Bruce McLaren

Bruce M. McLaren is an associate research professor at Carnegie Mellon University, current Secretary and Treasurer and past President of the International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society (2017-2019). McLaren is passionate about how technology can support education and has dedicated his work and research to projects that explore how students can learn with educational games, intelligent tutoring systems, e-learning principles, and collaborative learning. McLaren's research with educational games, for instance, has shown that students can learn decimals better by playing a web-based educational game than by using more conventional technology (e.g., IJGBL 2017 paper; the “Decimal Point” website). McLaren’s research with intelligent tutors investigates how students learn when presented with erroneous examples in conjunction with intelligent tutors on the web (see the AdaptErrEx project webpage). McLaren has also investigated how erroneous examples can work synergistically with educational games to help students learn. McLaren has also conducted a series of experiments investigating how chemistry students learn when presented with worked examples, in conjunction with intelligent tutors, as well as polite hints and feedback. Finally, McLaren has a keen interest in and experience with collaborative learning and technology for supporting and analyzing collaborative argumentation. McLaren has researched and developed educational technology using AI techniques to help teachers moderate collaborative e-Discussions and online arguments (See the projects LASAD, ARGUNAUT, and Metafora). McLaren has over 160 publications (33 journal articles) spanning peer-reviewed journals, conferences, workshops, symposiums and book chapters.

In addition to his research background, McLaren has over 20 years experience in the commercial sector, applying research ideas to practical problems using Artificial Intelligence techniques. As Director of eCommerce Technologies at OpenWebs Corporation from 2000 to 2002, he led a group of engineers in the development of an intelligent inter-company (B2B) trading product. He was also the leader of many expert system projects during over 10 years working for Carnegie Group, Inc.

McLaren holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in intelligent systems from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.S. in computer science from the University of Pittsburgh, and a B.S. in computer science (cum laude) from Millersville University. He has been a member of many academic conference and workshop committees and, most recently, was the co-chair for the AIED 2018 conference and the AIED 2019 conference. In October 2011, McLaren was elected to the Executive Committee of the Artificial Intelligence in Education Society (AI-ED Executive Committee), for a six-year term, 2012-2017. Finally, McLaren is the co-holder of two patents and one patent pending.