Educational Technology

Supporting Science Learning and Teaching in Middle School Classrooms through Automated Analysis of Students' Writing (Collaborative Research: Passonneau and Puntambekar)

Principal Investigator:
Sadhana Puntambekar
This project will design a sociotechnical system to automatically assess students written scientific explanations during science problem solving. The project will use two complementary mechanisms to provide feedback: automated assessment and feedback to students’ science explanations using using NLP techniques, and feedback to teachers provided through aggregated data about students’ writing generated by the system.
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Discipline/Topic:
Science
Technology
Educational Technology
Target Audience:
Middle School

Professional Development Supports for Teaching Bioinformatics through Mobile Learning

Principal Investigator:
Susan Yoon
Bioinformatics is an emerging area of research that develops new knowledge through computational analysis of vast biological data. This project investigates the professional development (PD) supports needed for teaching bioinformatics at the high school. Building from a robust literature in PD design research, project team worked with science teachers to co-design instructional modules to engage students with core bioinformatics concepts and data literacies, by focusing on local community health issues supported through mobile learning activities.
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Discipline/Topic:
Mathematics
Science
Technology
Classroom Practice
Curriculum
Disciplinary Content Knowledge
Educational Technology
Professional Development
Target Audience:
High School

PBS News Hour Student Reporting Labs StoryMaker: STEM-Integrated Student Journalism

Principal Investigator:
Leah Clapman
Sneak peek at StoryMaker, a video storytelling platform /educator co-learning community supporting students to produce videos about STEM projects.
PI: Leah Clapman, PBS NewsHour
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Discipline/Topic:
Science
Technology
Broadening Participation
Classroom Practice
Curriculum
Educational Technology
Pedagogical Content Knowledge
Target Audience:
Middle School
High School

Online Practice Suite: Practice Spaces, Simulations and Virtual Reality Environments for Preservice Teachers to Learn to Facilitate Argumentation Discussions in Math and Science

Principal Investigator:
Jamie Mikeska

This poster provides an overview of our three-year project where researchers are using a design-based research approach to develop, pilot, and refine a set of coordinated and complementary practice-based activities that teacher education programs can deploy to provide practice-based learning opportunities for preservice teachers. The goal is to help the preservice teachers to engage in authentic, purposeful, and scaffolded approximations of practice as they develop their ability to facilitate argumentation-focused discussions in mathematics and science.

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Discipline/Topic:
Mathematics
Science
Technology
Assessment
Curriculum
Educational Technology
Target Audience:
Post-secondary

Learning Trajectories as a Complete Early Mathematics Intervention: Achieving Efficacies of Economies at Scale

Principal Investigator:
Douglas Clements
The ULTIMATE (Understanding Learning Trajectories In Math: Advancing Teacher Education) project will evaluate Learning Trajectories as a complete early mathematics intervention by supporting teachers in deepening their understanding of how children learn mathematics and how to incorporate this understanding. Drs. Clements and Sarama have built a professional development tool, called Learning and Teaching with Learning Trajectories, or [LT]2. The team will investigate the positive impacts both in supporting teachers and on students' learning of mathematics.
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Discipline/Topic:
Mathematics
Broadening Participation
Classroom Practice
Cognitive Science
Curriculum
Educational Technology
Pedagogical Content Knowledge
Professional Development
Target Audience:
Pre-Kindergarten

Developing an Online Game to Teach Middle School Students Science Research Practices in the Life Sciences (Collaborative Research: Gagnon, Baker, and Metcalf)

Principal Investigator:
David Gagnon
Ryan Baker
Shari Metcalf

Aqualab is an online video game to teach scientific practices in the context of life sciences for middle school. Students use science practices of experimentation, modeling, and argumentation to investigate questions related to aquatic ecosystems. The project is developing and scaffolding layers of science practices within the gameplay, and exploring how learning progressions can be empirically derived from game data. The findings will be used to create personalized interventions to improve student learning outcomes.

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Discipline/Topic:
Science
Curriculum
Educational Technology
Target Audience:
Middle School

Developing an Online Game to Teach Middle School Students Science Research Practices in the Life Sciences (Collaborative Research: Gagnon, Baker, and Metcalf)

Principal Investigator:
David Gagnon
Ryan Baker
Shari Metcalf

Aqualab is an online video game to teach scientific practices in the context of life sciences for middle school. Students use science practices of experimentation, modeling, and argumentation to investigate questions related to aquatic ecosystems. The project is developing and scaffolding layers of science practices within the gameplay, and exploring how learning progressions can be empirically derived from game data. The findings will be used to create personalized interventions to improve student learning outcomes.

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Discipline/Topic:
Science
Curriculum
Educational Technology
Target Audience:
Middle School

Developing an Online Game to Teach Middle School Students Science Research Practices in the Life Sciences (Collaborative Research: Gagnon, Baker, and Metcalf)

Principal Investigator:
David Gagnon
Ryan Baker
Shari Metcalf

Aqualab is an online video game to teach scientific practices in the context of life sciences for middle school. Students use science practices of experimentation, modeling, and argumentation to investigate questions related to aquatic ecosystems. The project is developing and scaffolding layers of science practices within the gameplay, and exploring how learning progressions can be empirically derived from game data. The findings will be used to create personalized interventions to improve student learning outcomes.

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Discipline/Topic:
Science
Curriculum
Educational Technology
Target Audience:
Middle School

Assessing College-Ready Computational Thinking (Collaborative Research: Brown and Wilson)

Principal Investigator:
Mark Wilson

This project seeks to develop and validate learning progressions and items with dynamic features to generate machine-scorable student responses for assessing computational thinking, in a test of college-ready critical reasoning skills, and to integrate these items into an existing online assessment system, the Berkeley Assessment System Software (BASS). This assessment is intended to be useful for formative and summative purposes in high-school and introductory college-level STEM classes, including mathematics and computer science courses.

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Discipline/Topic:
Computer Science
Technology
Assessment
Educational Technology
Target Audience:
High School
Post-secondary

Exploring Experienced Designers' Strategies in a CAD Learning Environment

Engineering
Science
Assessment
Educational Technology
Gaming/Virtual Environments
High
Computer-aided design (CAD) simulation environments offer opportunities for students to evaluate, redesign, and visualize engineering design solutions quickly and get feedback. However, the use of CAD simulation tools in precollege settings is relatively rare. This study explores design strategies used by experienced designers in Energy3D, a CAD simulation environment designed for learning settings, to provide insight into supporting students' use of CAD simulation environments in precollege settings.
Access Link
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cae.22441
Author/Presenter

Anne M. McAlister

James P. Bywater

Jennifer L. Chiu

Lead Organization(s)
University of Virginia (UVA)
Year
2021
Short Description

This study explores design strategies used by experienced designers in Energy3D, a computer-aided design (CAD) simulation environment designed for learning settings, to provide insight into supporting students' use of CAD simulation environments in precollege settings.

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