Undergraduate and graduate students in Purdue University’s Polytechnic Institute presented posters summarizing their 2021-2022 research projects. Student research projects affiliated with the Polytechnic’s Future Work and Learning research impact area are summarized here.

Alejandra J. Magana, the W.C. Furnas Professor in Enterprise Excellence, and a multidisciplinary team of researchers evaluated the effectiveness of multiple teaching strategies used during the pandemic.

The creative and ill-structured nature of graphic design tasks creates difficulty in terms of assessment validity and reliability. Further, best practices in teaching and assessment are hampered by issues around scalability and efficiency. Finally, increasingly validated indications that good design(s) may be a function of a group consensus rather than the opinions of a few extensively trained individuals, have all led to an increased emphasis on researching new approaches to improving graphic design education.

HapTutor-Lab: Promoting Complex Learning in STEM Domains through Intelligent Tutors and Haptic Feedback.

There has been a breakthrough in recent years concerning artificial talking head agents that can have a conversation with the human learning in natural language in the form of intelligent tutoring systems. Faculty members are leading a project to integrate two lines of research.

Drs. Bartholomew & McGraw and Mr. Charlesworth hypothesize that some of the struggles with data-driven decision-making instruction stem from the lack of context and real-world application for students (Merrill, Custer, Daugherty, Westrick, & Zeng, 2009). Further, they believe that placing students in positions requiring data-driven decision approaches may increase the effectiveness of these experiences and foster student interest in pursuing related education and careers.

Richard Voyles took an optimistic view of the future in his presentation, “Can Polymers Think? Embodied Intelligence in a Meta-Material World” at the 2018 Dawn or Doom conference.

Mesut Akdere, associate professor of human resource development (HRD), along with professors in Purdue Libraries and CILMAR, received a grant to provide training for archivists across the country by developing and facilitating the Archives Leadership Institute (ALI).

Greg Strimel, assistant professor of engineering/technology teacher education (ETTE), and William Walls, ETTE undergraduate, launched the Improving Regional Manufacturing Ecosystems (IRME) project to serve as a Purdue undergraduate research/engagement initiative specifically for pre-service teachers.

Mayari Serrano’s research projects tend to focus on the intersection of one’s hands and technology.