Sketch Understanding for Geoscience Education - Dr. Ken D Forbus
Channel: Intelligent Systems for Geosciences Community
Date: 2020-03-03

Abstract:
A recent survey indicates that geoscience instructors think sketching is important for learning geoscience, but they don't use sketching as often as they would like because they are too hard to grade, especially with large class sizes.  This talk describes how cognitive models of high-level human visual processing and analogy can be used for open-domain sketch understanding, in a system called CogSketch.  CogSketch is also a platform for new kinds of sketch-based educational software, including  Sketch Worksheets, which are authored by instructors not AI experts.  This talk will describe the basics of CogSketch, Sketch Worksheets, and their deployment in geoscience classes at two universities. 

Short bio: Kenneth D. Forbus is the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Education at Northwestern University.  He received his degrees from MIT (Ph.D. in 1984). His research interests include qualitative reasoning, analogical reasoning and learning, spatial reasoning, sketch understanding, natural language understanding, cognitive architecture, reasoning system design, intelligent educational software, and the use of AI in interactive entertainment.  He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the Cognitive Science Society, and the Association for Computing Machinery.  He is the inaugural recipient of the Herbert A. Simon Prize for Advances in Cognitive Systems, a recipient of the Humboldt Research Award, and served as Chair of the Cognitive Science Society.