Daniel Damelin

Organization/Institution
About Me (Bio)
Daniel Damelin has worked in education for 20 years as a teacher, curriculum and software developer, professional development designer, and educational researcher. Currently an employee of the Concord Consortium, he works on numerous projects related to teaching science using simulations.

He is currently working on:
- The Inquiry Space project, which has a goal of researching the appropriate software and curricular scaffolds to enable students to engage in independent inquiry.
- The Interactions project, which is creating an NGSS inspired curriculum to help students develop models of intermolecular attractions that can form the foundation of deeper understanding in physics, chemistry, and biology.
- The NGSS Assessment project which is researching the process for developing appropriate formative assessments for NGSS, and developing templates for others to create such assessments.
- The Common Online Data Analysis Platform (CODAP), a tool to enable users to easily work with, manipulate, and make sense of data generated across a wide variety of sources. Research is aimed at understanding how people (students primarily) understand data structures and how the tool can facilitate deep understanding and more facile manipulation.

He is also wrapping up a Google Foundation funded project to convert the award winning Molecular Workbench tool from Java to HTML5.
Concord Consortium
10/01/2013

This project aims to engage students in meaningful scientific data collection, analysis, visualization, modeling, and interpretation. It targets grades 9-12 science instruction. The proposed research poses the question "How do learners conceive of and interact with empirical data, particularly when it has a hierarchical structure in which parameters and results are at one level and raw data at another?"

Concord Consortium
07/01/2022

This project is working to develop, implement, and research the introduction of data experiences and practices into a series of interdisciplinary, middle school project-based learning modules. The project examines how interdisciplinary data education can provide opportunities for students to take more control of their own learning and develop positive identities related to data, through integration with social studies and science topics. Curriculum modules and teaching resources produced by the project serve as guides for subsequent efforts at integrating data science concepts into teaching and learning in various subject areas.

University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)
09/01/2013

This is a collaborative project to develop, test, and analyze sets of technology-supported diagnostic classroom assessments for middle school (grades 6-8) physical science. Assessments are aligned with the performance assessment and evidence-centered design methodologies suggested in the Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012).

Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI)
09/01/2020

This project addresses the need to make science relevant for school students and to support student interpretation of large data sets by leveraging citizen science data about ecology and developing instruction to support student analyses of these data. This collaboration between Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Bowdoin College and Vanderbilt University engages middle-school students in building and revising models of variability and change in ecosystems and studies the learning and instruction in these classroom contexts.

Michigan State University (MSU), University of Michigan (UM)
09/01/2011

This project designs, develops, and tests coherent interdisciplinary instructional materials to support high school students' integrated understanding of the forces and energetics involved in interactions that occur between atoms and molecules, and explores how students' learning progresses across time. The project will be implemented in three Michigan school districts with students who traditionally do not succeed in science. 

Concord Consortium
09/15/2009

This project addresses biology teachers and students at the high school level, responding to the exponential increases occurring in biology knowledge today and the need for students to understand the experimental basis behind biology concepts. The project studies the feasibility of engaging students in an environment where they can learn firsthand how science knowledge develops in the fields of bioinformatics and DNA science by performing collaborative, simulated experiments to solve open-ended problems.

Concord Consortium
09/15/2016

This project will create technology-enhanced classroom activities and resources that increase student learning of science practices in high school biology, chemistry, and physics. InquirySpace will incorporate several innovative technological and pedagogical features that will enable students to undertake scientific experimentation that closely mirrors current science research and learn what it means to be a scientist.

Concord Consortium
08/01/2014

This project will (1) develop and test a modeling tool and accompanying instructional materials, (2) explore how to support students in building and using models to explain and predict phenomena across a range of disciplines, and (3) document the sophistication of understanding of disciplinary core ideas that students develop when building and using models in grades 6-12.