Planning Grant: Engineering Tools for Education Research (EnTER)

规划补助金：教育研究工程工具（EnTER）

基本信息

批准号：
1937057
负责人：
Mark Hempstead
金额：
$ 10万
依托单位：
Tufts University
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2019
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2019-09-01 至 2021-08-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1937057&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Planning Grant Engineering Tools Education

项目摘要

The proposing team envisions an Engineering Research Center that will transform learning and instruction with a focus on active learning in STEM education. Current efforts to understand what takes place in such environments are limited to choosing between studies using compact, simple forms of data (such as grades or surveys), and studies employing video and written records of students' work. Compact data provide insight but are removed from the classroom setting, while detailed record reviews are small-scale because of the labor-intensive methods required to analyze these rich, qualitative data. The compromises associated with both strategies have severely limited progress in developing a scientific understanding of the classroom environment and using this information to impact real-world classrooms. Radically altering the way educational environments foster learning requires a multi-pronged approach bringing together researchers with expertise in cognitive and learning sciences, bio-sensing, data analytics and computer systems. The resulting engineered system will address fundamental research questions concerning how students learn best as individuals, in teams, and in classroom communities. This knowledge can subsequently be translated into practical tools to provide instructors with in-classroom insight into students' thinking and engagement in active learning environments at scale. This ERC planning grant will facilitate the development of a team and Center structure that the National Academies of Science and Engineering believe is necessary to Advance Personalized Learning in the next century. Knowledge developed through these tools will, in an inclusive and ethically sensitive manner, lead to advances in curriculum, pedagogy, and the design of engineered systems in support of learning and instruction.Active learning environments with multiple concurrent conversations and activities are a challenge to study; however, understanding their dynamics is central to the advancement of learning science. Our engineering team will invent new sensors, embedded in low-power wearable computing platforms, whose data will be processed by next-generation machine learning algorithms. The ERC planning grant will bring together researchers in convergent disciplines through workshops and data hackathons to understand the research problems and demonstrate potential technologies. These instrumented learning environments will allow researchers to formulate and evaluate the hypotheses rapidly and at a scale well beyond that which can be achieved today. The ERC planning team will directly engage a range of stakeholders with an interest in the education of the next generation workforce. These stakeholders include students, educators, researchers, administrators, industry and accreditation agencies that will be engaged to build an ecosystem around the proposed center. Given the nature of the effort, privacy and ethical treatment of human subjects will be central to all aspects of the project. The hackathons and workshop activities will impact the broader research community beyond Tufts University by showing the potential of these technologies for educational research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

提议团队设想了一个工程研究中心，该研究中心将改变学习和教学，重点是在STEM教育中积极学习。当前了解在这种环境中发生的事情的努力仅限于使用紧凑的，简单的数据（例如成绩或调查）进行研究，以及使用学生工作的视频和书面记录进行研究。紧凑的数据提供了洞察力，但从课堂环境中删除，而详细的记录审查是小规模的，因为分析这些富有的定性数据所需的劳动密集型方法。与这两种策略相关的妥协在对课堂环境的科学理解发展并使用这些信息来影响现实世界的教室方面的进展严重有限。从根本上改变教育环境的方式促进了学习的方式，需要采用多方面的方法将具有认知和学习科学，生物传感，数据分析和计算机系统的专业知识的研究人员聚集在一起。由此产生的工程系统将解决有关学生如何以个人，团队和课堂社区学习最佳学习的基础研究问题。随后，这些知识可以转化为实用工具，以使教师对学生在主动学习环境中进行大规模的思维和参与的洞察力。这项ERC计划赠款将促进国家科学与工程学院认为，在下一世纪推进个性化学习是必要的，这是一个团队和中心结构的发展。通过这些工具获得的知识将以包容性和道德敏感的方式发展，导致课程，教学法的进步，并在支持学习和教学的工程系统的设计方面。但是，了解它们的动态对于学习科学的发展至关重要。我们的工程团队将发明嵌入低功率可穿戴计算平台的新传感器，其数据将通过下一代机器学习算法处理。 ERC规划赠款将通过研讨会和数据钢琴马拉松将收敛学科的研究人员聚集在一起，以了解研究问题并证明潜在的技术。这些仪器的学习环境将使研究人员能够迅速和评估假设的规模，远远超出了今天的规模。 ERC规划团队将直接与一系列利益相关者参与，对下一代员工的教育感兴趣。这些利益相关者包括学生，教育工作者，研究人员，行政人员，行业和认证机构，这些机构将参与围绕拟议中心建立生态系统。鉴于努力的性质，对人类受试者的隐私和道德待遇将是该项目各个方面的核心。黑客马拉松和研讨会活动将通过展示这些技术对教育研究的潜力来影响塔夫茨大学以外的更广泛的研究社区。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响来通过评估来支持的。