Name Janet Kolodner | Role Computer scientist | |
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Books Retrieval and Organizational Strategies in Conceptual Memory: A Computer Model, Case-based reasoning Education Brandeis University, Yale University | ||
Janet L. Kolodner is an American cognitive scientist and learning scientist and a retired Regents' Professor in the School of Interactive Computing, College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She was Founding Editor in Chief of The Journal of the Learning Sciences and served in that role for 18 years. She was Founding Executive Officer of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS). From August, 2010 through July, 2014, she was a program officer at the National Science Foundation and headed up the Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies program (originally called Cyberlearning: Transforming Education). Since finishing at NSF, she is working toward a set of projects that will integrate learning technologies coherently to support disciplinary and everyday learning, support project-based pedagogy that works, and connect to the best in curriculum for active learning.
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Academic career
Kolodner graduated with a B.S. in math and computer science from Brandeis University in 1976. She then completed her M.S. in computer science in 1977 and her Ph.D. in computer science in 1980 from Yale University. She is a retired Regents' Professor of Computing and Cognitive Science in the School of Interactive Computing in Georgia Tech's College of Computing. She spent the 1996-97 academic year as a Visiting Professor Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. From August, 2010 until July, 2011, she was on loan to The National Science Foundation, where she is a Program Officer in the CISE and EHR Directorates and has responsibility for the Cyberlearning: Transforming Education program (renamed Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies).
In 1992, Kolodner was elected a fellow in the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence for "pioneering research on case-based reasoning and learning, including memory organization, information retrieval, problem solving, and knowledge acquisition."
Research
Kolodner's research addresses issues in learning, memory, and problem solving, both in computers and in people. She pioneered the computer reasoning method called case-based reasoning, a way of solving problems based on analogies to past experiences, and her lab emphasized case-based reasoning for situations of real-world complexity. In case-based reasoning, the results of previous cases are applied to new situations, cutting down the complexity of the reasoning necessary in later situations and allowing a problem solver to anticipate and avoid previously-made mistakes. Automated case-based reasoners from her lab include MEDIATOR and PERSUADER, common sense and expert mediation programs; JULIA, a case-based design problem solver; CELIA, a case-based car mechanic; MEDIC, a case-based physician; and EXPEDITOR, a case-based logistics manager. Kolodner's classic work in this area, Case-based Learning (1993), has been cited thousands of times by researchers.
Her research interests are the implications and applications of cognition to education and educational technology, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, case-based reasoning, novice-expert evolution, the role of experience in expert and common-sense reasoning, design cognition, creativity, design of decision-aiding tools, and interactive learning environments.
Book published
Following are the books published by Kolodner: