NIS International Research-to-Practice Conference
Inspirational Speakers
Keynote Speakers
Gunter Maris
Gunter Maris is full professor of psychological methods at the University of Amsterdam and principal research scientist at CITO, both in the Netherlands.
Maris holds a Phd in mathematical psychology from the University of Nijmegen and a Masters degree in theoretical psychology from the University of Leuven. His research interests focuses on formal theories of learning and individual differences, and statistical methods to evaluate such theories. Maris has published widely in top tier journals in science in general (e.g., Science), in psychology (e.g., Psychological Review), and psychometrics (e.g., Psychometrika).
VIII NIS International Conference, 27-28 October 2016: Keynote Speech
Learning as it happens – Learning how it happens
With the increased availability of computers with broadband internet connections in schools it becomes possible to register every response to every excercise a child attempts during his or her school career, for every child. Information that was once locked into excercise books becomes unlocked, and can be centrally stored in a data base. Literally for the first time in history it becomes possible to study learning as it happens, and start to address the question of how it happens. Both of these are important prerequisites for adapting education to the needs of individual learners. Neither the educational measurement literature nor the psychological literature related to learning offer appropriate formal theories for how learning happens. There is a wealth of detailed information on the outcomes of learning (through large scale educational testing), and on artificial learning tasks (through small-scale experiments), but we are still far from a comprehensive theory encompassing all of these findings. In this presentation, Prof. Maris will outline some contours of such a comprehensive theory.
