Mills awarded grant to better understand mind wandering during learning

Caitlin Mills, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Educational Psychology’s psychological foundations of education program, has been awarded a grant from the 2021-22 Learning Engineering Tools Competition for her project “Understanding mind wandering during learning: Creating a large dataset for more generalizable and equitable research.”

Dr. Mills’ project was one of more than 800 initial proposals from more than 60 countries, showcasing innovative ways to address pressing challenges and opportunities in education.

“We know from previous research that mind wandering occurs quite often during learning—anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of the time, and we also know that mind wandering typically has a negative relationship with performance. However, much of the research that has been done so far has been done with relatively homogenous populations,” Dr. Mills shared.

Dr. Mills will conduct the research with her colleague Ryan Baker, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, to gather a “large-scale data set that will focus on creating more accurate, generalizable, and equitable research on mind wandering, and also the ability to build detectors of mind wandering during learning.”