Associate Professor
School of Computer Science,
Telecommunications and Information Systems
DePaul University
Office: CTI Building (Loop Campus), Room 745
Phone: (312) 362-5085
Email: cmiller at-symbol cs.depaul.edu
Jump to Research Information
I'm often in my office weekday afternoons. Just give me a call for availability.
My particular focus has been on understanding human learning and problem solving through the construction and evaluation of computational systems. A common thread in all my research involves designing and running experiments, collecting qualitative and quantitative data, performing statistical analyses, and presenting appropriately generalized conclusions. My dissertation work involved the construction of a category learning system, which was evaluated in terms of its performance and similarity to human behavior as well as it performance compared to other machine learning systems. Lately, I have applied cognitive modeling to evaluating user interfaces including the evaluation of educational software and web site design.
Working with Roger Remington at NASA Ames, we developed an abstract process model of a user navigating through a web site in search of some targeted information. This simulation demonstrates search time costs as a function of the site depth, breadth, and the quality of link labels. Most recently Shu-Chieh Wu (NASA Ames and San Jose State University) and I are investigating how users visually search and evaluate categorical link labels as they navigate a web site or hierarchical menu system. Part of our methodology uses eye tracking equipment to identify strategies users employ when they visually scan a list of links on a screen.
Student learning using computer microworlds. Electric Field Hockey (EFH) is an educational computer microworld that simulates how a set of fixed electrically-charged particles affect the movement of a floating charge. Students interact by placing and adjusting fixed particles in attempting to achieve a game-oriented objective. The educational objective is to provide physics students with a qualitative understanding of electrical interactions. My research objective is to understand what knowledge is required to interact with EFH, what students learn by interacting, and how and to what extent EFH's game-oriented objective detracts from the pedagogical objective. My approach involves the construction and evaluation of a computer simulation interacting with EFH, as well as recording verbal protocols of students interacting with EFH. This work is with Jill Lehman and Ken Koedinger at Carnegie Mellon University.
A Soar model of category learning. My Ph.D. advisor, John Laird, along with Allen Newell and Paul Rosenbloom, created Soar, a cognitive architecture-a system whose basic problem solving and learning mechanisms support intelligent behavior. Soar's features include a performance-based learning mechanism and a fully symbolic problem solver that uses an efficient production-based means of knowledge retrieval. Since Soar's architectural principles are founded upon psychological task demands, Soar serves as a candidate unified theory of cognition. I constructed my category learning system from the mechanisms of the Soar architecture. This work provided Soar with an additional learning capability while also demonstrating how a discrete rule-based system can deliver flexible and gradient behavior. The EFH model is also constructed from the Soar architecture.
Integrating Empirical Methods into Computer Science. This project identified areas in computer science that involve empirical investigative skills such as experimentation, data analysis and statistics. With Dave Reed (Creighton University) and Grant Braught (Dickinson College), we developed examples, assignments and labs where students can apply these skills while learning concepts in computer science. The Web page for this project has a lab repository freely available to instructors.
I completed my Ph.D. (1993) in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan. I have a B.S. and B.A. (1987) from Bowling Green State University in Computer Science and French. I was a post-doc for 2 years at Carnegie Mellon University. More recently taught computer science for 4 years at Dickinson College.
I play ultimate frisbee and am usually on a league team in Chicago. I'm interested in learning Spanish and have taken courses in Spanish at Instituto Cervantes de Chicago, but my studies are on a hiatus with the arrival of our first child.
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