Engrammetron Information

The Canada Foundation for Innovation's New Opportunities Program has provided Dr. Stephen R. Campbell with funding to establish a mathematics educational neuroscience laboratory, a.k.a., the ENGRAMMETRON, one of the world's first facilities specifically designed for and dedicated to research in educational neuroscience. Fully operational in the Fall Semester, 2006, the ENGRAMMETRON is envisioned to serve as a magnet facility for the Educational Neuroscience Group for Research into Affect and Mentation / in Mathematics Education (ENGRAM/ME). The ENGRAMMETRON aims toward accommodating needs of ENGRAM research associates more generally, beyond this primary specialisation in mathematics education. ENGRAMMETRON facilities enable simultaneous observation and acquisition of audio data from talking-aloud reflective protocols; video data of facial and bodily expression; and real-time screen capture. Instrumentation most notably supports: multi-channel electroencephalography (EEG); electrocardiography (EKG); electromyography (EMG); and eye-tracking (ET) capability. Orbiting this constellation of observational methods around computer enhanced learning platforms allows for unprecedented flexibility of educational research experimental design and delivery, and for subsequent data integration and analyses. The ENGRAMMETRON will help establish educational neuroscience as a rigorous and humanistically oriented area of scientific inquiry, connecting the fields of cognitive neuroscience and educational psychology. ENGRAM/ME investigations are initially focusing on improving mathematics teacher education and instructional design of computer-assisted learning in ways that teachers and students alike can learn mathematics in less threatening and more gratifying manners, and in ways that will enable learners to gain deeper aesthetic appreciations for and conceptual understandings of mathematics and its applications. The ENGRAMMETRON will provide ENGRAM/ME members, and ENGRAM associates more generally, with means to quantify learning human minds/bodies in action. Aspirations for the ENGRAMMETRON include expediting and establishing international affiliations, collaborations, and developing expertise and highly trained personnel in this important and potentially foundational new area of educational research.