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The U.S. Department of Education is committed to supporting innovative advances in educational technology to improve teaching and learning across the nation's education systems and to support educators as they incorporate emerging technology into their learning communities. Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education is a complex and rapidly expanding topic because individuals have different knowledge, opinions, and perspectives on using AI, which has implications for all members of school communities. This user-friendly toolkit was developed through engagement with educators, community members and technology leaders and is designed to help educational leaders make critical decisions about incorporating AI applications into student learning and the instructional core. This document connects broad ideas about AI to the establishment of school and district use policies that will guide its effective implementation. This toolkit provides guidance for the effective use and integration of AI in teaching and learning and presents an overview of Federal laws and considerations that are essential to anchoring and ensuring the use of AI in a safe, secure, and non-discriminatory manner across ten key modules--from federal policies to pressing educational issues, including privacy, data security, civil rights, and digital equity. Finally, the toolkit promotes the principles of transparency and awareness in the use of AI in schools, and emphasizes the importance of providing students, teachers, and parents opportunities to opt out of AI-enabled applications in school.

The expansion of early childhood education (ECE) and increased spending have benefited children and supported families. However, these investments have not addressed inequities within the ECE workforce. ECE providers face economic insecurity, earning an average of $14 per hour, which is below a living wage. In rural communities, this median wage drops to $11.42, and in Tennessee, it is even lower at under $10 per hour. Women of color, especially in rural areas, are disproportionately affected by poor compensation and benefits. To address these issues, this project partners with an organization called Tennessee Early Childhood Training Alliance (TECTA) to understand the experiences of ECE providers in an effort to raise awareness of: (1) the benefits of the TECTA program and the resources they provide; (2) the key challenges and barriers they navigate on the pathway to their education; and (3) the need for program expansion to enable opportunities for social and economic mobility. This study underscores the need for systemic changes to support ECE providers, particularly in rural areas and other marginalized communities. By addressing economic insecurity, professional recognition, training disparities, and policy inconsistencies, we can create a more equitable and effective ECE workforce.

Research has shown that access to technology industry pathways and support for recruitment, retention, and advancement through technology careers remain inequitable for Black talent due to various systemic barriers. To help address this issue, Digital Promise conducted research that centers the voices and lived experiences of Black workers and learners seeking to enter and advance in the technology industry with the purpose of building awareness to the: (1) challenges and barriers they face navigating the U.S. technology learning and working ecosystem; (2) factors such as supports and services that have facilitated their technology career pathway entry, retention, and advancement; and (3) collaboratively designed recommendations for needed supports that they have identified that can better promote successful navigation and persistence within technology career pathways. This report further highlights actionable steps that various technology industry contributors can take to dismantle systemic barriers within the technology learning and workforce ecosystem and increase access to non-four-year-degree pathways to tech careers. [Funding for this project is provided by Walmart through the Walmart.org Center for Racial Equity.]

OpenSciEd is a set of Creative Commons licensed, standards aligned curriculum and teacher professional learning materials that will be available for grades K-12. Using a storyline model that gives students the responsibility of "figuring out" science phenomena by engaging in science practices and classroom discussion to achieve consensus, OpenSciEd "empowers educators to go beyond traditional science teaching methods." This instructional model is ambitious for teachers, who must serve as facilitators and continually adapt instruction in response to directions students take. Because of this instructional shift, districts must also shift in how they adopt and implement science curriculum. Among the aims of the OpenSciEd Research Community, led by Digital Promise with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, is to develop and disseminate resources that support advancement of OpenSciEd-enabled research. Toward this goal, Digital Promise has released this report that synthesizes perspectives from OpenSciEd practitioners on their needs. The report identifies: (1) supports that teachers need to enact OpenSciEd with integrity, engage all their students, and gather evidence of students' standards-based learning outcomes; (2) ways districts can achieve deep, sustained adoption and meet their teachers' needs; and (3) potential research questions and opportunities for innovation that can improve OpenSciEd implementation in districts and classrooms. [This report was produced in collaboration with OpenSciEd.]

In this report, we share insights from a Research-Practice-Industry Partnership (RPIP) that explored mathematics instructional practices with support of digital mathematics tools. RPIPs bring together researchers, practitioners, and product developers, with each party having an equal voice, in a rapid-cycle model for edtech research and development. We framed this RPIP using the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL): provide multiple means of Engagement, Representation, and Action & Expression. These principles support learner variability, improve accessibility, and are closely aligned with mathematics education research, which highlights the multimodal nature of mathematics and the need to use and connect multiple representations to help students develop understanding of mathematics concepts. [This report was produced in partnership with Creativity Labs with funding support from Texthelp.]

The five SEERNet digital learning platforms (DLPs) present unique opportunities for researchers by offering tools, processes, and infrastructure to make research more efficient, scalable, and relevant. However, conducting research within a DLP may require a shift in a researcher's orientation or mindset in how they think about potential research questions, study samples, available data, and planning study logistics. We encourage researchers to think flexibly about how they might adapt their ideas to the specific learning platform and consider iterating toward a more comprehensive understanding of their hypotheses. We illustrate some of the potential mindset shifts and offer key considerations at stages of the research process.

There is a necessity for an educational shift to equip today's learners for success in a dynamically evolving world shaped by emerging technologies and globalization. Emphasizing the importance of academic and technical skills, this report stresses the need for learners to possess adaptability and interpretive abilities to apply these skills in diverse contexts. The "Portrait of the Graduate" initiative is introduced as a visionary framework where readers will learn more about the skillsets districts across the country have identified for students. Furthermore, this report will introduce readers to the design and implementation of "Integrated Learning Pathways'' as a strategy to breathe life into the Portrait of the Graduate and will provide examples of districts putting their Portraits into action. The report concludes with recommending district leaders to create Integrated Learning Pathways to align learning and initiatives to their Portrait of a Graduate and ultimately better prepare students for a successful future.

This paper presents a conceptual exploration of how Digital Learning Platforms (DLPs) can be utilized to investigate the impact of language clarity, precision, engagement, and contextual relevance on mathematics learning from word problems. Focusing on three distinct DLPs--ASSISTments/E-TRIALS, MATHia/UpGrade, and Canvas/Terracotta--we propose hypothetical studies aimed at uncovering how nuanced language modifications can enhance mathematical understanding and engagement. While these studies are illustrative in nature, they provide a blueprint for researchers interested in leveraging DLPs for empirical investigation so that future investigators gain a better understanding of the emerging infrastructure for research in DLPs and the opportunities provided by them. In highlighting three distinct implementations of the same core research question, we reveal both commonalities as well as differences in how different educational technologies might build evidence, offering a unique opportunity to advance the field of math education and other education research fields.

Across the country, district-community teams are tackling pressing and complex educational challenges with Inclusive Innovation, an education R&D model that starts with centering the needs of those most impacted by these challenges. This paper shares the stories, solutions, outcomes, and learnings from years of deep collaboration in the words of students, parents, teachers, and district leaders who have worked together to tackle education challenges--and discusses how the Center for Inclusive Innovation, anchored in its core tenets, is building upon this work with the Inclusive Innovation 2.0 model.

SEERNet digital learning platforms (DLPs) are developing new infrastructure to support research in authentic contexts where student learning is happening. In order to contextualize this work within the larger field, we trace historical precedents along four main categories: data repositories, data collection services, research design interfaces, and research communities. By situating this innovative movement alongside its predecessors, we can identify the opportunities for SEERNet and others to progress and sustain the mission of making research more scalable, equitable, and rigorous.

This report details how Reynoldsburg City Schools utilized the Inclusive Innovation model to introduce an innovative Open Educational Resource, Socratic Circles, designed to assist teachers in guiding discussions on racial and social justice in the classroom. These OER will be accessible to educators who are inspired by this work and interested in incorporating Socratic Circles into their classrooms. This report also offers insights from members of Reynoldsburg City Schools' Inclusive Innovation Core Team on how they applied the Core Tenets of Inclusive Innovation throughout their process.

The academic success of historically and systematically excluded (HSE) students, including Black, Brown, Indigenous, low-income, multilingual learners, and students with learning differences, remains impacted by social position and identity factors. Despite numerous education reform efforts, equity in education continues to be a pressing challenge in the United States. Many BIPOC solution providers possess the expertise and innovative solutions needed to meet the needs of HSE students, but they often face barriers that hinder their access to districts and education markets. To bridge this equity gap, the Center for Inclusive Innovation has introduced two innovative approaches: Learning Salons and Solution Showcases. The education Learning Salons create opportunities for collaboration and engagement between BIPOC solution providers and district leaders using a five-phase engagement model that allows both parties to identify and address specific challenges faced by HSE students. Solution Showcases provide a three-hour event where district leaders can learn about various undiscovered teaching and learning solutions designed by BIPOC solution providers. This report centers on the BIPOC solution providers and district leaders that participated in the Learning Salons and Solution Showcases from 2022-2023 and concludes with key pivots that education stakeholders can make to foster greater district-provider alignment in equity-centered solution sourcing and implementation.

SEERNet is a network of Digital Learning Platforms, researchers, and practitioners with the vision to leverage DLPs as research infrastructure, enabling researchers to ask and answer important questions about learning in ways that are grounded in realistic, widespread use of learning technologies. A first wave of work established the foundation for the research community. The network looks now towards a second wave of work that clarifies research opportunities and builds capacity for the types of research that can be supported. A third wave seeks to expand the network's efforts towards broader aspirations for better science, engineering, practitioner engagement, and community.

This report represents another installment in our Learning and Employment Records (LERs) series, where we explored the unique challenges and opportunities that learners encounter when familiarizing themselves with LER technology. As the paradigm shifts towards skills-based hiring and career advancement gains momentum, it becomes imperative for technologies like LERs to provide a transparent, user-friendly, and accessible onboarding experience. Digital Promise collaborated closely with historically and systematically excluded (HSE) adult learners and workers, including those facing economic hardship and multilingual learners, to establish a set of onboarding design principles. These principles are designed to ensure that LERs are crafted in ways that actively engage a diverse range of users.

While diversity within the technology industry has been critical for developing robust and creative technology solutions, recruiting and retaining diverse tech talent in today's society has been a challenge worldwide, especially for Black learners and workers. Subsequently, the technology field is left lacking in diversity of thought and perspective among technology industry practitioners and leaders. By examining peer-reviewed journal articles, statistical data from research reports, and website material from professional associations, this landscape scan synthesizes existing research and curates programs, services, and supports that effectively promote the success of Black learners and workers within technology career pathways. [Funding for this project is provided by Walmart through the Walmart.org Center for Racial Equity.]

Providing feedback to students in a sustainable way represents a perennial challenge for secondary teachers of writing. Employing artificial intelligence (AI) tools to give students personalized and immediate feedback holds great promise. Project Topeka offered middle school teachers pre-curated teaching materials, foundational texts and videos, essay prompts, and a platform for students to submit and revise essay drafts with AI-generated scores and feedback. We analyze AI-generated writing scores of 3,233 7th- and 8th-grade students in school year 2021-22 and find that students' growth over time generally was not explained by teachers' (n=35) experience or self-reported instructional approaches. We also find that students' growth increased significantly as their baseline score decreased (i.e., a student with the lowest possible baseline grew more than a student with a medium baseline). Lastly, based on an in-person convening of 16 Topeka teachers, we compared their scores and feedback to AI-generated scores and feedback on the same essays, finding that generally the AI tool was more generous, with differences likely driven by teachers' ability to understand the whole essay's success better than the AI tool.

With the emergence of digital credentialing and platforms to support learners and workers with entering and traversing the increasingly skill-based education and workforce ecosystem, Learning and Employment Record (LER) technologies have been identified as a promising solution for individuals to share and access their learning- and skills-data and to education and career opportunities. However, learning journeys are rarely continuous; opportunities, challenges, and evolving circumstances can result in both the development of skills and competencies and a change in the way in which individuals demonstrate and get recognized for their skills and competencies. Further, systemic barriers and inequities disproportionately impact learning transitions for historically and systematically excluded (HSE) communities, barring access to supports and resources to enter and persist in the education and workforce ecosystem. To help inform the the design of LER technologies to be of value and useful in supporting HSE learners and workers during learning transitions and along multiple pathways, this report highlights the following: (1) co-design methodologies and experiences that center HSE learners and workers in LER design, development, and testing; (2) recommendations and insights from HSE learners and workers on the opportunities and challenges of utilizing LERs through education and career pathways; and (3) seven learning transition design principles that support the multiple and often fluid transitions between education and the workforce that many HSE communities experience. These findings will inform the future work in developing a certification that guides developers to center HSE learners and workers as they design LER technologies to support individuals over time and through learning transitions. Based on these findings, LER developers, postsecondary education providers, and the workforce ecosystem, may develop a more inclusive skills-based learning and employment record system.

There is growing recognition of the need and importance for high-quality science teaching and learning in early childhood. The increased emphasis on science stems from recognition of the following: (1) young children are curious and interested in making sense of the world around them (Larimore, 2020); (2) early science experiences not only support children's later science learning but also promote and strengthen young children's learning and development in other key areas (Bustamante et al., 2018; Bustamante, White, & Greenfield, 2017; Sarama et al., 2017; Conezio & French, 2002; Wheatley et al., 2016); and (3) young children have the right to learn about science phenomena and develop problem-solving skills that will allow them to be problem solvers and active citizens in their communities (NASEM, 2022). Although science is increasingly recognized as a key dimension of early learning, young children, especially those in programs serving historically excluded communities, continue to have few opportunities to engage in high-quality science activities (Dominguez & Stephens, 2022; Morgan et al., 2016; NASEM, 2022). Early childhood educators are interested and find science valuable for young children, but adding science into an already packed curriculum can be challenging, especially given the lack of resources that can be feasibly integrated into existing whole-child curricula. This report describes the co-design of a preschool science program, Early Science with Nico & Nor®, with partner teachers and families, curricula and media developers, and researchers. It also summarizes findings from a field study to understand how teachers and families utilized the resources at school and home to promote STEM teaching and learning.

Talladega County Schools (TCBOE) spans 760 square miles and serves about 7,000 learners, 71 percent of whom receive free and reduced-priced meals. It also is a member of the League of Innovative Schools, a network of forward-looking school districts that have declared their commitment to improving and advancing equitable outcomes for students through innovative solutions, including those powered by the smart use of learning technologies. This white paper examines how the traditional one-size-fits-all approach to teaching and learning compares to more learner-centered, personalized, and motivating frameworks; why there needs to transition to them at scale; and how digital technologies now enable that scaling. It is also a companion to the report, "Delivering on the Promise of Digital Equity" (ED626483) which is designed to help state and local community leaders find effective ways for investing in K-12 education to increase digital equity.

The Working Group on Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and Learning Differences was launched in 2021 as an initiative of the Global Cities Education Network (GCEN). Fourteen school districts each worked to implement a unique action plan designed to strengthen SEL supports in their district, including for students with learning differences. Districts drew on expertise and resources shared in the working group and adapted the strategies to meet their needs. The learning centered on deep dives into two international school systems: a virtual site visit to Surrey Schools (British Columbia, Canada) and an in-person convening in Melbourne (Victoria, Australia). This report features four case studies and shares lessons learned and strategies implemented by the districts.

This report profiles five public PreK-12 learning education agencies across the U.S. that participated in the Digital Promise Center for Inclusive Innovation Teacher of Color Recruitment and Retention cohort and utilized the Inclusive Innovation model to create and launch locally contextualized programs designed by teachers of color.

This report describes a 15-month collaboration between three Every Learner Everywhere partner organizations (Achieving the Dream, the American Association of Public and Land-grant Universities [APLU], and Digital Promise) and five colleges, all engaged in a research-practice partnership (RPP) around enhancing equity and digital learning in gateway courses. The report describes the key features of research-practice partnerships, the design choices made for this Equity and Digital Learning RPP, the process of establishing the RPP, RPP activities both within and across institutions, and data on student perceptions and academic performance in the target courses before and after the RPP activities.

Digital knowledge and skills are needed to fully participate in the society and economy of the United States. The historic $65 billion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act represents a significant federal investment in advancing digital equity and inclusion, and an opportunity to make lasting change in communities across the country. This report proposes solutions to strategically use that funding to advance digital equity and inclusion. We recommend nine "big plays" that districts and states can make to that end, including building and sustaining infrastructure, strengthening teachers' digital skills, and deeply engaging underrepresented communities.

Digital learning platforms (DLPs) are beginning to become open to research. Specifically, in our work in SEERNet, developers are extending five platforms, each used in either K-12 or higher education by more than 100,000 users, to enable third-party researchers to explore, develop, and test improvements. SEERNet seeks to enable equity-relevant research aligned with the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Standards for Excellence in Education Research (SEER) principles. It also seeks to support research that is more agile (or rapid), is more open, and scales from research to impacts on practice. We review the emerging tensions among the goal of equity-relevant research and desires for agile, open, and scalable research. We argue that designing and developing technical capabilities for agile, open, and scalable research will not be enough. Based on a series of interviews we conducted with experts in social sciences and equity-focused research, we argue that researchers will have to rethink how they plan and undertake their research. Five shifts could help. First, researchers could deliberately reframe their designs away from a comprehensive, monolithic study to smaller, agile cycles that test a smaller conjecture each time. Second, researchers could shift from designing new educational resources to determining how well-used resources could be elaborated and refined to address equity issues. Third, researchers could utilize variables that capture student experiences to investigate equity when they cannot obtain student demographic variables. Fourth, researchers could work in partnership with educators on equity problems that educators prioritize and want help in solving. Fifth, researchers could acknowledge that achieving equity is not only a technological or resource-design problem, but requires working at the classroom and systems levels too. In SEERNet, we look forward to working with the research community to find ways to address equity through research using well-used digital learning platforms, and to simultaneously conduct research that is more agile, more open, and more directly applicable at scale.

This study explores the ways in which teachers in Puerto Rico are currently increasing their effective use of technology for their instructional practice through expanded access to professional learning opportunities and supports. The aim of this study was to gain insight about the effectiveness and impact of professional learning supports for technology integration and use, including competency-based micro-credentials, for educators. This report synthesizes the findings from the perspective of 14 teachers on their technology journey as well as from larger island-wide surveys and data. It sought to identify patterns and trends, as well as common structural barriers and opportunities, influencing the professional learning and development of teachers around their use of technology as part of their classroom practice. [This report was co-produced by Global Education Exchange Opportunities (GEEO).]

A new participatory research model, Research-Practice-Industry Partnerships (RPIP), presents a unique value proposition. Design processes have typically placed professional designers, not the end users, at the center of the work. RPIPs create an intentional feedback loop that transforms the knowledge, action, or goals of all involved parties (Baker et al., 2022). RPIP aims to create better designs for scalable technologies that both meet the needs of educators and incorporate research from the learning sciences. This yields a product more likely to be used, used appropriately, and have the desired impact for learners. Digital Promise partnered with edtech startup Merlyn Mind and the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in an RPIP. This white paper describes our engagement and suggests that this model can yield positive impacts and new learning for all participants. Surveys and interviews with participants showed that engagement was mutually valued among all parties, practitioners learned more about AI and edtech in general, and Merlyn Mind staff learned more about working with schools and educators. Practitioners also benefited from the networking and collaboration that participation in the RPIP brought and felt it helped them grow professionally. [This paper was funded by Merlyn Mind.]

Classrooms nationwide welcome a diverse group of learners. A goal, and an achievable one, is to recognize this unique diversity on a whole child spectrum and to strive to customize learning to meet individual needs. Critical to this process is for teachers to have at hand research that connects factors of learning in a holistic way. It is equally important to provide research-based strategies that teachers can use to embrace differences and provide pathways to robust learning for each student. With these considerations in mind, the Learner Variability Project (LVP) engaged in a partnership with the national nonprofit DonorsChoose to discover if teachers across the country could use the Learner Variability Navigator (LVN) to find and put in place research-based strategies that address the whole learner. The LVN is a free and open-source web app that curates research to provide factors of learning and affiliated strategies on a whole child framework. The pilot study found that even brief use of LVN encouraged teachers to reflect on the research-based strategies they already use and explore new strategies that support their students' diverse experiences and needs.

This report details the feedback loops initiative at Digital Promise in which we evaluated and mapped the way we generate insights and knowledge and the ways in which our partners contribute, perceive, and share in that process. In particular, we are interested in how we can create new processes we call feedback loops that can aid us in including our partners in more meaningful collaborations, developing solutions that are better targeted to the audiences they are intended for, and elevating the voices, needs, and excellence of the members of school communities. We believe there are cases where feedback loops will provide superior outcomes compared to traditional methods of feedback, and we detail in this report our conception of feedback loops, their components, and places within the Digital Promise ecosystem where they are currently in use, as well as provide guidance for others wishing to carry out this work.

Learning and Employment Records (LERs) require careful, deliberate design to ensure that workers benefit from their adoption and use. If designed without the inclusion of individuals who are most marginalized in the workforce, LERs could reproduce existing inequities in the talent pipeline. Digital Promise collaborated with workers in frontline sectors--along with leaders in higher education, design, and technology--to explore how LERs could be designed to promote greater equity in the emerging skills-based economy. The result is a set of worker-generated inclusive design principles and user profiles for LER technology developers. This report outlines the process for creating the principles and profiles for LERs, as well as key learnings and implications for future work.

This landscape report explores the impact of earning micro-credentials on the social mobility of rural learners. Through four in-depth case studies, we show how earning micro-credentials may lead to credential attainment, workforce entry, promotions, and/or economic improvements (e.g., salary increase, prioritizing learners impacted by poverty), particularly for Black, Latino, and Indigenous populations, as well as women. All of the initiatives emphasize the need for strong regional partnerships across educational sectors and deeper efforts to engage communities of color to lead to greater impact. Preliminary research indicates that micro-credentials can--and in some cases, do--lead to job promotions, higher wages, and an increase in self-confidence for rural learners.

In the face of a worldwide pandemic, educators rose to the challenge of engaging students and families remotely to not only continue learning but also to provide as much normalcy as possible at a time of chaos and uncertainty. Many educators were looking for quick, meaningful ways to learn new skills to effectively teach remotely and connect with learners from afar. The Edcamp Community by Digital Promise saw this as an opportunity to further demonstrate how the Edcamp model of professional learning paired with learning sciences research could quickly meet the needs of educators and create spaces for shared learning and networking. The Edcamp team created the Edcamp: Design for Learning (DfL) series. Supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and in partnership with Transcend, a national nonprofit organization focused on innovation in school design, we refined our model for online Edcamps to emphasize bringing together learning sciences expertise within Digital Promise and educator context and pedagogy expertise from the Edcamp Community to co-design a series of four online Edcamps. This report shares the key lessons learned from that series. [This report was supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative DAF, an advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation.]

Learning sciences research uncovers how people learn best and has the potential to enable technology to build powerful learning opportunities. This report explores the ways in which several edtech products focus their efforts on an intended learning purpose, consult and integrate research in their design, and strive to achieve their articulated goal. The five case studies included in the report provide examples of and best practices for leveraging research at multiple phases of product development, including acquisition, establishing cross-functional teams to collaboratively leverage learning sciences research, and using research to understand the best ways to measure success.

Technology is becoming more integral across professional fields and within our daily lives, especially since the onset of the pandemic. As such, opportunities to learn computational thinking are important to all students--not only the ones who will eventually study computer science or enter the information technology industry. However, large inequalities continue to exist in access to equipment and learning opportunities needed to build computational thinking skills for students that experience marginalization. We call all educators to integrate computational thinking into disciplinary learning across PreK-12 education, while centering inclusivity, to equip students with the skills they need to participate in our increasingly technological world and promote justice for students and society at large. This report issues two calls to action for educators to design inclusive computing learning opportunities for students: (1) integrate computational thinking into disciplinary learning, and (2) build capacity for computational thinking with shared leadership and professional learning. Inspired by the frameworks, strategies, and examples of inclusive computational thinking integration, readers can take away practical implications to reach learners in their contexts.

Digital Promise and Global Education Exchange Opportunities (GEEO) established a partnership in May 2020 to support and expand educator professional learning and use of technology in Puerto Rico through coaching and micro-credentials. Together, the organizations identified an opportunity to address the gaps in coaching structures and pilot a coaching model to support the powerful use of technology in schools. From January-June 2021, GEEO, with the support of Digital Promise, launched a 6-month coaching pilot with 10 schools across Puerto Rico. As part of the pilot, school leaders, coaches, and teachers engaged with micro-credentials to support their professional learning journey around systems change, coaching, and technology. The pilot was based on the Challenge-based Coaching Model which was developed through Digital Promise's work on the Dynamic Learning Project. The objective of the pilot was to help coaches work with teachers to enhance their technology use and tackle instructional and professional challenges using innovative strategies. This report represents the results and findings from the coaching pilot. [This paper was co-produced by Global Education Exchange Opportunities (GEEO), and funded by the Puerto Rico Department of Education.]

In this paper, our collaborative project team shares design principles and lessons learned from research for designing an app to support families' joint engagement with media and promote powerful shared learning experiences. We provide a rationale, based on research literature, for why a second-screen app in particular addresses our project goals. In addition, we describe the Splash and Bubbles for Parents app components as well as the co-design process and design-based research studies conducted to inform its design and development. Finally, our team offers design principles grounded in findings from our research that may be useful to app developers and researchers interested in continuing and expanding on this work. [This report was written by Digital Promise, The Jim Henson Company, Concord Evaluation Group, and Curious Media.]

When school administrators support instructional coaching, it is more likely to be effective in improving teacher practice. Building teacher buy-in, promoting awareness of the coach's non-evaluative role, ensuring coaches have adequate time to provide classroom support, meeting consistently with the coach, and trusting the coach to make decisions are all critical components of a successful coaching program. Based on data from our study of instructional coaching across 163 schools, this guide describes specific actions school-based administrators can take to serve as productive partners in instructional coaching programs.

Districts are increasingly investing in coaching programs to improve teacher practice and student outcomes. However, merely providing schools with the funding for a coaching position is not enough. To maximize the return on the investment of coaching, our research on the Dynamic Learning Project (DLP) shows that districts need to ensure that they are taking an active role in eliminating barriers to effective coaching and fostering a culture that encourages teachers to innovate their practice. Drawing from our three-year research study of instructional coaching across 32 districts, this guide describes concrete ways districts can remove roadblocks and support coaching throughout the school year. [Funding for this report was provided by Google for Education.]

The Powerful Learning with Computational Thinking report explains how the Digital Promise team works with districts, schools, and teachers to make computational thinking ideas more concrete to practitioners for teaching, design, and assessment. We describe three powerful ways of using computers that integrate well with academic subject matter and align to our goals for students: (1) collecting, analyzing, and communicating data; (2) automating procedures and processes; and (3) using models to understand systems. We also explore our four main commitments to computational thinking at Digital Promise: PreK-8 Integration; Commitment from District Leadership; Inclusive Participation of Students Historically Marginalized From Computing; and Participatory and Iterative Design.

The abrupt transition to remote instruction in response to COVID-19 posed significant challenges for both students and instructors. This report provides data on the prevalence of the different kinds of challenges college students faced during the shift to remote instruction and the nature of spring 2020 courses from the perspectives of both students and instructors. These descriptions are complemented by survey data on the prevalence of online instructional practices that are generally recommended in the online learning literature and analyses of the relationship of these practices to student satisfaction with their course. This report describes findings from two research activities conducted concurrently: a survey of a nationally representative sample of over 1,000 undergraduates who were taking online courses that included in-person meetings when they began and had to switch to entirely remote instruction; and qualitative descriptions of 29 courses offered by 10 institutions, based on interviews and focus groups with students and instructors.

Digital Promise sought to create and validate historical thinking skills rubrics for use in its evaluation of Gates Ventures' World History Project (WHP) curriculum. Adopting a principled assessment development approach called Evidence Centered Design (Mislevy et al., 2003), the Digital Promise team began by conducting an academic literature review. In this paper, we elaborate on how the literature on history education and historical thinking skills informed rubric design, including details of what it says about: how historical thinking skills have been defined in the literature; what dimensions of historical thinking used in national frameworks and standards; convergences of concepts across multiple frameworks and standards, and evidence on the progression of historical thinking skills. The results of this literature review led to the creation of two sets of historical thinking skills rubrics, one for evaluating teacher-assigned activities, and another for evaluating the student work those activities produced (presented in Iwatani, Hardy, Means, & Seylar, 2021 with additional validity evidence described in Iwatani, Means, Seylar, & Hardy, 2021). [This research was made possible through funding by Gates Ventures.]

This interview protocol includes five steps to conduct an empathy interview. In the Empathize Phase of designing an inclusive computing pathway, empathy interviews are conducted. Empathy interviews allow you to hear the stories and experiences of someone who will use what you are designing and learn about their realities, in this case, a student. [This report was produced by the Center for Inclusive Innovation.]

The convergence of growing classroom diversity, learning sciences research, sophistication of technology, and 21st-century job requirements in a global market could put America's education system on track for personalizing the learning experience. The goal is for each student to master content and skills to help guarantee their success in college and career. Efforts to personalize learning must take in the whole child -- the academic, social, and emotional needs of the learner. It must address learner variability, recognizing each child learns in a way unique to them and demonstrates distinctive strengths and challenges. To be effective, personalized learning environments must hold high expectations for each learner. Digital Promise Global, through its Learner Positioning Systems (LPS) initiative, is linking research to practice to enhance opportunities to personalize learning to address learner variability. LPS facilitates the connection among researchers, edtech product developers, teachers, and ultimately learners. When done right, supported by research on how people learn, with high expectations for all learners, and a consideration for whole-child development, personalized learning welcomes students as partners in their education and turns schools into places where ALL are inspired to learn and have the best chances for success. This paper, the fourth in the Making Learning Personal for All series, is divided into two parts. Part 1, The Promise of Reaching All Learners, discusses how learner variability defines personalized learning, striving for equity, and the dimensions to reach all learners. Part 2, Policy Actions and Investments to Personalize Learning, addresses school district strategy and policy, state policy and investment, and federal-national policy.

To meet the growth in learner diversity in today's classroom, a new paradigm for improving the precision and accuracy of "personalization" is critical to address the needs of students who are held back by traditional pathways designed for the mythical "average" learner. In response to this challenge, Digital Promise Global has embarked on a multi-year initiative, Learner Positioning Systems™ (LPS). The culmination of two years of systematic literature review and framework development, the LPS website is a free, open-source digital resource presenting the research behind the Learner Factors ("Factors") that most impact learner variability. The LPS app translates the Factor research into actionable educational product design and curriculum strategies for developers and educators to support research-based personalization for the full diversity of learners. This paper provides an overview of the research behind LPS's first area of focus, K-3 Reading. Beginning with the common standards used to evaluate reading success, the paper then details each area of LPS's K-3 Reading research and identifies the specific Factors with links to full annotated bibliographies for each. Finally, this paper explores interactions among Factors to highlight the complexity inherent in each person's individual learning path.

Effective classroom teachers have always personalized learning. But they have done so with limited structural supports, such as curriculum, pedagogy, tools, and resources specifically designed to support personalization. For the education community to bring personalized learning more systematically to many more learners, research about how students learn needs to be leveraged so the accuracy and precision of personalization can be improved. This paper focuses on four points: (1) Personalized learning must begin with research; (2) Technology can be used to translate research to support learner variability for personalized learning practices providing structures, strategies, and scale; (3) In the push for a common understand of "what" personalized learning is, it is critical not to lose sight of the "why"; and (4) Understanding learners creates pathways to success.

Personalized learning--learning that is connected to each individual's development, background, interests, and experiences--provides an approach that broadly and equitably supports educators' efforts to empower learners as individuals. Personalized learning offers a path to effectively support the growing diversity of the population of students by understanding how individual learners learn best and actively engage, motivate, and inspire them with the right resources at the right time, in the right medium, and at the right pace. Current models that drive personalization remain overly simplistic and are rarely based on research. These over-simplified models risk driving personalization in a way that leaves diverse learners behind. This paper highlights the need for researchers, the education community, and technology developers to implement new models that take personalized learning to the next level.

Higher education experienced an unprecedented and unplanned shift to remote instruction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020. For the first time, the great majority of postsecondary faculty and students were engaged in remote instruction. Faculty members who had never taught (or learned through) online courses were challenged to teach in a new format. Students who had never learned online before, and were not expecting to do so, had to shift to learning at a distance at the same time they were coping with abrupt changes in their living circumstances. As the pandemic has persisted, restrictions on classroom-based instruction have extended much longer than envisioned in spring 2020. Colleges and universities are looking for ways to design courses that are resilient in the face of epidemics and other interruptions to campus-based teaching while also being equitable to all students. This report highlights challenges and equity issues that surfaced in spring 2020 and that should be considered in course design and implementation, even beyond the pandemic. Its description of specific practices associated with higher student satisfaction with their STEM courses has applicability far beyond the first semester of pandemic-induced remote learning. This report describes findings from two research activities conducted concurrently: (1) Survey of a nationally representative sample of over 650 undergraduates who were taking STEM courses that included in-person meetings when they began and had to switch to entirely remote instruction; and (2) Qualitative descriptions of 28 STEM courses offered by nine institutions, based on interviews and focus groups with students and instructors. In this report the authors provide selected survey findings along with related descriptions of STEM remote teaching practices and learning experiences from the course case studies.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many students are learning remotely or in a hybrid of remote and in-school learning. As a result, most teachers and students are in learning situations where more independent work is assigned to students. There is no research that directly speaks to this unprecedented situation. There is, however, a considerable body of established research to draw on about assigning independent work to students to do at home: research on homework. Further, technology to support homework is becoming more available and research supports its effectiveness. In this article, we review some of the major points of this established research and suggest how schools, teachers, and parents and guardians can apply this research and related technology now, during the pandemic.

This report is based on the discussion that emerged from a convening of a panel of 22 experts in artificial intelligence (AI) and in learning. It introduces three layers that can frame the meaning of AI for educators. First, AI can be seen as "computational intelligence" and capability can be brought to bear on educational challenges as an additional resource to an educator's abilities and strengths. Second, AI brings specific, exciting new capabilities to computing, including sensing, recognizing patterns, representing knowledge, making and acting on plans, and supporting naturalistic interactions with people. Third, AI can be used as a toolkit to enable us to imagine, study, and discuss futures for learning that don't exist today. Experts voiced the opinion that the most impactful uses of AI in education have not yet been invented. The report enumerates important strengths and weaknesses of AI, as well as the respective opportunities and barriers to applying AI to learning. Through discussions among experts about these layers, we observed new design concepts for using AI in learning. The panel also made seven recommendations for future research priorities. [The report was also created with the Center for Integrative Research in Computing and Learning Sciences (CIRCLS), the University of Pittsburgh, and NC State University.]

Educator micro-credentials present a unique opportunity to link professional learning to practice. Through each competency-based credential, educators demonstrate application of their learning. School districts are seeing the value of embedding micro-credentials in existing professional learning pathways to promote educator agency, recognize educators developing their practice, and expand competency-based learning practices with students. Micro-credentials are particularly well-suited for introducing emerging technologies and content. Offering greater flexibility than one-time, stand-and-deliver professional learning, micro-credentials can serve as a vehicle for just-in-time, embedded learning in high-demand areas like computational thinking. While learning opportunities in computational thinking may have once been limited for educators without close proximity to a university with computer science education pathways, through micro-credentials, research-based resources are curated and made accessible to educators with an internet connection. This paper captures experiences and insights from educators and administrators as their districts integrated micro-credentials in support of professional learning. Learnings include suggestions for integrating micro-credentials effectively, ideas for deepening learning through micro-credentials, strategies for facilitating learning through micro-credentials, approaches to sustaining and expanding the role of micro-credentials for professional learning, and insights on evolving policies for micro-credential integration.