Technology and Mental Health Research at Trinity College Dublin: Supporting Teens through Mental Health Games & Mobile Apps

In my last post, I mentioned some of the work in technology and mental health by researchers at Trinity College.  PlayWrite is a system that is designed for mental health professionals to create and adapt 3D computer games designed for therapeutic activities with teens, and can incorporate a variety of treatment approaches. In includes a dialogue builder that can incorporate written and spoken questions.  PlayWrite can also be used to adapt exisiting games.

The Personal Investigator game was created using PlayWrite and provides solution-focused conversational strategies that are mapped onto various game areas. The game is available tor trial purposes for use by mental health professionals and researchers.  You can request a trial by contacting Dr. Gavin Doherty:  Gavin.Doherty at cs.tcd.ie

Coyle, D., Matthews, M., Sharry, J., Nisbet, A., & Doherty, G. (2005). Personal Investigator: A Therapeutic 3D Game for Adolescent Psychotherapy. International Journal of Interactive Technology and Smart Education, 2, 73-88

As a school psychologist,  I'd like to have a chance to work with the above applications.  Even more, I'd like to try out two applications that the Trinity College team designed for use on mobile phones,  My Mobile Story and Mobile Mood Diary.

I think this concept would work.  Why?

In my observations of students in high school classrooms, I've recently come across the phenomenon of students texting on their cell phones, underneath their desks, without looking,  out of sight of the teacher, but not out-of-sight of an observant school psychologist!

Matthews, M., Doherty, G., Sharry, J., & Fitzpatrick, C. (2008). Mobile Phone Mood Charting for Adolescents. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 36(2), 113-129.

(I'll post more about this soon.)

Data Systems Standards and Guidelines from the National Center for Education Statistics

If you are involved in data-driven decision making in your school or school district, it is important to keep up with the most recent standards regarding data systems. The National Center for Education Statistics has recently developed a toolbox for educational data system designers and managers who are "looking for ways to build and/or improve education data systems".

According to the NCES website, the Education Data Model, Version I is a "comprehensive, localized, conceptual model that provides a generic blueprint for schools and districts. This blueprint enables schools to evaluate and improve instructional tools, communicate those needs to their umbrella agency or directly to vendors, enhance the movement of student information from one district to another, and in the end, have better tools to inform instruction. Using a standard Education Data Model as a starting point contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the need for data, how data are used, and the questions that can be answered with the data. For instance, the Data Model helps to answer questions such as the following:

• What data do schools, LEAs, and states need to collect and manage at the local level to meet the information needs of students, staff, and other stakeholders?
• What data do they need to effectively manage education organizations in order to increase success in teaching, learning, and school leadership?
• What data do they need to efficiently manage and run an education organization from a fiscal and administrative perspective?

A single, comprehensive model of education data is prerequisite to establishing automated systems with the right data, data that are comparable across time and systems, and data accurate enough to answer our questions".

Educational data systems are developed on a large scale, and generally the "client" is a school district, or administrator of a school district. I am not sure that those who design the data base systems are aware of the work of school psychologists, and how our work is negatively impacted by a system that doesn't address our work needs efficiently or effectively.

So what is a data-minded school psychologist to do? The first step is to become informed about databases and how they are used and implemented in your school(s). Find out who is responsible for making decisions regarding the use of data-based systems, and find out if there is a district committee who is involved in this area. It just might be that it has not occurred to high-level administrators that school psychologists might want to have a say in this matt

If you are interested learning more, you can browse the data model on the NCES Data Model web page. Also take a look at the "How to Use the Data Model" on-line guide.

Here are a few graphics from the NCES website:

Concept map behind the development of the data model:



Taxonomy - entities, classes, and attributes:



Here is the relationship diagram of the data model:


Educational data systems are developed on a large scale, and generally the "client" is a school district, or administrator of a school district. I am not sure that those who design the data base systems are aware of the work of school psychologists, and how our work is negatively impacted by a system that doesn't address our work needs efficiently or effectively.

So what is a data-minded school psychologist to do? The first step is to become informed about databases and how they are used and implemented in your school(s). Find out who is responsible for making decisions regarding the use of data-based systems, and find out if there is a district committee who is involved in this area. It just might be that it has not occurred to high-level administrators that school psychologists might want to have a say in this matter.

School Psychology and Special Education Researchers: Educational Data Mining Conference

In keeping with my recent theme about data, I thought I'd post a copy of a call for papers for an interdisciplinary conference on topic of educational data mining, which will be held in UQÀM - Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada, immediately following the International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems.

University researchers fields such as school psychology, education, special education, and related disciplines might have some important insights to share at this conference. Practitioners and graduate interns might also have something important to contribute to this new are of study. The topics that I think are most relevant to RTI and broader K-12 school improvement efforts are highlighted below in green.

Call For Papers

The First International Conference on Educational Data Mining brings together researchers from computer science, education, psychology, psychometrics, and statistics to analyze large data sets to answer educational research questions. The increase in instrumented educational software, as well as state databases of student test scores, has created large repositories of data reflecting how students learn. The EDM conference focuses on computational approaches for using those data to address important educational questions. The broad collection of research disciplines ensures cross fertilization of ideas, with the central questions of educational research serving as a unifying focus. This Conference emerges from preceding EDM workshops at the AAAI, AIED, EC-TEL, ICALT, ITS, and UM conferences.

Topics Of Interest

We welcome papers describing original work. Areas of interest include but are not limited to:

Improving educational software. Many large educational data sets are generated by computer software. Can we use our discoveries to improve the software’s effectiveness?

Domain representation. How do learners represent the domain? Does this representation shift as a result of instruction? Do different subpopulations represent the domain differently?

Evaluating teaching interventions. Student learning data provides a powerful mechanism for determining which teaching actions are successful. How can we best use such data?

Emotion, affect, and choice. The student’s level of interest and willingness to be a partner in the educational process is critical. Can we detect when students are bored and uninterested? What other affective states or student choices should we track?

Integrating data mining and pedagogical theory. Data mining typically involves searching a large space of models. Can we use existing educational and psychological knowledge to better focus our search?
Improving teacher support. What types of assessment information would help teachers? What types of instructional suggestions are both feasible to generate and would be welcomed by teachers?

Replication studies. We are especially interested in papers that apply a previously used technique to a new domain, or that reanalyze an existing data set with a new technique.

Important Dates

Paper submission: March 31, 2008
Acceptance notification: April 30, 2008
Camera ready paper: May 16, 2008
Conference: June 20-21, 2008

Submission Types

All submissions should follow the formatting guidelins (MS Word, PDF). There are two types of submission:
Full papers: Maximum of 10 pages. Should describe substantial, unpublished work
Young researcher: Maximum of 8 pages. Designed for graduate students and undergraduates

Conference Organization

Conference Chair: Tiffany Barnes, University of North Carolina Charlotte, USA
Program Chairs: Ryan S. J. de Baker, Carnegie Mellon University, USA; Joseph E. Beck, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA
Local Arrangements Chair: Michel Desmáris, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada
Web Chair: Arnon Hershkovitz, Tel Aviv University, Israel

(Click here for a PDF version)

InspireData for RTI and related data-driven decision-making efforts

I've been sharing more information over the past few weeks that focuses on topics such as data-driven decision making, educational and social-behavioral progress monitoring, the use of technology to support, deliver, and monitor interventions, and the importance of quality educational data management system.

All of these topics come into play when we plan, implement, and evaluate efforts to improve learning and behavior among students in K-12 settings. In order to meet the needs of our students as well as keep up with the efforts such as RTI (Response to Intervention), school psychologists, educators, and administrators will need to brush up on their measurement, statistics, and data analysis know-how.

Watch the InspireData Quick Tour.

A low-cost solution might be available to you in your schools to get started with the basics. InspireData is an application initially intended for teaching students about data analysis, statistics, data analysis, and data representation. Originally funded by the National Science Foundation, inspiration has the basic tools for educators to get started with tracking and analyzing student data. Since it was designed to teach data literacy skills for students in grades 4 through 12, it is easy enough for them to use to track their own progress.

TECHNOLOGY FOR DATA COLLECTION, ANALYSIS, AND PROGRESS MONITORING-Revised Post

The amount of data collected for monitoring interventions can be overwhelming. Innovative solutions that harness technology can help. Here are a few examples:
From the IDEA Partnership website:

RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

“The Royal Oak RTI Management System is a secure district Intranet system that promotes interactive problem solving and decision making among Student Study Team members for the purpose of improving student achievement. The system allows all members of a school’s team to enter and continually monitor the information necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of prescriptive interventions, strategies and programs as well as gauge individual students’ progress. This team includes the district director of special education, school psychologists, literacy coaches, teacher consultants, other specialists, principals, teachers, students and their parents."

"Particular emphasis is placed on the leadership of building principals and general educators in the successful implementation of the system. In development for a year, the RTI Management System is being piloted in 2007-08 in two elementary schools, with universal screening (AIMSweb) for all second graders (as well as individual screening for other students who are referred to school psychologists). Universal screening is followed by continuous probes of student progress. Entries on students begin with data-driven questions based on screening results. Team members enter the specific area they will work on (e.g., fractions, phonemic awareness, any skill or behavior); the exact steps; who will do what; duration and frequency; and who is responsible for probes of student progress. In addition, the school psychologists have created a graph that charts individual students’ growth so that their progress can be monitored and the effectiveness of interventions can be evaluated. The charts incorporated in the RTI Management System can provide ongoing graphic comparisons between the student’s trend line progress and target line (goal) expectations for use in team meetings."

"The secure online form has a slot for email addresses requested by the team at various levels, so that a team member can add information and make comments and suggestions. When anything new is added to a student’s page, the entire team gets an email flag, and they can interact about a student’s interventions and progress (much like a blog or threaded conversation). Parents’ passwords are coded for information and discussions on their child only. At the school and district level, there’s a summary page that lists all students, a brief description of the problem, and progress of all students in the school who are involved in RTI.”

For more information on the RTI Management System:
Melinda Stout, Director of Special Education or Ed Meade, School Psychologist, School District of the City of Royal Oak


Wireless Generation

I have not yet evaluated the software developed by Wireless Generation. From what I can see, it is the software used in the Royal Oak schools, mentioned above. My hope that it is flexible and user friendly!

Here is some information from the company's website:

"A leader in educational assessment, reporting, and professional development, Wireless Generation offers solutions that give teachers, coaches, and administrators real-time data about student progress and the capacity to use it to improve reading and math achievement, and reduce special education referrals."

"The mCLASS software is a complete handheld-to-Web solution that saves classroom time, reduces paperwork and allows you to apply results to instructions. Each mCLASS Solution: Automates scoring & timing Gives real-time assessment results Delivers one-touch robust Web reporting for deep analysis of scores How does it work? A teacher assesses the student using a handheld computer loaded with mCLASS assessment software. When assessment is complete, the teacher gets a student’s results instantly on the handheld, “syncs” the handheld to a secure, password-protected Web site, views and analyzes Web-based reports on the class and individual students, and then uses the information to tailor instruction to students’ needs."

Whitpaper: An Analysis of Technology-Assisted Progress Monitoring to Drive Improved Student Outcomes (Download)

Wireless Generations' mClass: RTI Software (information page)


From the Science Daily website:
Autism Caught on Tape: Computer Scientists Use Technology to Help Children with Autism

"Computer scientists have devised two tools to help people interact with autistic children. Videotaping interactions allows teachers or parents to replay situations and evaluate the cause of particularly good or bad behavior. Cataloging actual data, rather relying on memory or interpretation, proves to be a more accurate measure of a situation."

CareLog and Abaris are data collection/logging tools used in intervention and progress monitoring of students who have autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The tools were developed by Dr. Gregory Abowd, a Human Computer Interaction professor at Georgia Tech, and his research teams. Dr. Abowd is the father of two sons who have ASD.

Screenshot of Abaris:

CareLog Screenshot:

Detailed information about CareLog and related technologies can be found in Documenting and Understanding Everyday Activities through the Selective Archiving of Everyday Activities, a Ph.D. dissertation written by Gillian Hayes, at Georgia Tech.(2007)

Software such as CareLog and Abaris is much-needed, given the significant increas in the number of young people who have autism spectrum disorders.