Mind Wandering and Learning Project

Written By Michael Wiemeyer

Joined 2022

A young woman wearing headphones works on a laptop at a red table with University of Minnesota materials and snacks nearby.
University of Minnesota logo.

Partners

What are we building?

To foster a more equitable and scientifically rigorous understanding of mind wandering during learning, this project is constructing a comprehensive, publicly available dataset. Recognizing that current research is often limited by small, demographically narrow datasets and costly detection equipment, this project is developing innovative tools and methods to capture and analyze attentional lapses during instructional moments in a scalable manner. This project will pave the way for more inclusive research into how mind wandering impacts diverse learners and how interventions can be effectively designed for real-world educational settings.

What are we learning?

  • How to create and provide a functional and available dataset on mind wandering

  • How to collect data with a diverse population and low-cost technologies

  • Expanded upon key theories about mind wandering by studying diverse samples and novel measures of various thought dimensions

Products

A large, publicly available dataset on mind wandering, focused on improving representation in the data and scalable options for detection.

AIMS Collaboratory | Inventory of Public Goods

Public goods shared by the Mind Wandering and Learning Project team:

Screenshot of the EYE Mind Wandering database webpage explaining why the dataset was created, how mind wandering is defined, and how data is collected.
Michael Wiemeyer
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