Institute of Education London

Dr Kaska Porayska-Pomsta

• Qualifications and position:
  • MA joint Honours in Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh; PhD in Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh, School of Informatics
  • Senior Lecturer in Technology-Enhanced Learning,
  • RCUK Academic Fellow
• Faculty:
  • Faculty of Children and Learning
• Department:
  • Culture, Communication and Media
• Centre:
  • London Knowledge Lab
• Summary:
  • My research focus lies in developing adaptive technologies for learning. In building such adaptive technologies I have two aims: (1) to provide new and effective modes of learning and teaching and (2) to create research tools that allow researchers, teachers and practitioners to learn about learning, teaching and communication processes between humans and between humans and machines. Creating technologies that are able to provide appropriate support to a diversity of learners requires input from a number of research areas including human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, education and psychology. I strive to combine different interdisciplinary perspectives and to involve practitioners and learners in the design of technology, in order to achieve the best pedagogical and technological designs. Of particular interest to me are the areas of real time learner modelling and generation of contextually appropriate pedagogical feedback (both natural language and non-verbal). Within the learner modelling area, my main interests lie in examining learners' behaviours that may be indicative of their affective and motivational states and in investigating the way in which those states impact on learners' learning. In relation to pedagogical feedback, I focus primarily on communication strategies and natural language feedback and on the relationship between the context of a specific situation (including the information about learner's affective and motivation states) and appropriateness of communication strategies that may be used in the specific situations. I have been involved in research and in developing technologies for different groups of both adult and children learners, with and without special needs. I am the Principal Investigator on the ECHOES and ECHOES 2 project concerned with developing a virtual learning environment for young children to explore and acquire social interaction and communication skills (see http://echoes2.org/). I am currently a co-Invenstigator on an EU-funded TARDIS project (started November 2011) concerned with developing a virtual training environment for young people at risk of social exclusion to explore, acquire and improve their social interaction skills in the context of job interviews.
• Teaching:
  • Learning and Teaching with Technologies module leader (part of MA in ICT)
    
    Pedagogy, Adaptivity and Technology module leader (part of Birkbeck College, Computer Science MSc in LT)
    
    Issues in Educational Neuroscience lecturer (part of the Birkbeck College, Psychology, MSc/MA in Educational Neuroscience)
• Research Projects:
  • 2011-2014 TARDIS (European Commission funding under FP7)
    
    2007-2012 ECHOES II (ESRC and EPSRC under TLRP-TEL programme) http://echoes2.org/
    
    2006-2007 ECHOES (ESRC and EPSRC under TLRP-TEL programme) http://echoes2.org/
    
    2004-2006 LeActiveMath (European Commission funding under FP6) http://www.leactivemath.org/
• Postgraduate Research:
  • I supervise students in the following research areas: learner modelling in virtual learning environments, educational games technology and affective learner modelling, technology-enhanced intervention for autism and social communication and human computer-interaction.
    
    PhD Students:
    Sam Wass "Gaze Contingent Concentration Training for Infants", submitted 2011
    Man Xu "The effective integration of computer games and learning"
    Paul Gormley "Towards e-competence: strategic approaches to mainstreaming technology-driven educational innovation in higher education"
    
    MSc/MA students:
    Jonathan Wong "Affective User Modelling of ASD children through Flow State Detection", 2011
    Bianca Girzhar "Investigating the Perception of Expressive Body Behaviour in Animated Agents", 2007, University of Edinburgh, School of Informatics
    Suzanne Ball, "Investigating the relation between eye tracking, inferring emotional expressions, and Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) using animated agents", 2007, University of Edinburgh, School of Informatics
• Professional Activities:
  • Member of the steering committee for the Centre for Neuroscience in Education
    Member of the Artificial Intelligence in Education Society
    Member of the Cognitive Science Society
    
    Reviewer of EU research grant proposals and reviewer for the Greek Ministry of Education, Life Long Learning and Religious Affairs
    
    Reviewer for AIEd, UMAP, IDC, ITS and many other conferences
• Conferences/presentations:
  • Rajendran, G., Acorn, A., Pain, H., Lemon, O., Porayska-Pomsta, K., Foster, M.E., Frauenberger, C. (2011) Exploring Responses of Children with ASD to a Virtual Character in the ECHOES Technology-Enhanced Learning Environment. International Meeting for Autism Research May 2011.
    Acorn, A., Pain H., Rajendran, G., Smith, T., Lemon, O., Porayska-Pomsta, K., Foster, M.E., Avramides, K., Frauenberger, C., Bernardini, S. (2011) Social Communication between Virtual Characters and Children with Autism. 15th International Conference in Artificial Intelligence in Education
    Wass, S., deKlerk, C., Porayska-Pomsta, K. and Johnson, M. (2010) Using eye-gaze contingent software to train executive attention and working memory skills in 11-month-old babies. British Psychological Society Developmental Conference
    Foster, M E, Avramides K, Bernardini S, Chen J, Frauenberger C, Lemon O, Porayska-Pomsta K. 2010. Supporting Children's Social Communication Skills through Interactive Narratives with Virtual Characters. Proceedings of the ACM Multimedia Conference.
    Avramides, K, Bernardini S, Chen J, Frauenberger C, Foster M E, Lemon O, Porayska-Pomsta K. 2010. ECHOES: Technology-Enhanced Learning for Exploring and Improving Social Interaction Skills. Proceedings of CogSys 2010
    Porayska-Pomsta, K., Bernardini, S., Rajendran, G. (2009) Embodiment as means of Scaffolding Young Children's Social Skill Acquisition. 8th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children.
    Pain, H. and Porayska-Pomsta, K. (2006) Affect in One-to-One Tutoring. Proceedings of the Intelligent Tutoring Systems: 8th International Conference, ITS 2006, Jhongli, Taiwan, June 26-30 2006, Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series.
    Porayska-Pomsta, K and Pain, H. (2004) Providing Cognitive and Affective Scaffolding through Teaching Strategies, Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems.
    Porayska-Pomsta, K. and Mellish, C. (2004) Modelling Politeness in Natural Language Generation, Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Natural Language Generation.
• Personal Country Knowledge:
  • Poland: native
    France: childhood resident
    UK: long term resident
• Languages Spoken:
  • Polish: native
    English: near native
    French: advanced
• Languages Written:
  • Polish: native
    English: near native
    French: advanced