Contact Information
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Department of Psychology 401 W. Kennedy Blvd., Box Q Tampa, FL 33606 Voice: (813) 257-3461 e-mail: sblessing@ut.edu |
Education
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Ph.D. Summer 1996 |
Carnegie Mellon University Psychology Advisor: John R. Anderson Committee: Jill Larkin, Herbert A. Simon |
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M.S. Spring 1994 |
Carnegie Mellon University Psychology Advisor: John R. Anderson Committee: Jill Larkin, Herbert A. Simon |
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B.S. Spring 1992 |
University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign Psychology (with honors) Minor: Computer Science Advisor: Brian H. Ross |
Research Interests
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Intelligent Tutoring Authoring Systems Cognitive Modeling Learning and Memory |
Teaching Interests
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Cognitive Psychology Introductory Psychology Introductory and Intermediate Statistics Research Methods |
Professional Experience
| Associate Professor, University of Tampa, 2009 – present | |
| Assistant Professor, University of Tampa, 2004 – 2009 | |
| Cognitive Scientst, Carnegie Learning, 1999 – 2004 | |
| Assistant Professor, University of Florida, 1996 – 1999 |
Other Experience
| Chair of University of Tampa IRB, 2009-present | |
| Co-organizer, International Workshop on Authoring Simulation and Game-Based Intelligent Tutoring (2011) | |
| Program committee, International Artificial Intelligence in Education conference (2011) | |
| Program committee, International Cognitive Science conference (2010-2011) | |
| Program committee, International Annual FLAIRS conference (ITS special track, 2008-2011) | |
| Chair of University of Tampa Honors Committee, 2007-2009 | |
| Guest editor, The International Journal for Artificial Intelligence in Education, special issue on authoring tools for intelligent tutors | |
| Ad hoc Reviewer: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition; Memory & Cognition; International Journal of AI in Education; Interactive Learning Environments; Transactions on Learning Technology | |
| Intern, Apple Computer Inc. (Manager: James C. Spohrer), Summer 1994 |
Honors, Awards, and Grants
| Developing an Intelligent Tutor for Statistics, University of Tampa Board of Fellows Grant, 2010 [$1,000, PI] | |
| The Vanderbilt-Northwestern-Texas-Harvard/MIT (VaNTH) Engineering Research Center for Bioengineering Educational Technologies. National Science Foundation SBIR Phase IIR, 2007-2008. [$200,000, consultant] | |
| Developing a Cost-Effective Method for Creating Cognitive Models for Cognitive Tutors. National Science Foundation SBIR Phase II, 2006-2007. [$500,000; subawardee] | |
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Developing a Cost-Effective Method for Creating Cognitive Models for Cognitive Tutors. National Science Foundation SBIR Phase I, 2005. [$100,000; consultant]
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Authoring tools for cognitive models. National Science Foundation SBIR Phase I, 2004. [$100,000; co-PI]
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Developing a methodology for understanding how professional development translates into classroom practice. Department of Education SBIR Phase I, 2002. [$75,000; senior personnel]
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| Psi Chi Outstanding Instructor, University of Florida, Spring 1999 |
Refereed Journals
Blessing, S. B. (1997). A Programming by demonstration authoring tool for model-tracing tutors. The International Journal for Artificial Intelligence in Education, 8, 233–261. [reprinted in T. Murray, S. Blessing, & S. Ainsworth (Eds.) (2003). Authoring tools for advanced technology educational software (pp. 93-120). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.] [pdf]
Blessing, S. B. & Anderson, J. R. (1996). How people learn to skip steps. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22, 576-598. [reprinted in T. Polk & C. Seifert (Eds.). (2002). Cognitive modeling (pp. ). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.] [pdf]
Blessing, S. B. & Ross, B. H. (1996). Content effects in problem categorization and problem solving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22, 792-810. [pdf]
Blessing, S. B. & Blessing, J. S. (2010). PsychBusters: A means of fostering critical thinking in the introductory course. Teaching of Psychology, 37, 178-182.
Ritter, S. & Blessing, S. B. (1998). Authoring tools for component-based learning environments. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 7(1), 107–131.
Blessing, S., Gilbert, S., Ourada, S., & Ritter, S. (2009). Authoring model-tracing cognitive tutors. The International Journal for Artificial Intelligence and Education, 19, 189-210.
Refereed Conferences
Blessing, S. B. (1995). ITS authoring tools: The next generation. In J. Greer (Ed.), Proceedings of AI-ED 95-7th World Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education (p. 567). Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. [pdf]
Blessing, S. B., & Dronek, P. (2006). The effect of einstellung on compositional processes. In R. Sun & N. Miyake (Eds.), Proceedings of the Twenty–eighth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (p. 2444), Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. [pdf]
Blessing, S. B., & Gilbert, S. (2008). Evaluating an authoring tool for model-tracing intelligent tutoring systems. In Proceedings of the ITS 2008 Conference (p. 204-215), Montreal, Quebec. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. [pdf]
Blessing, S. B. & Ross, B. H. (1994). Problem content affects the categorization and solutions of problems. In A. Ram and K. Eiselt (Eds.), Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 51-55), Atlanta, GA. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. [pdf]
Blessing, S., & Svetlik, M. (2007). How the statistical structure of the environment affects perception of the müller-lyer illusion. In D. S. McNamara & J. G. Trafton (Eds.), Proceedings of the Twenty–ninth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 827-832), Nashville, TN. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [pdf]
Blessing, S. B., Devasani, S., & Gilbert, S. (2011). Evaluation of webxpst: A browser-based authoring tool for problem-specific tutors. In G. Biswas, S. Bull & J. Kay (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (pp. 423-425), Auckland, NZ. Berlin, Germany: Springer.
Blessing, S. B., Gilbert, S, & Ritter, S. (2006). Developing an authoring system for cognitive models within commercial-quality ITSs. In Proceedings of the Nineteenth International FLAIRS Conference (pp. 497-502), Melbourne, FL. AAAI Press. [pdf]
Blessing, S. B., Gilbert, S. B., Blankenship, L. A., & Sanghvi, B. (2009). From sdk to xpst: A new way to overlay a tutor on existing software. In Proceedings of the Twenty-second International FLAIRS Conference (pp. 466-467), Sanibel Island, FL. AAAI Press. [pdf]
Blessing, S., Gilbert, S., Ourada, S., & Ritter, S. (2007). Lowering the bar for creating model-tracing intelligent tutoring systems. In R. Luckin, K. Koedinger, & J. Greer (Eds.), Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (pp. 443-450), Marina del Rey, CA. Amsterdam, Netherlands: IOS Press. [pdf]
Devasani, S., Aist, G., Blessing, S. B., & Gilbert, S. (2011). Lattice-based approach to building templates for natural language understanding in intelligent tutoring systems. In G. Biswas, S. Bull & J. Kay (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (pp. 47-54), Auckland, NZ. Berlin, Germany: Springer.
Gilbert, S. B., Blessing, S. B., & Blankenship, E. (2009). The accidental tutor: Overlaying an intelligent tutor on an existing user interface. In CHI '09 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. [pdf]
Gilbert, S., Blessing, S. B., & Kodavali, S. (2009). The Extensible Problem-specific tutor (xpst): Evaluation of an api for tutoring on existing interfaces. In V. Dimitrova et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (pp. 707-709), Brighton, UK. Amsterdam, Netherlands: IOS Press. [pdf]
Gilbert, S., Devasani, S., Kodavali, S., & Blessing, S. B. (2011). Easy authoring of intelligent tutoring systems for synthetic environments. Proceedings of the 20th Conference on Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (pp. 192-199), Sundance, UT.
Gunzelmann, G., & Blessing, S. B. (2000). Why are some problems easy? New insights into the Tower of Hanoi. In L. R. Gleitman and A. K. Joshi (Eds.), Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (p. 1029). Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [pdf]
Hategekimana, C., Gilbert, S. & Blessing, S. (2008). Effectiveness of using an intelligent tutoring system to train users on off-the-shelf software. In K. McFerrin et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2008 (pp. 414-419), Las Vegas, NV. Chesapeake, VA: AACE. [pdf]
Haverty, L., & Blessing, S. (2007). What did that $2.5 million dollar ad buy us? Cognitive science goes to the super bowl. In D. S. McNamara & J. G. Trafton (Eds.), Proceedings of the Twenty-ninth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 347-352), Nashville, TN. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [pdf]
Kodavali, S., Gilbert, S., Blessing, S. B. (2010) Expansion of the xPST framework to enable non-programmers to create intelligent tutoring systems in 3D game environments. In V. Aleven, J. Kay, & J. Mostow (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (pp. 365-367), Pittsburgh, PA. Berlin, Germany: Spring.
Ritter, S. & Blessing, S. B. (1995). Controlling content: Towards a domain-general authoring framework for intelligent tutors. In N. Major, T. Murray, and C. Bloom (Eds.), Workshop on Authoring Shells for Intelligent Tutoring Systems (pp. 78-81). Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
Ritter, S. & Blessing, S. B. (1996). A programming-by-demonstration tool for retargeting instructional systems. In D. C. Edelson & E. A. Domeshek (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Learning Sciences (pp. 292-299). Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
Ritter, S., & Blessing, S. B., Wheeler, L. (2003). User modeling and problem-space representation in the tutor runtime engine. In P. Brusilovsky, A. T. Corbett, & F. de Rosis (Eds.), User Modeling 2003 (pp. 333-336), Johnstown, PA. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Roselli, R.J., Gilbert, S., Howard, L., Blessing, S. B., Raut, A., & Pandian, P. (2008). Integration of an intelligent tutoring system with a web-based authoring system to develop online homework assignments with formative feedback. In Proceedings of 115th Annual American Society for Engineering Education Conference (ASEE 2008). [pdf]
Books
Murray, T., Blessing, S., Ainsworth, S. (Eds.) (2003). Authoring Tools for Advanced Technology Educational Software. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. [info]
Technical Reports
Blessing, S. B. (1999). The cognitive tutor: Successful application of cognitive science. Carnegie Learning whitepaper. [link]
Presentations
Blessing, S. B. (April, 2004). A case study using cognitive psychology to design cognitive tutor curricula. Presentation at the NCTM National Conference, Philadelphia, PA.
Blessing, S. B. (April, 2005). Cognitive tutors: A successful application of cognitive science. University of Tampa Honors Symposium presentation.
Blessing, S. B. (November, 2007). What cognitive psychology can tell us about learning, memory, and super bowl commercials. University of Tampa Honors Symposium presentation.
Blessing, S. B., Blessing, J. S., & Fleck, B. K. B. (January, 2010). Twittering through psychology: Using social networking for out-of-class instruction . Poster presented at the 32nd Annual National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP) Conference, St. Petersburg, FL
Blessing, S., Weiss, J., Garrett, M, Mather, S. (January, 2007). Exam Q&A: Effective review software made easy. Poster presented at the 29th Annual National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP) Conference, St. Petersburg, FL.
Donohoe, C., Rhein, D., & Blessing, S. B. (March, 2011). Field trip! What fourth-graders learn while visiting a history museum. Poster presented at the 57th Annual Southeast Psychological Association Conference, Jacksonville, FL.
Gunzelmann, G. & Blessing, S. B. (1998). A tale of three isomorphs: Transfer in the tower of hanoi. Poster presented at the 11th Annual Florida Cognition Conference.
Gutierrez, S., & Blessing, S. B. (March, 2008). Effects of mood on the occurrence of the false memory effect. Poster presented at the 2008 Meeting of the Southeast Psychological Association, Charlotte, NC.
Maass, J. K., & Blessing, S. B. (April, 2011). Xstat: An intelligent homework helper for students. Poster presented at the 2011 Georgia Undergraduate Research in Psychology Conference, Kennesaw, GA.
In the News
Anderson, M. K. (2001). ‘Aaron’: Art from the machine. Wired. May 12, 2001. [link]
Belcher, W. (2008). Tampa professor studies what makes ads like 'Magic Fridge' memorable. Tampa Tribune. Feb. 3, 2008.
Castle, C. (2007). Ongoing Research. Museum Education Monitor. June 2007.
Castle, C. (2006). Ongoing Research. Museum Education Monitor. October 2006.
Freakonomics (2009). Why it's good to get your commercial banned from the super bowl. Feb. 1, 2009. [link]
Traphagen, M. (2008). 'Wining’ trumps screaming in analysis of super bowl ads. Miller-McCune. Feb. 6, 2008. [link]
Vasquez, D. (2008). A downside to funny Super Bowl ads: Consumers often forget the advertiser behind them. Media Life Research. Jan. 30, 2008. [link]
Professional Affiliations
| Cognitive Science Society | |
| Society for Artificial Intelligence in Education | |
| Society for the Teaching of Psychology |
Professional Consulting
| Ad hoc Reviewer: International Journal of AI in Education (2003, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010); Topics in Cognitive Science (2010); IEEE Learning Technology (2009); Interactive Learning Environments (2006); Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (1998); Memory & Cognition (1997) | |
| Conference Reviewer: International Artificial Intelligence in Education Conference (2009, 2011), International Cognitive Science Conference (2004-2011), International Intelligent Tutoring Conference (2002, 2010) | |
| Book/Chapter review: McGraw-Hill (2008, 2009, 2010), Wadsworth (2007) | |
| Consultancies: McGraw-Hill (2008-2010), Cengage (2009-2010) |