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The massive racial inequities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide protests in response to the killings of unarmed Black people forced a reckoning among many educators about racial injustice in the educational system. In March 2020, we launched a massive open online course designed to support teachers in adopting antiracist equity mind-sets and practices. We used a mixed-methods approach to describe how the participants experienced the online course between March and July 2020. Participants in immediate post- and follow-up surveys reported statistically significant shifts in their mind-sets and practices toward equitable teaching practices (effect size = 0.18-58 SD). In interviews, participants described how the course helped them change their practice through acquiring new language, reflecting collaboratively on practice, and engaging in calls to action. The findings provide insight to designers of online professional learning experiences focused on equity and open up new research areas on online professional learning for equity teaching mind-sets and practices.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues are urgent in education. We developed and evaluated a massive open online course (N = 963) with embedded equity simulations that attempted to equip educators with equity teaching practices. Applying a structural topic model (STM)--a type of natural language processing (NLP)--we examined how participants with different equity attitudes responded in simulations. Over a sequence of four simulations, the simulation behavior of participants with less equitable beliefs converged to be more similar with the simulated behavior of participants with more equitable beliefs (ES [effect size] = 1.08 SD). This finding was corroborated by overall changes in equity mindsets (ES = 0.88 SD) and changed in self-reported equity-promoting practices (ES = 0.32 SD). Digital simulations when combined with NLP offer a compelling approach to both teaching about DEI topics and formatively assessing learner behavior in large-scale learning environments.

While school educators are increasingly interested in adopting maker pedagogy, many schools struggle to integrate making with their existing core curriculum because of the difficulty in assessing the learning that occurs in maker classrooms. To address this issue, we collaborated with educators on design-based research focused on assessment in maker classrooms. We investigated assessment approaches that support the process of making. This paper reports on four design principles of assessment in school-based making that emerged from a literature review and the collaborative development process with educators. We discuss the challenges and opportunities for assessment in maker classrooms, as well as strategies to seamlessly embed assessment within a classroom's culture, norms, and activities.

The relationship between pricing and learning behavior is an important topic in research on massive open online courses (MOOCs). We report on two case studies where cohorts of learners were offered coupons for free certificates to explore how price reductions might influence behavior in MOOC-based online learning settings. In Case Study 1, we compare participation and certification rates between courses with and without free-certificate coupons. In the courses with a free-certificate track, participants signed up for the verified-certificate track at higher rates, and completion rates among verified students were higher than in the paid-certificate track courses. In Case Study 2, we compare learner behavior within the same courses by whether they received access to a free-certificate track. Access to free certificates was associated with lower certification rates, but overall, certification rates remained high, particularly among those who viewed the courses. These findings suggest that some incentives, other than simply the cost of paying for a verified-certificate track, may motivate learners to complete MOOCs.

Registered reports engender a review process in which reviewers evaluate the merits of the research question rather than the magnitude or direction of the results. In this process, authors first submit introduction, methods, and prespecified analyses sections of an article. Next, an initial peer-review process assesses the merits of the research question, in the absence of knowing the results. Worthy articles are granted an "in-principle acceptance." The authors, then conduct their study, analyze their data, write up the remainder of their article, and resubmit it. The in-principle acceptance means that if the authors adhere to the research design as originally submitted, then the article will be accepted. Building from seven of the earliest registered reports in education research, our introduction describes the benefits, opportunities, and challenges of registered reports as a means to increasing transparency in research and reducing the number of illusory results.

Great teachers know that learning requires practice. Ironically, when teachers learn, they listen to people talk about teaching, and sometimes they talk with others about teaching, but they very rarely do teaching. Novice teachers need many more and much better opportunities to practice their new craft, especially in short, high-frequency, low-stakes formats--similar to "drills" used in sports and music education. One of the most promising experiments that we could conduct in teacher education would be to substantially accelerate the adoption of these kinds of opportunities and to make them routine parts of pre- and in-service teacher preparation. By 2025, teacher education should ensure that 1) pre-service teachers will have opportunities for approximation and practice at least once a week in at least 50% of the approximately 2,000 teacher preparation providers in the United States, and 2) in-service teacher professional learning will include opportunities for low-stakes practice in the annual professional learning opportunities available in at least 10% of the 130,000 schools in the U.S.

To understand the experiences of educators during the 2020 extended school closures, we interviewed 40 teachers from across the country in public, charter, and private schools, at different grade levels, and in different subject areas. Teachers articulated three main concerns about emergency remote schooling: 1.) student motivation; 2.) professional loss and burnout; and 3.) exacerbated inequities. As the climate emergency makes school disruptions more common, school systems must learn from the tragic school closings under COVID-19 to prepare for an uncertain future. We propose five design considerations to build school systems with greater resilience for the long-term: center equity, focus on relationship-building, address student motivation, address staff motivation and burnout, and mitigate uncertainty.

Scientific progress is built on research that is reliable, accurate, and verifiable. The methods and evidentiary reasoning that underlie scientific claims must be available for scrutiny. Like other fields, the education sciences suffer from problems such as failure to replicate, validity and generalization issues, publication bias, and high costs of access to publications--all of which are symptoms of a nontransparent approach to research. Each aspect of the scientific cycle--research design, data collection, analysis, and publication--can and should be made more transparent and accessible. Open Education Science is a set of practices designed to increase the transparency of evidentiary reasoning and access to scientific research in a domain characterized by diverse disciplinary traditions and a commitment to impact in policy and practice. Transparency and accessibility are functional imperatives that come with many benefits for the individual researcher, scientific community, and society at large--Open Education Science is the way forward.

Preregistration and registered reports are two promising open science practices for increasing transparency in the scientific process. In particular, they create transparency around one of the most consequential distinctions in research design: the data analytics decisions made before data collection and post-hoc decisions made afterwards. Preregistration involves publishing a time-stamped record of a study design before data collection or analysis. Registered reports are a publishing approach that facilitates the evaluation of research without regard for the direction or magnitude of findings. In this article, I evaluate opportunities and challenges for these open science methods, offer initial guidelines for their use, explore relevant tensions around new practices, and illustrate examples from educational psychology and social science.

The public schoolhouse is one of the few remaining public spaces in which citizens may routinely gather to discuss controversial issues. Furthermore, it is social studies classrooms and teachers, in particular, that bear the moral imperative to ensure such civic discourse takes place. Nevertheless, many social studies teachers refrain from centering such discussions in their classrooms, often for fear of reprisal should these discussions go awry. It thus falls to social studies teacher educators to rethink how we prepare future teachers. This paper reports on a study that incorporated digital simulations of controversial issues into three preservice social studies teacher preparation methods courses to help develop high-leverage practices associated with leading whole-group discussions. Case study analysis suggests participants developed greater fluency with the teacher moves they practiced in the simulation. Accordingly, participants' developed greater confidence with and perceived importance of facilitating discussions of controversial issues in their future classrooms. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

This paper explores how the use of digital practice spaces (DPSs) can inform teacher preparation through a reimagining of clinical practice in teacher preparation by addressing the question: what roles might DPSs play in the ecology of apprenticeship opportunities for future educators? We leveraged AACTE's "Essential Proclamations and Tenets for Highly Effective Clinical Educator Preparation" as an analytical framework to examine our own experiences using DPSs in our teacher education coursework. We discuss the alignment between these proclamations and the theoretical, conceptual, and practical underpinnings of DPSs. Finally, we consider the remaining proclamations that represent the horizons of DPSs within teacher preparation, a task we undertook as a set of informed provocations, envisioning how DPSs could be designed to support the proclamations not currently supported.

Big data from massive open online courses (MOOCs) have enabled researchers to examine learning processes at almost infinite levels of granularity. Yet, such data sets do not track every important element in the learning process. Many strategies that MOOC learners use to overcome learning challenges are not captured in clickstream and log data. In this study, we interviewed 92 MOOC learners to better understand their worlds, investigate possible mechanisms of student attrition, and extend conversations about the use of big data in education. Findings reveal three important domains of the experience of MOOC students that are absent from MOOC tracking logs: the practices at learners' workstations, learners' activities online but off-platform, and the wider social context of their lives beyond the MOOC. These findings enrich our understanding of learner agency in MOOCs, clarify the spaces in-between recorded tracking log events, and challenge the view that MOOC learners are disembodied autodidacts.

Teacher Moments is an open source resource for teacher educators to create and use practice-based simulations in teacher education. Teacher Moments may be used to create digital clinical simulations (DCS) which are defined as opportunities for improvisational interaction with scripted character(s). During the COVID-19 crisis, we implemented an equity-based simulation created by a teacher educator. Results demonstrate the utility of the system for surfacing student perspectives which, in turn, provides opportunities for deeper discussion and reflection.

Dealing with the vast quantities of text that students generate in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and other large-scale online learning environments is a daunting challenge. Computational tools are needed to help instructional teams uncover themes and patterns as students write in forums, assignments, and surveys. This paper introduces to the learning analytics community the Structural Topic Model, an approach to language processing that can: 1) find syntactic patterns with semantic meaning in unstructured text, 2) identify variation in those patterns across covariates, and 3) uncover archetypal texts that exemplify the documents within a topical pattern. We show examples of computationally aided discovery and reading in three MOOC settings: mapping students' self-reported motivations, identifying themes in discussion forums, and uncovering patterns of feedback in course evaluations.

A long history of laboratory and field experiments have demonstrated that dividing study time into many sessions is often superior to massing study time into few sessions, a phenomenon known as the "spacing effect." We use this well-established finding from the psychology literature as inspiration for investigating how students distribute their study sessions across an entire Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Drawing on observational tracking log data from 20 HarvardX courses, we examine the relationship between students' allocation of their time in MOOCs and their performance. While controlling for the effect of total time, we show that the number of sessions students initiate is correlated with certification rate, across students in all courses. A one-unit change in session count is positively associated with an estimated 3.4% change in certification odds. When individual students spend similar amounts of time in multiple courses, they perform better in courses where that time is distributed among more sessions, suggesting that the benefit of spacing MOOC study sessions is independent of student characteristics. Our study demonstrates that well-established learning theories can be combined with massive new datasets and innovative approaches to learning analytics to advance our understanding of student practice and learning.

There is an urgent need to build the public's resilience in the face of disinformation. Nevertheless, librarians may be hesitant to assume a frontline role in confronting politicized misinformation. We conducted ethnographic observations and interviews across three Montana libraries to understand the informational needs and search habits of library patrons and the role that librarians play in promoting effective search practices. Montana poses unique challenges with regard to broadband speed and access; however, our findings replicated studies in school settings across the country regarding reliance on antiquated search literacy techniques. The librarians interviewed noted challenges with confronting patrons about specific information claims that might be politically sensitive, but they expressed confidence in their ability to build patron trust and teach effective search literacy practices. We built and tested interventions designed to enable librarians to build their skills and empower patrons to better confront misinformation now and in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactive simulations allow preservice teachers to connect education theory and pedagogy in scaffolded environments. We created digital simulations with scenarios from in-person simulations and used them to prepare novice teachers for conversations with parents. Using a design-based approach we implemented the simulations in an education class, gathered data through surveys and observations, and incorporated feedback into subsequent designs. Novice teachers perceived the simulation as authentic and practiced maintaining composure and articulating pedagogical approaches. Recordings of novice teachers' responses produced by the simulation enabled self-reflection and peer and instructor feedback. Results suggest that these digital simulations hold promise as low-cost, flexible tools for novice teachers to engage in targeted practice in a low-stakes setting.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) attract diverse student bodies, and course forums could potentially be an opportunity for students with different political beliefs to engage with one another. We test whether this engagement actually takes place in two politically-themed MOOCs, on education policy and American government. We collect measures of students' political ideology, and then observe student behavior in the course discussion boards. Contrary to the common expectation that online spaces often become echo chambers or ideological silos, we find that students in these two political courses hold diverse political beliefs, participate equitably in forum discussions, directly engage (through replies and upvotes) with students holding opposing beliefs, and converge on a shared language rather than talking past one another. Research that focuses on the civic mission of MOOCs helps ensure that open online learning engages the same breadth of purposes that higher education aspires to serve.

Identifying online users' contexts can help researchers understand their needs. However, the validity of different methods for identifying the location of online users has been underexplored. This paper proposes using multiple methods and examining their impact on different research questions to determine their validity. It then demonstrates this approach using data from six Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) by examining whether different methods produce different results regarding the relationship between SES and participation and engagement in MOOCs. We found that the choice of method impacted the estimated SES of the sample; IP geolocation placed participants in lower SES districts in comparison with their self-reported districts. Using all geolocation methods, we found that our MOOCs' learners tended to be located in high-SES districts, but the results were inconclusive regarding the relationship between SES and course engagement. Based on this case study, we suggest that using multiple methods produces more robust findings. However, when methods diverge in findings, researchers should consider which method is most suitable for their specific purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While school educators are increasingly interested in adopting maker pedagogy, many schools struggle to integrate making with their existing core curriculum because of the difficulty in assessing the learning that occurs in maker classrooms. To address this issue, we collaborated with educators on design-based research focused on assessment in maker classrooms. We investigated assessment approaches that support the process of making. This paper reports on four design principles of assessment in school-based making that emerged from a literature review and the collaborative development process with educators. We discuss the challenges and opportunities for assessment in maker classrooms, as well as strategies to seamlessly embed assessment within a classroom's culture, norms, and activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To document wiki usage in U.S. K-12 settings, this study examined a representative sample drawn from a population of nearly 180,000 wikis. The authors measured the opportunities wikis provide for students to develop 21st-century skills such as expert thinking, complex communication, and new media literacy. The authors found four types of wiki usage: (a) trial wikis and teacher resource-sharing sites (40%), (b) teacher content-delivery sites (34%), (c) individual student assignments and portfolios (25%), and (d) collaborative student presentations and workspaces (1%). Wikis created in schools serving low-income students have fewer opportunities for 21st-century skill development and shorter lifetimes than wikis from schools serving affluent students. This study illustrates the exciting potential that Web 2.0 data warehouses offer for educational research. (Contains 3 tables, 2 figures, and 4 notes.)

New social technologies offer new opportunities for creating online communities of praxis in the preparation of preservice teachers. In this design research study, 22 preservice teachers in a social studies methods class conducted online class discussions inside the National Council of the Social Studies Network Ning, a social network for social studies educators. These preservice teachers engaged in series of reflective dialogues blending theory and practice--the hallmark of praxis--with their classmates, with other preservice teachers from around the country, and with practicing social studies educators from around the world. They also expressed a strong intent to engage in professional learning networks and communities of praxis in the future, although the Ning was ancillary to these intentions. These findings both hold promise and offer crucial guidance for other teacher educators. When implemented with attention and intention, online social networks provide promising opportunities for students in teacher education programs to engage in networked communities of praxis that can provide opportunities for colearning throughout a teacher's career.

Used wisely, academic technology empowers students to take responsibility for their own learning. "In Leonardo's Laptop," Ben Shneiderman provides teachers with a powerful framework, "Collect-Relate-Create-Donate" (CRCD), for designing student-centered learning opportunities using computers. Shneiderman developed his model by applying new insights from creativity researchers like Mihaly Csikszentimihaly and Howard Gardner to established methods for creative problem solving. In particular, Shneiderman's framework emphasizes the importance of the social aspects of learning in generating creative work. In CRCD projects, students research information, work collaboratively to create a meaningful product that demonstrates their learning, and contribute that project to a larger learning community. Shneiderman designed the "Collect-Relate-Create-Donate" framework as a vehicle for preparing young people for a twenty-first-century world where innovation, creativity, and collaboration will be more highly prized than retention and repetition. This article provides a case study of how the CRCD framework shaped the development of the "Day in the Life of a Teenage Hobo Project," a multi-day investigation into the social history of teenage homelessness during the Great Depression. Using the framework, Tom Daccord, a former U.S. history teacher and current academic technology specialist in Massachusetts, designed a project that used multiple technologies--search engines, blogs, and podcasting tools--to help students investigate the political, economic, and social history of the Great Depression. (Contains 5 resources and 10 notes.)

Eliciting and interpreting students' ideas are essential skills in teaching, yet pre-service teachers (PSTs) rarely have adequate opportunities to develop these skills. In this study, we examine PSTs' patterns of discourse and perceived learning through engaging in an interactive digital simulation called Eliciting Learner Knowledge (ELK). ELK is a seven-minute, chat-based virtual role play between a PST playing a "teacher" and a PST playing a "student" where the goal is for the teacher to find out what the student knows about a topic. ELK is designed to be a practice space where pre-service and in-service teachers can learn strategies for effectively eliciting their students' knowledge. We review the implementation of ELK in eight teacher education courses in math or science methods at six different universities and assess (a) patterns of interaction during ELK and (b) PSTs' perceptions of ELK and their learning from the simulation. Our findings suggest that PSTs engage in effective practices such as eliciting and probing more often than less effective practices such as evaluating and telling. Results suggest that PSTs gain experience in practicing talk moves and having empathy for students' perspectives through using ELK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Used wisely, academic technology empowers students to take responsibility for their own learning. In Leonardo's Laptop, Ben Shneiderman provides teachers with a powerful framework, Collect-Relate-Create-Donate (CRCD), for designing student-centered learning [...]

This paper explores how the use of digital practice spaces (DPSs) can inform teacher preparation through a reimagining of clinical practice in teacher preparation by addressing the question: what roles might DPSs play in the ecology of apprenticeship opportunities for future educators? We leveraged AACTE's Essential Proclamations and Tenets for Highly Effective Clinical Educator Preparation as an analytical framework to examine our own experiences using DPSs in our teacher education coursework. We discuss the alignment between these proclamations and the theoretical, conceptual, and practical underpinnings of DPSs. Finally, we consider the remaining proclamations that represent the horizons of DPSs within teacher preparation, a task we undertook as a set of informed provocations, envisioning how DPSs could be designed to support the proclamations not currently supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preregistration and registered reports are two promising open science practices for increasing transparency in the scientific process. In particular, they create transparency around one of the most consequential distinctions in research design: the data analytics decisions made before data collection and post-hoc decisions made afterwards. Preregistration involves publishing a time-stamped record of a study design before data collection or analysis. Registered reports are a publishing approach that facilitates the evaluation of research without regard for the direction or magnitude of findings. In this article, I evaluate opportunities and challenges for these open science methods, offer initial guidelines for their use, explore relevant tensions around new practices, and illustrate examples from educational psychology and social science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of RIED: Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia is the property of Revista Iberoamericana de Educacion a Distancia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of RIED: Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia is the property of Revista Iberoamericana de Educacion a Distancia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Teacher Moments is an open source resource for teacher educators to create and use practice-based simulations in teacher education. Teacher Moments may be used to create digital clinical simulations (DCS) which are defined as opportunities for improvisational interaction with scripted character(s). During the COVID-19 crisis, we implemented an equitybased simulation created by a teacher educator. Results demonstrate the utility of the system for surfacing student perspectives which, in turn, provides opportunities for deeper discussion and reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between pricing and learning behavior is an important topic in research on massive open online courses (MOOCs). We report on two case studies where cohorts of learners were offered coupons for free certificates to explore how price reductions might influence behavior in MOOC-based online learning settings. In Case Study 1, we compare participation and certification rates between courses with and without free-certificate coupons. In the courses with a free-certificate track, participants signed up for the verified- certificate track at higher rates, and completion rates among verified students were higher than in the paid- certificate track courses. In Case Study 2, we compare learner behavior within the same courses by whether they received access to a free-certificate track. Access to free certificates was associated with lower certification rates, but overall, certification rates remained high, particularly among those who viewed the courses. These findings suggest that some incentives, other than simply the cost of paying for a verified- certificate track, may motivate learners to complete MOOCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactive simulations allow preservice teachers to connect education theory and pedagogy in scaffolded environments. We created digital simulations with scenarios from in-person simulations and used them to prepare novice teachers for conversations with parents. Using a design-based approach we implemented the simulations in an education class, gathered data through surveys and observations, and incorporated feedback into subsequent designs. Novice teachers perceived the simulation as authentic and practiced maintaining composure and articulating pedagogical approaches. Recordings of novice teachers' responses produced by the simulation enabled self-reflection and peer and instructor feedback. Results suggest that these digital simulations hold promise as low-cost, flexible tools for novice teachers to engage in targeted practice in a low-stakes setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the impact that massive open online courses (MOOC) has had on the education system. It states that MOOC has not disrupted existing education systems but instead is allowing universities to outsource internet-based master's degrees for professionals. It examines data from MOOCs taught on MOOC provider edX which found soon after enrollment, most MOOC registrants leave with 52 percent never entering the courseware. It talks about high student attrition in the first two weeks.