Online Mathematics Homework Increases Student Achievement

In a randomized field trial with 2,850 seventh-grade mathematics students, we evaluated whether an educational technology intervention increased mathematics learning. Assigning homework is common yet sometimes controversial. Building on prior research on formative assessment and adaptive teaching, we predicted that combining an online homework tool with teacher training could increase learning. The online tool ASSISTments (a) provides timely feedback and hints to students as they do homework and (b) gives teachers timely, organized information about students’ work. To test this prediction, we analyzed data from 43 schools that participated in a random assignment experiment in Maine, a state that provides every seventh-grade student with a laptop to take home. Results showed that the intervention significantly increased student scores on an end-of-the-year standardized mathematics assessment as compared with a control group that continued with existing homework practices. Students with low prior mathematics achievement benefited most. The intervention has potential for wider adoption

Classroom orchestration: synthesis

a b s t r a c t Orchestration is an approach to Technology Enhanced Learning that emphasizes attention to the challenges of classroom use of technology, with a particular focus on supporting teachers' roles. The present collection of papers on orchestration highlights broad agreement that classrooms are variable and complex and that teachers have an important role in adapting materials for use in their own classrooms. The synthesis also shows a difference of opinions in how useful "orchestration" is as a metaphor, the proper scope of issues to include when studying orchestration, and how to approach design. Despite the lack of consensus, orchestration is a timely and important shift of focus and all of the approaches merit further exploration. The field shows healthy self-criticism and debate, which is the hallmark of fields with the potential for great progress

The AI Institute for Engaged Learning

The EngageAI Institute focuses on AI‐driven narrative‐centered learning environments that create engaging story‐based problem‐solving experiences to support collaborative learning. The institute's research has three complementary strands. First, the institute creates narrative‐centered learning environments that generate interactive story‐based problem scenarios to elicit rich communication, encourage coordination, and spark collaborative creativity. Second, the institute creates virtual embodied conversational agent technologies with multiple modalities for communication (speech, facial expression, gesture, gaze, and posture) to support student learning. Embodied conversational agents are driven by advances in natural language understanding, natural language generation, and computer vision. Third, the institute is creating an innovative multimodal learning analytics framework that analyzes parallel streams of multimodal data derived from students’ conversations, gaze, facial expressions, gesture, and posture as they interact with each other, with teachers, and with embodied conversational agents. Woven throughout the institute's activities is a strong focus on ethics, with an emphasis on creating AI‐augmented learning that is deeply informed by considerations of fairness, accountability, transparency, trust, and privacy. The institute emphasizes broad participation and diverse perspectives to ensure that advances in AI‐augmented learning address inequities in STEM. The institute brings together a multistate network of universities, diverse K‐12 school systems, science museums, and nonprofit partners. Key to all of these endeavors is an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion

Principal Leadership in a Virtual Environment

Commissioned by The Wallace Foundation, which supports efforts to promote effective school leadership, this report sets out to define what high-quality, equitable learning looks like in a virtual environment. It poses questions for school district leaders to ask if they want to develop principals who can lead their schools to this type of learning. It also describes strategies for districts to consider in efforts to develop a whole pipeline of principals adept at high-quality, equitable virtual learning—using a definition of an "aligned, comprehensive principal pipeline" that emerged through research and field work funded by The Wallace Foundation. The report is based on an examination of research literature supplemented by interviews with 11 principals and administrators knowledgeable about virtual learning. It also draws on Digital Promise's experience in working with schools and school districts. The final chapter looks at topics that merit further exploration in the areas of virtual learning, equity, and school leadership

Coordinating Networked Learning Activities with a General-Purpose Interface

Classrooms equipped with wirelessly networked tablets and handhelds can engage students in powerful collaborative learning activities that are otherwise impractical or impossible. However, the system must fulfill certain technological and pedagogical requirements such as tolerance for latecomers, supporting disconnected mode gracefully, robustness across dropped connections, promotion of both positive interdependence and individual accountability, and accommodation of differential rates of task completion. Two approaches to making a Tuple Space-based computer architecture for connectivity into an inviting environment for the generation and creation of novel coordinated activities were attempted. One approach made the technological “bones” of the system very clear but assumed user vision of the complex goals and settings of real education. The more satisfactory approach made clear how Tuple Spaces matches the complex goals and settings of real education, but backgrounded technical complexity. This approach provides users with a system, Group Scribbles, which may inspire a wide range of uses.SRI International Virginia Tech Newport Universit

Inclusive computing in special needs classrooms: designing for all

With a growing call for an increased emphasis on computing in school curricula, there is a need to make computing accessible to a diversity of learners. One potential approach is to extend the use of physical toolkits, which have been found to encourage collaboration, sustained engagement and effective learning in classrooms in general. However, little is known as to whether and how these benefits can be leveraged in special needs schools, where learners have a spectrum of distinct cognitive and social needs. Here, we investigate how introducing a physical toolkit can support learning about computing concepts for special education needs (SEN) students in their classroom. By tracing how the students’ interactions—both with the physical toolkit and with each other—unfolded over time, we demonstrate how the design of both the form factor and the learning tasks embedded in a physical toolkit contribute to collaboration, comprehension and engagement when learning in mixed SEN classrooms

O impacto, sobre estudantes brasileiros, de uma linguagem visual para aprender a aprender conjuntamente

Resumo Um dos temas mais importantes na aprendizagem colaborativa apoiada pelo computador é a autorregulação da aprendizagem sem o apoio de professores. A autorregulação da colaboração pode ser definida como o conjunto dos processos sociais que os alunos usam para coordenar o seu esforço conjunto em uma atividade. Este trabalho apresenta um estudo de caso brasileiro que examina o impacto da plataforma computacional Metafora para apoiar a regulação da colaboração entre os estudantes brasileiros. Nosso objetivo é investigar se o uso da linguagem visual Metafora ajuda os alunos a aprenderem a aprender em conjunto (learn to learn togueter – L2L2). L2L2 abrange o desenvolvimento da capacidade de coordenação da colaboração. Para perseguir esse objetivo, são fornecidas evidências de mecanismos de coordenação e as respostas emocionais subjacentes ao uso, pelos alunos, da ferramenta de planejamento Metafora. Os resultados deste estudo de caso demonstram que as interações dos alunos, ao usarem a ferramenta de planejamento Metafora, influenciaram o seu desenvolvimento de L2L2 de maneira natural e envolvente. A ferramenta de planejamento Metafora proporciona aos alunos um ambiente amigável para a regulação dos processos de grupo e tem potencial para modificar os pensamentos dos estudantes com respeito à coordenação de processos colaborativos

Guest Editorial: Special section on Mobile and Ubiquitous Technologies for Learning

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Towards Highly Interactive Classrooms: Improving Mathematics Teaching and Learning with TI-Nspire Navigator Towards Highly Interactive Classrooms: Improving Mathematics Teaching and Learning with TI-Nspire Navigator Towards Highly Interactive Classrooms:

Executive Summary Improving mathematics teaching and learning through and beyond Algebra is one of the most important challenges facing educators worldwide. The powerful capabilities of technology to engage students, support their cognitive effort, represent mathematics insightfully, and better connect teachers and students are important to addressing the Algebra challenge. To leverage technology effectively, teachers need an appropriate pedagogical model. We propose a pedagogical model based on the concept of interactivity. By interactivity, we mean increasing the quality and frequency of back-and-forth interplay among the teacher, her students, and the mathematical content at hand. Technology can enhance many forms of interactivity, especially when: • students and teachers use technology to explore mathematical models, not just as a calculation tool, and when: • teachers use a shared display and instant feedback to increase students' cognitive engagement, not only to demonstrate or assess. Across these forms of interactivity, the most important goal is to increase student engagement centered on the doing and making sense of mathematics. Application of this principle leads to highly interactive mathematics classrooms, in which teachers: 1. engage their students in mathematically meaningful activities; 2. focus on mathematics with connections; 3. track what mathematics their students know and adapt accordingly; 4. make mathematics learning a shared responsibility of teachers and students. Implementing a highly interactive mathematics classroom takes more than technology, it requires support for professional development and time for teachers to learn and adapt. For example, the new capability to instantly capture and display students' screens can provide cognitive contrasts that drive learning, but only when the teacher uses classroom discussions to probe the meaning of contrasting screens. We propose an implementation model that proceeds in stages, based on research data that shows what teachers typically accomplish immediately, with experience and, eventually, as masters of the technologyrich classroom. By thinking in terms of not just technology but also a pedagogical model and implementation in stages, schools can realize deepening benefits over time. Within the first year, schools can experience increased student achievement and more positive student attitudes. Teachers see immediate benefits from knowing more about their students. Over time, with continued technological support and sustained professional development, schools can make progress in closing achievement gaps and introducing higher-order skills, such as mathematical problem solving, collaboration, and argumentation. Over many years, schools will develop master teachers who can lead further improvement in their regions, aimed at developing students' passion to pursue and succeed in university level mathematics and on toward challenging STEM careers

Integrating Cognitive and Conversational Accounts of Conceptual Change in Qualitative Physics Learning

Empirical data on students' science learning has demonstrated that learning science is a very complicated and fine-grained process. Simple replacement models — destruct the misconception, and instruct the target concept - have failed to cope with the observation that both states of knowledge are not imitary, monolithic, tightly coupled systems. At the same time, expert-novice research has produced a long list of specific areas in which students and scientists are said to fundamentally differ, spanning all the way from perception to metacognition. The deep irony is that Cognitive Science research, which should make instruction easier, has in fact expanded the "great divide" by locating more and more ways in which students and scientists differ. Time has come to articulate the commonalties among students and scientists that enable conceptual change to occur. Students and scientists have commonalties both in cognition and conversation. Research in qualitative physics and epistemology is providing an account of physics learning in terms of re-using cognitive structures available to both students and scientists (i.e. p-prims and qualitative cases). Social studies of science show that turn-taking can allow negotiation of knowledge, both in everyday conversation and in the laboratory. This paper discusses research demonstrating the deep compatibility of cognitive and conversational accounts, and their potential symbiosis as an account of conceptual change in students' physics learning. In particular, I present data from students' use of a computer simulation, "The Envisioning Machine," which shows that students' conversational and cognitive processes can operate over the same basic data ~ qualitative physics knowledge - thereby allowing students to achieve conceptual change by simultaneously exploiting cognitive and sodal constraints