[Haskell-cafe] Vacancy for a PhD student

[Johan Jeuring]

(Knowledge of Haskell is a big plus; implementation of most of
the tools will be done in Haskell.)

Vacancy: PhD student in the Strategy Feedback project

1+3 years, Open University the Netherlands, location: Heerlen  
(preference).

The project:

In many subjects students have to acquire procedural skills. Problems
in mathematics are often solved using a standard procedure, such as for
example solving a system of linear equations by subtracting equations
from top to bottom, and then substituting variables from bottom to top.
Problems in computer science, physics, chemistry, electrotechnics, and
other subjects, often require procedural skills as well. Furthermore,
procedural skills appear at any educational level.

E-learning systems offer excellent possibilities for practicing  
procedural
skills. The first explanations and motivation for a procedure that  
solves a
particular kind of problems are probably best taught in a class room, or
studied in a book, but the subsequent practice can often be done behind
a computer.

There exist many e-learning systems or intelligent tutoring systems that
support practicing procedural skills. The tools vary widely in  
breadth, depth,
user-interface, etc, but, unfortunately, almost all of them lack  
sophisticated
techniques for providing immediate feedback. If feedback mechanisms are
present, they are hard coded in the tools, often even with the  
exercises.
This situation hampers the usage of e-learning systems for practicing
procedural skills. This project aims to investigate techniques for  
providing
flexible and immediate feedback in tools that support practicing  
procedural
skills. We want to use advanced techniques from computer science, taken
from fields such as term rewriting, strategies, error-correcting  
parsers, and
generic programming to provide feedback at each intermediate step from
the start towards the solution of an exercise. We want to further  
develop
some of these techniques, and apply and experiment with them in the
domain of e-learning systems. Our goal is to obtain e-learning systems
that give immediate and useful feedback.

We will cooperate on this project with the Software Technology group
from Utrecht University.

Requirements: University degree in Computer Science. Good knowledge of
functional programming, and several advanced computer science  
techniques.
Knowledge of parsing, rewriting, strategies, generic programming,  
etc. will be
useful.

More information about the project can be found on

http://ideas.cs.uu.nl/wiki/index.php/IDEAS:StrategicFeedback

or contact Johan Jeuring (johanj at cs.uu.nl, +31 6 40010053).

To apply:

send a letter and your curriculum vitae before May 5, 2007 to:

Open Universiteit
Nederland, afdeling Personele ondersteuning,
Postbus 2960, 6401 DL Heerlen. U kunt ook

or an e-mail to:

martin.vanloo at ou.nl

Mention vacancynr  FAC/INF/07024

In both cases, please cc Johan Jeuring (johanj at cs.uu.nl).