHS 7418.
PSYC 7425 - Cognitive Science Research Applications Seminar 2
Primary Instructor - Spring 2024
Independent, interdisciplinary research project in cognitive science for advanced graduate students pursuing a joint PhD in an approved core discipline and cognitive science. Research projects integrate at least two areas within the cognitive sciences: psychology, computer science, linguistics, education, philosophy. Students need commitments from two mentors for their project. Same as CSCI 7422 and EDUC 6516 and LING 7425 and PHIL 7425 and SLHS 7428.
PSYC 7775 - Topics in Cognitive Science
Primary Instructor - Fall 2018 / Fall 2019 / Fall 2020 / Fall 2021 / Fall 2022 / Spring 2024 / Fall 2024
Reading of interdisciplinary innovative theories and methodologies of cognitive science. Students participate in the LCS Distinguished Speakers series that hosts internationally recognized cognitive scientists who share and discuss their current research. Session discussions include analysis of leading edge and controversial new approaches in cognitive science. Restricted to students enrolled in LCS Cognitive Science Academic Programs. Same as CSCI 7772 and EDUC 7775 and LING 7775 and PHIL 7810 and SLHS 7775.
SLHS 7775 - Topics in Cognitive Science
Primary Instructor - Fall 2018 / Fall 2019 / Fall 2020 / Fall 2021 / Fall 2022 / Spring 2024
Reading of interdisciplinary innovative theories and methodologies of cognitive science. Students participate in the ICS Distinguished Speakers series that hosts internationally recognized cognitive scientists who share and discuss their current research. Session discussions include analysis of leading edge and controversial new approaches in cognitive science. Same as CSCI 7772 and EDUC 7775 and LING 7775 and PHIL 7810 and PSYC 7775.

Background

education and training

Ph.D., University of Colorado Boulder 1995
M.S., University of Colorado Boulder 1992
B.A., University of California-Santa Cruz 1985
B.S., University of California-Santa Cruz 1982

International Activities

geographic focus

http://dbpedia.org/page/Hong_Kong Geographic Region
Asia Continent
Australia Country
China Country
Europe Continent
Ireland Country
Italy Country
Singapore Country
United Kingdom Country

Other Profiles

VIVO

Positions

Research Areas

Research

research overview

keywords

Publications

selected publications

book

chapter

conference proceeding

journal article

Teaching

courses taught

Background

education and training

International Activities

geographic focus

Other Profiles

ORCID iD

Google Scholar

ResearchGate