2017 Report on the Learning Sciences

2017 Report on the Learning Sciences

Dean

David H. Monk

Editor

Annemarie Mountz

Writers

Jessica Buterbaugh, Jim Carlson, Annemarie Mountz

Photographers

Jessica Buterbaugh, Jim Carlson, Annemarie Mountz

Contact Us

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Contents Dean’s Message

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There is much work going on in the College directly related to the Learning Sciences.

McDonald to convene Learning Sciences Initiative

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The goal is to make Penn State a national leader in Learning Sciences scholarship.

Methods by which students learn science is undergoing revision

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Penn State now is part of Advancing Coherent and Equitable Systems of Science Education.

Intelligent Tutor helps students increase reading comprehension

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Course highlights how important the design of education in online spaces is to students.

Research exploring race and gender in video games first of its kind 14 Study attempts to understand different types of exclusionary practices in gaming across gender and race.

The TeachLivE™ program gives prospective teachers a feel for classroom situations.

Quality Talk increases critical thinking in high school science classrooms 18 8

Informal learning is just one of the many components of the Learning Sciences.

Doctoral candidates create online studio for graphic design course

Marcela Borge is part of ground-breaking research about the usefulness of online communities within learning programs.

Virtual reality lessons can help students become better real-life teachers 16

Technology is helping to implement structure strategy in classrooms in grades 4-8.

Research explores learning habits of skateboarders

New computer program to examine collaborative online learning 12

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The approach has experienced success in improving elementary students’ comprehension of text and writing skills.

Dual-title degrees provide options; Penn State joins NAPLeS 20-21 The College offers a dual-title degree in comparative and international education (CIED); Learning Sciences might be next.

Read this magazine online: https://issuu.com/pennstateeducation

Dean’s Message The study of what has become known as the Learning Sciences constitutes a wide-ranging modern effort within the field of education to build bridges among various related but often distinct areas of scholarship. Within the College of Education at Penn State, there is much work going on in the classroom and through research directly related to the Learning Sciences.

collaborative programs. You can read more about his appointment and what he hopes to accomplish on page 2.

We will look to the initiative to develop curricular offerings at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in the Learning Sciences and also to facilitate the funding of collaborative research projects designed to advance scholarship in the Learning Sciences.

Penn State has a long tradition of scholarship with a focus on design and applications of technology to teaching and learning. Our graduate program in Learning, Design and Technology (LDT) is central to this effort.

We see the following areas of scholarship playing key roles in the emerging initiative: the design and utilization of emerging technology; content area learning (science and mathematics and STEM fields more generally at the Penn State has an even longer commitment to outset); learning process measures; and the design and Dean David H. Monk the study of cognitive science in various parts of the utilization of learning spaces. These explorations will University, including the Educational Psychology include the use of inventive research approaches such as Graduate Program in the College of Education. learning analytics, problem/design-based research, cognitive studies, intervention and prevention science, and discourse analysis.

Several content domains also are active in the modern Learning Sciences efforts at Penn State, including the science education and On the following pages, you will read about some of our mathematics education emphasis areas within the Curriculum and College’s work in the Learning Sciences, including the framework for Instruction (C&I) graduate program. The University has an extended establishing dual-title graduate degree programs; the development history of excellence in these content domains as well. of an “intelligent tutor” to help students in grades four to eight learn to write informative and persuasive essays; research into “informal Within the College of Education, the four areas most immediately learning” through participation in action sports; research looking at salient for the Learning Sciences Initiative are located in three art and design instruction and how a studio-based setting impacts separate academic departments. Good work is proceeding and several learners and learning; the use of race and gender in videogames; and recent tenure-line faculty hires have been made, particularly within other topics.

LDT. I hope you enjoy this snapshot of our efforts in the Learning In addition, we have created an administrative structure that Sciences. As always, I welcome your feedback. will strengthen connections among these four areas of the College of Education and also build bridges to other relevant areas of the University. The new structure will be led by Scott McDonald, director of the Krause Studios for Innovation and a tenured faculty member in the College of Education. Scott has strong connections to aspects of the Learning Sciences and proven administrative skills for building College of Education 1

McDonald to convene Learning Sciences Initiative

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cott McDonald, associate professor of science education and director of the Krause Innovation Studio in the Penn State College of Education, has been named convener of the College’s Learning Sciences Initiative.

The initiative’s short-term goal is to coordinate and successfully conduct a cluster hire of four new faculty with scholarly interests in the Learning Sciences and the science of learning. The longer-term goal is to begin engaging College of Education faculty, including the new hires, in formative discussions addressing how to constitute the research agendas and academic graduate programs that would shape the foundation for a Learning Sciences Center that will be connected with additional parts of the University.

The Learning Sciences is an area of scholarship that focuses on how learning happens in a variety of learning contexts – in classrooms, online, museums, clubs, the workplace, and many other formal and informal locations. A significant strand of research in this area tends to focus on the role of design and design principles in education, including educational interventions, curricula, spaces and exhibits, or technologies.

“The Learning Sciences also tends to value interdisciplinary approaches to researching these problems, as multiple perspectives on 2 Theme Report

By Annemarie Mountz

The Learning Sciences is an area of scholarship that focuses on how learning happens in a variety of learning contexts – in classrooms, online, museums, clubs, the workplace and many other formal and informal locations. A significant strand of research in this area tends to focus on the role of design and design principles in education, including educational interventions, curricula, spaces and exhibits, or technologies. complex problems is the best way to get a handle on the full complexity of learning in the wild,” said McDonald.

“We will look to the initiative to develop curricular offerings at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in the Learning Sciences and also to facilitate the funding of collaborative research projects designed to advance scholarship in the Learning Sciences,” said David H. Monk, dean of the College of Education. “Scott has strong connections to aspects of the Learning Sciences, and also the administrative skills needed for building collaborative programs.

Under his leadership, I see this initiative growing into a formal Learning Sciences Center at Penn State that will be a national leader in Learning Sciences scholarship and teaching.”

McDonald will be working closely with Richard Duschl, the Kenneth B. Waterbury chaired professor in secondary education.

Duschl is planning the next Waterbury Summit to facilitate scholarly conversations around the research agendas for a Learning Sciences Center at Penn State. The summit will bring national and international thought leaders together with Penn State faculty for a multi-day conversational conference.

“When I came here and accepted the Waterbury Chair, one of my agendas was to focus on building up the Learning Sciences and coupling that to scholarship in science studies (history, philosophy and sociology of science),” Duschl said. Now, he said, the Learning Sciences agenda is part of the larger strategic plan for the University.

“It plays a complementary role to what’s happening in the Center for Online Innovation in Learning (COIL) and with Teaching & Learning with Technology at Penn State,” Duschl said. The Learning Sciences also have the potential to connect with the World Campus because of the potential for researching the design of courses, the design of those learning experiences. In general, transforming education initiatives at Penn State all are packaged in a way that present wonderful opportunities for us to do whole new lines of research with the faculty here in collaboration with faculty elsewhere.”

There already is much work going on in the College of Education, both in the classroom and through research directly related to the Learning Sciences. The purpose of the Learning Sciences Initiative is to create an administrative and organizational structure that will build on the current strengths and develop relationships and infrastructure to support a collaborative and interdisciplinary group of faculty and graduate students with a shared set of interests around the science of learning.

“My role is to work with interested faculty across the College and beyond to define what Learning Sciences looks like here at Penn State, and what kinds of structures we

want to try and develop to support students and faculty who are interested in engaging in Learning Science-focused research,” McDonald said.

“This will likely mean convening groups of faculty both from within the College of Education and from other colleges across Penn State, to talk through issues and concerns, and to facilitate conversations that can clarify what the faculty hopes to see come out of the initiative,” he said.

engage in scholarship with a much more diverse set of faculty; learn about working in collegial ways with other researchers on a team; and be inside the process of seeking external funding. These are all skills that graduate students need to have to be successful faculty members,” McDonald said.

McDonald plans to begin his work with the initiative first by building relationships and an understanding among colleagues of the goals of the initiative.

“My role is to work with interested faculty across the College and beyond to define what Learning Sciences looks like here at Penn State, and what kinds of structures we want to try and develop to support students and faculty who are interested in engaging in Learning Science-focused research.”

“Beginning steps include discussions of a Learning Science structure for graduate students – either a joint program or some other way to allow students to be recognized as doing work in the Learning Sciences. We will also look to set up some kind of colloquium for interested faculty — Scott McDonald where we can begin to share our work across departments so we can Educational scholarship increasingly has build connections that will be fundamental to become more of a “big science” model, with making the initiative work,” McDonald said. multiple faculty members with different “This is an exciting opportunity to extend backgrounds and expertise working together Penn State’s leadership role into a powerful in a research group using a team approach to area of educational scholarship, and to tackle larger-scale problems. provide our students with opportunities “Having a strong community of scholars to expand their expertise in ways that are at Penn State that are doing this kind of professionally productive,” he said. “I’m collaborative, interdisciplinary work will looking forward to diving in and getting to provide opportunities for our students to work.”

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Methods by which students learn science are undergoing considerable revision

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high-profile, Learning-Sciences project known as Advancing Coherent and Equitable Systems of Science Education (ACESSE) could be the impetus behind driving national change about how K-12 students learn science.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project brings together 13 member states, eight of which have adopted Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and five that have not. Pennsylvania has yet to adopt those standards but ACESSE will examine systems of science education at the state level.

“The elements of bridging research and practices in support of ambitious and equitable science instruction and assessment and building coherence and capacity across state systems of education are both powerful and innovative,” said Carla Zembal-Saul, professor of science education who holds the Kahn endowed professorship in STEM education in the College of Education at Penn State.

“We’re going to look at the coherence and infrastructure for implementing and the 4 Theme Report

By Jim Carlson

“If we do this right, it will be the most important change in science education in our lifetimes.”

— Carla Zembal Saul

research-based framework that underlies the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).”

Pennsylvania’s ACESSE team consists of Zembal-Saul; Rick Duschl, the Kenneth B. Waterbury chaired professor in secondary education in the College; and Judd Pittman, special consultant to Pennsylvania State Secretary of Education Pedro Rivera.

The primary research is being conducted

by Phil Bell at the University of Washington and William Penuel at the University of Colorado, and an organization called the Council of State Science Supervisors (CSSS), according to Zembal-Saul.

“State teams are partnering with researchers to provide support and codesigned resources,” she said. “Having a common vision across state systems of science education allows for coherence in messaging and resources necessary for largescale change.”

ACESSE PA will examine the degree to which there is alignment of curriculum, instruction and assessment with the policies and practices in Pennsylvania science standards, or horizontal coherence.

The project fits with the Learning Sciences and Improvement Sciences kind of model, according to Duschl. “This is functioning at the system level, this example of designbased research,” Duschl said. “What could be nice about it politically is that it would link the Department of Education and we all would like that.”

It also will explore the extent to which there exists shared understandings and consensus practices statewide in threedimensional science learning goals and the purposes and uses of formative assessment, or vertical coherence.

The Next Generation Science Standards, Zembal-Saul said, are based on a framework that was published first and based on a number of research syntheses. “One of the most important ones is a document from the National Research Council called ‘Taking

Science to School,’ and Rick (Duschl) was one of the authors on that,” Zembal-Saul said.

“Decades of research provide strong support for a new vision for science learning that is ambitious and equitable. Transforming the vision into practice requires the integration of crosscutting concepts in science (cause and effect, systems and modeling, and patterns); scientific discourse and practices (arguing from evidence, constructing and interrogating scientific explanations); and what is traditionally known as the content of science (disciplinary core ideas),” she said.

Zembal-Saul confirmed the need for coherent implementation of instructional and assessment practices. “Robust professional learning opportunities are central to systems change,” she said. “We need to consider teacher learning across the professional continuum, including the development of next generation teachers who understand equitable student engagement in science.”

Zembal-Saul said there is a great deal of momentum around the Photo: Jim Carlson Learning Sciences at Penn State.

“It shows a genuine commitment Carla Zembal-Saul is part of Pennsylvania’s team of Advancing Coherent and Equitable Systems of Science Education (ACESSE). to the kinds of work that are happening in the research–practice professor of educational psychology and space.

ACESSE is a pretty high-profile project Learning Sciences at the University of That “three-dimensional learning” in in that it is driving national change,” she said.

Colorado. the NGSS allows students to learn in more That change is multi-faceted, according meaningful and lasting ways when using “We have some ambitious goals to help to Penuel.

“We want kids now not just to scientific practices to investigate natural create more equitable and coherent systems learn ideas from a textbook but to encounter phenomena while learning scientific content, of science education in states,” Penuel said. science and learn science through explaining Zembal-Saul explained.

“That means that teachers get clear and natural phenomena and designing solutions consistent messages about what and how “Unfortunately, 3D science instruction and to problems that arise from phenomena; to teach from everyone in their systems, and assessment practices are uncommon in U.S. research is key to that,” he said. schools,” she said. “ACESSE is one attempt to this message emphasizes the importance of “States have some common challenges inclusive instructional strategies that reach all co-design resources for teacher professional in implementing research-based ideas – kids.” learning, as well as other important aspects incoherence of guidance from lots of different of systems change, that stand to be coherent A key first step is getting state leaders in professional development providers is an and consequential. the network on the same page as to the vision example. and key ways to accomplish coherence.

“If we do this right, it will be the most “By banding together and sharing important change in science education in our “I feel like we have that, and in some strategies for bringing professional lifetimes,” Zembal-Saul said. states, they are also starting to track their development providers into alignment, our states’ outcomes using a set of practical (easy network has the potential to facilitate great To make that happen, specific objectives must be targeted, according to Penuel, to administer) survey measures,” Penuel said. cross-state collaborations,” Penuel said.

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Intelligent Tutor technology helps students increase reading comprehension

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By Jessica Buterbaugh

onnie J.F. Meyer has dedicated her 44-year career to helping students improve their reading comprehension skills. But as the years went by and the field of education continued to change, she realized the importance of using technology in instruction.

In 2001, Meyer, a professor of educational psychology in Penn State’s College of Education whose research focuses on the Learning Sciences, developed the first web-based tutoring program to teach fifth-graders about the text structure strategy to improve comprehension of nonfiction.

In 2003, she and Kausalai (Kay) Wijekumar, a former Penn State College of Education graduate student and current professor at Texas A&M University, adapted their earlier instruction with older adult tutors coaching fifth-graders into web-based lessons delivered via an intelligent tutoring system. Known as the Intelligent Tutoring of the Structure Strategy (ITSS), the web-based tutoring system focuses on teaching the text structure strategy, an educational model Meyer developed in 1975, and included a cartoon-like, talking tutor.

“The text structure strategy is a different approach to comprehension than what traditional textbooks recommend,” Meyer said, adding that instruction about the strategy has been continually refined over the years. “It helps students better organize their reading by focusing on text organization. These text organizations or structures include compare and contrast, cause and effect, problem and solution, sequence, description and nested mixtures of these organizations.

“The content of the lessons, the text structure strategy, has been my life’s work,” she said, adding that a study she led in 1980 found 6 Theme Report

that good comprehenders use the strategy. That study, published in Reading Research Quarterly, is among the top five cited articles from the publication in the past 50 years.

“Structure strategy has been well-tested and shows that students have significant improvement in recall of the contents of expository text as well as production of good summaries,” she said. “We also have had teachers note improvement in the quality of writing of students who learn and use the text structure strategy.”

When the structure strategy was developed more than 40 years ago, its effectiveness and transfer to everyday reading of nonfiction was examined with younger and older adults through multiple grants from the National Institute of Aging and the National Institutes of Health.

In later years, proficient older adult tutors provided tutoring to children learning the structure strategy in web-based lessons. This approach was expensive, Meyer said, because the researchers had to recruit, train, mentor and monitor tutors. That’s why Meyer and her colleagues decided to change direction and make use of advances in technology to help make structure strategy more effective and accessible to school-age readers.

“The core of the instruction has basically remained the same,” Meyer said. “It’s just the technology, the tool we use to get it out to the schools, that has changed. Affordances of technology have increased our outreach and impact on students in grade four through middle school.”

For a while, she continued to use human tutors to work with children. Although the content was available online, students followed content instructions on their own and then received feedback from the

tutors. Feedback also was available within the online instruction so students could look to see their progress. However, the process wasn’t perfect.

able to look at whether students were more successful if they chose their own text topics for practice lessons,” she said.

After years of work with other intelligent tutor models and refining web-based instruction with the text structure strategy, ITSS came to fruition. The unique tutoring model provides students with interactive activities and allows for modeling and practice as well as more consistent instruction across different learners.

“The wonderful thing about the model is that it can work with thousands of students at once and give consistent online learning instruction,” Meyer said.

“That is something we could never do before.”

In 2011, her research progressed even more.

“We conducted a study where we individualized the model more so that we could quickly, in real time, see how a child was performing within a lesson and then assign what the next lesson should be in terms of text difficulty and familiarity of content,” Meyer said. “We were able to see

these skills on their own.

“Reading is one of the most important vehicles children have for obtaining information. Whether or not they retain information depends not only on the skills of the writers presenting the information, but also on the skill of the children in mentally organizing the ideas.”

Since establishing the web-based groundwork for ITSS 16 years ago, Meyer and her colleagues have secured more than $10 million in grant funding from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and they have no plans of slowing down anytime soon.

“The core of the instruction has basically remained the same. It’s just the technology, the tool we use to get it out to the schools, that has changed.

Affordances of technology have increased our outreach and impact on students in grade four through middle school.”

A valuable characteristic of ITSS for learning is that it provides immediate feedback to students.

Not only does that feedback give students instant results, it also allows for Meyer and her team of researchers to do comparisons and conduct trials to evaluate the effectiveness of ITSS. “We learned a lot about how to improve ITSS and were also able to do various studies. For example, we were

if students were actually able to understand and comprehend the particular content or the relationships between the ideas.”

The best outcome Meyer has seen from her research is that the combination of structure strategy with an intelligent tutor is working.

“The research is having an impact,” she said. “Awareness and strategic use of text structure are important skills of good readers, and we have found that these skills can be taught to students who haven’t picked up

“We have completed four IES grants and are in the — Bonnie J.F. Meyer middle of the fifth grant.

We just keep expanding, extending and improving the idea,” she said. “The basic text structure strategy instruction is the same — just who you’re reaching and how you improve the delivery varies.

“To get something that really works using technology, you need to make sure you have a comprehension strategy that works and we have years of strong basic and applied research, plus collaborations with people, that have made it possible to get text structure strategy out there.”

College of Education 7

Research explores learning habits of skateboarders

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By Jessica Buterbaugh

here’s a common misconception that education must be a formal process that involves contentbased curriculum and teacherled instruction. But learning takes place all around us and, many times, kids are their own teachers.

“I believe that students learn best when they pursue their own interests,” said Ty Hollett, assistant professor of learning, design and technology in Penn State’s College of Education.

“With interest-driven learning, kids are doing their own thing, teaching themselves and teaching others.”

Hollett, whose research focuses on the Learning Sciences, said it is important for educators, administrators and researchers to understand how students learn.

8 Theme Report

Every student is different and those differences lead to different ways of learning. Informal learning is just one of the many components of the Learning Sciences that give educators a glimpse at how students’ individual differences cultivate learning and an education.

Hollett first began investigating how youth learn in informal, interest-driven settings while completing his dissertation at the Nashville Public Library in Nashville, Tennessee.

When he came to Penn State in 2015, he began looking at youth action sports, specifically skateboarding and BMX riding, and how digital media is used in the learning process.

“I was put in touch with people at a nearby action sports camp and I was able to continue my research on out-of-school,

Photo: Ty Hollett

A skateboarder and videographer analyze the skater’s attempt — and failure — at a specific trick as well as the videographer’s efforts to capture it.

interest-driven learning,” Hollett said. “I really look at how people talk, how they move, how they interact with one another and how they use technology to help facilitate their learning.

And action sports is really just a perfect place to study all of that.”

During the summer of 2016, Hollett spent three months watching and recording youth action sports participants to better understand how they learn. “I was basically able to just hang out at this camp and I collected about 200 hours of video

data,” he said.

“One of my first days at the camp, I was walking around with a professional videographer who started the digital media program at this camp,” Hollett said. “He pointed out a trio that included a 16-year-old videographer, a 15-year-old photographer and a 15-year-old skateboarder and said, ‘These guys are going to grow up together. They’re going to call each other up and shoot film and photos and skate together over time.’”

This intrigued Hollett and he started focusing on these types of relationships. “I really became fascinated by the power of these partnerships and the analysis that was happening.”

“They were using the videos and the photos they were shooting to go back and sort of debrief, have these quick little debrief sessions where they’re reflecting on the trick and how it looked and how it can be improved,” he said.

“But then they also discussed the shot and how it looked, how the video looked and how it could be improved.”

attempt, the athlete and videographer watched the film and briefly analyzed and discussed what went wrong and how to improve. They continued this process for more than an hour, during which they openly asked questions that created opportunities for critique and, ultimately, learning.

especially in informal settings, we ask, how can one youth get better at X-Y-Z? And here, it wasn’t just collaboration but it was kind of a dependent collaboration in that you really needed that other person there to be present with you in order for both to succeed but then also to let other people see your work.”

Reflecting on the attempts also created a nurturing environment where the

Hollett said he was drawn to the culture of action sports because its athletes are typically youth who find themselves in the margins of more formal, schoolbased learning settings.

“Society says that youth who have these interests and hobbies often do not mesh well, or at least that is how they are perceived, in those predominant or privileged ways we view learning,” he said.

“We need to understand more and more about how youth learn in order then to begin to think more deeply about both school and outof-school learning settings.”

The more time he spent at the camp, the more he realized that their learning was interdependent and contingent on the success of these partnerships.

“As I was talking with one skateboarder, he said ‘You gotta vibe with the guy that you’re shooting with or skating with.

And if you don’t vibe, then you’re not going to get that trick or that shot,’” Hollett said.

While hanging out at skate parks and watching cool tricks A trio consisting of a skateboarder, photographer and videographer all shoot and skate was fun, Hollett said his goal is to together. They will collaboratively develop their respective skill sets over time. get educators thinking about the different ways in which students “Vibing,” Hollett explained, is the result videographer provides encouragement for the learn and make adaptations to accommodate of a symbiotic learning partnership that skateboarder to succeed, Hollett said. After that learning. includes cycles of reflection and nurture. He all, without the successful completion of the “When we look at schools, broadly, they’ve observed this firsthand when an athlete and trick, the videographer cannot successfully looked the same for the past 100 years or a videographer worked together on a new complete his task. so,” he said. “As a researcher in the Learning trick. The skateboarder failed his attempt “They depended on each other to analyze Sciences, I’m looking for new and innovative at an alley-oop backflip, which caused the and to reflect and to support one another,” ways to help reframe what learning looks like videographer to stop filming. he said. “This is really powerful because, and redesign some of those settings, whether However, immediately after the failed often times when we think about learning, it is in school or out of school.”

Photo: Ty Hollett

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Doctoral candidates create online studio for graphic design course

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By Jessica Buterbaugh

hen transferring a resident course to an online format, course designers face many challenges.

Those challenges become even more complex for arts classes that require constant student interaction and feedback.

Jessica Briskin and Gary Chinn, doctoral candidates in the College of Education’s Learning, Design and Technology Program whose research focuses on the Learning Sciences, experienced those challenges firsthand while designing an online course that follows a studio-based instructional approach.

“The way in which we structure the studio and the methods we use, especially for collaboration and critiquing, can inform other disciplines and how they design their online classes.”

“We had the opportunity to collaborate with a graphic design professor to create an online course around graphic novels as a narrative device,” said Chinn, who works full time as the assistant dean for digital learning for the Office of Digital Learning in the College of Arts and Architecture.

“The challenge was to try and figure out how to work with this graphic design professor who had only done in-person, studio-based instruction and figure out what that could look like with technology,” he said.

“We were trying to look at how arts instruction happens and how it is different from a typical instructional approach,” added Briskin, who serves as a graduate assistant for the Office of Digital Learning.

In arts-based courses it is common for classrooms to follow a 10 Theme Report

studio set-up where characteristics such as consistent feedback, peer assessment and openness are key elements. Classes also focus on the creation of artifacts (writings, drawings, sculptures, etc.), and peer evaluations and critique are required in order for students to make refinements and improve their work.

“An arts-based approach usually looks a little bit different than traditional classes. The conversations are different and the artifacts or products of the work are different as well,” Briskin said, adding that during the development process, she and Chinn tried to identify certain hallmarks of arts-based pedagogy and focus on them.

— Jessica Briskin

“A lot of what we tried to do with the platform was get at what a critique process could look like if students weren’t all together in the same room,” she said.

In fall 2016, Chinn and Briskin worked with Joel Priddy, associate professor of graphic design, to pilot a new hybrid approach to his Introduction to Graphic Novels course. The trio decided on this approach to learn what works best in both a face-to-face and online environment before launching the courses solely online. Piloting the course in this format was beneficial, Chinn said, because they were able to make immediate changes and updates.

“There are many developers across campus who have worked on our studio and so based on feedback from the students and the professor, we were able to make changes on demand,” he said.

“The students all gave really positive feedback to their online experience and that was a little bit surprising because we expected one or two students to have a negative experience,” Briskin added. “We did interviews and had survey feedback and they all reported having a very good experience. So that leads us to believe that we did something right.”

that arts-based disciplines are rarely an option for online learners because of the unique studio-based instructional model most classes follow.

critiquing process extremely interesting and saw ways that they could use our technology to meet their needs.

“Our research is applied,” she said. “The way in which we structure the studio and the methods we use, especially for collaboration and critiquing, can inform other disciplines and how they design their online classes.”

“This feedback is very reassuring because the studio design is kind of the catalyst to start research for other projects in the Office of Digital Learning,” she said. “A lot of what we did is helping to inform how other arts classes or artsbased instruction could use this virtual, online studio as well.”

Studying the Learning Sciences and focusing on the design of education in online spaces is important not only to the field of education but also to current and future students, Chinn said.

Briskin and Chinn’s creation also is the driving force behind a new interdisciplinary online program among the College of Arts and Architecture, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and College of Information Sciences and Technology.

The program — Digital Multimedia Design — launched this past summer.

Image: courtesy of the Office of Digital Learning

This screenshot of the digital studio shows where student artwork is displayed and viewable by others in the class. Since the pilot course in 2016, the studio has undergone a redesign based on feedback from students.

“There are populations of learners who for various reasons cannot attend in-person educational experiences,” he said. “ Look at (Penn State) World Campus, for example. Most of the students enrolled are adult learners who have children. The average age at the undergraduate level is 33. So, it is a much different population than you see on campus.

“Designing online educational experiences like the online studio unlocks the ability for these learners to pursue certain disciplines that otherwise would not be possible for them to do because the only other options are resident experiences,” Chinn said, explaining

Although Chinn’s and Briskin’s research and work developing an online studio classroom specifically benefits the College of Arts and Architecture, they believe it is applicable to other disciplines and already have seen interest from faculty at other universities.

“We recently presented at AERA,” Briskin said. “It was a roundtable discussion and a lot of people, many from the Learning Sciences, were interested in ways they could use our virtual studio. They found the collaborative,

“A lot of the work that went on last fall led to direct improvements that are being rolled out on the program level,” Chinn said, adding that he and Briskin will do additional data collection this fall to draw comparisons and evaluate areas of improvement.

“With the Learning Sciences and online innovations, there are a lot of possibilities for the future,” Briskin said. “And those of things we will look into as this process continues.”

Briskin and Chinn detailed their process of creating the online studio in a case study published in the UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal in March 2017. Their adviser, Susan Land, associate professor of learning, design and technology, and Joel Priddy served as co-authors for the article.

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Computer program to examine collaborative online learning

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By Jim Carlson

n effort to transform burgeoning online learning from being essentially individualistic to considerably more collaborative is gaining ground, according to a researcher who is breaking ground about the usefulness of online communities.

Marcela Borge, assistant professor in Learning, Design and Technology in Penn State’s College of Education, earned a National Science Foundation grant for her work on Fostering Ecologies of Online Learning Through Technology Augmented Human Facilitation.

Borge said the online format is usually the only way those students have to develop social relationships and engaging in cognitive forms of social discourse around course content.

“The problem is that really good discourse requires a certain amount of facilitation, because people are not generally good at collaboration or sense-making discourse, and there’s a great deal of research that supports that,” she said.

Photo: Jim Carlson

Because there isn’t always an online facilitator to ask the “deeper” questions, Borge and her colleague, Carolyn Rosé from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, combined to examine how to use technology as a means to help student groups improve their own collaborative processes and prevent students from dropping out of massive online environments.

The goal of the Learning Marcela Borge, assistant professor in Learning, Design and Technology in Penn State’s Sciences project is to find ways College of Education, earned a National Science Foundation grant for her work on Fostering Ecologies of Online Learning Through Technology Augmented Human to use technology to better meet Facilitation. the needs of online students by important aspect of education,” Borge said. developing technological support for cognitive, metacognitive and social “Research in the Learning Sciences has “We combined forces because we both processes. The project has produced many shown that collaborative processes like recognized the importance of collaborative interesting outcomes including a new model discourse and collective sense-making are learning and the many problems that can for supporting the development of socioessential for learning. For this reason, we prevent it,” Borge said. “My design expertise metacognition, the ability to monitor and wanted to make sure that students who was needed to create and test a tool to help regulate collective thinking processes in are learning in online contexts have equal students learn how to monitor and regulate online collaborative learning contexts. access to meaningful learning experiences: their own collaborative activity. Carolyn’s area collaborative learning, deep sense-making, “We were looking at online learning of expertise, machine learning and natural because it’s becoming an increasingly building relationships with other students.” language processing, was essential to the 12 Theme Report

project because we needed to find a way to automate assessment of collaborative sensemaking and give students feedback.”

It was a potentially difficult feasibility project, Borge said, because there are few tools out there that actually show that they can improve students’ ability to monitor and regulate collaborative interactions.

She stressed that higher-order thinking is becoming much more critical.

“Multiple iterations of our study have shown that we can help students learn to regulate collaborative processes and actually improve them,” she said. “We have looked at the quality of students’ conversations across an entire semester and we found that they significantly improve over time through use of the CREATE (Collective Regulation & Enhanced Analysis Thinking Environment) technology and related activities. However, the other thing we were trying to do is see if we could find a way of automatically assessing the quality of discourse.”

Borge said she and her students currently do that manually, which is time consuming.

“We took our manual coding framework and worked with Carolyn to see if we could use machine-learning to develop a way to do it automatically,” she said. “We were partially successful; we could get the computer to automatically code the quality of discourse but only if we had a human in the loop.”

They were able to get the machine to automatically code discourse acts, whether students were adding information, making judgments, or requesting evidence or elaboration. Where it became more precarious

“I think that we need to start taking a more systematic view of the impacts of technology and start thinking about learning and learning outcomes more broadly.”

— Marcela Borge

was when these acts were aggregated for the entire session, and Borge and Rosé were looking for a combination of patterns that would allow them to score the quality of higher-level cognitive functions.

The available options – even if some are unknown – are what makes the Learning Sciences exciting for Borge. “Part of the reason I love the Learning Sciences is because not only does it try and push the boundaries of new technologies to support learning and evaluating technologies that exist, but it’s extremely theoretically and methodologically rigorous,” she said.

“For those folks who are not familiar with the Learning Sciences, it is important to understand that analysis of learning occurs at multiple levels of scale in real-world contexts and there is a push to look at learning in social contexts — how do interventions, technology and tools impact discourse processes in the classroom?“ Borge said.

Part of the process of the system being studied is trying to determine what quality

collaborative processes concretely look like.

Borge explained the CREATE system as students being asked to conduct a one-hour synchronous conversation with other online students about their perspectives on difficult questions about course content.

“The system has tools to help students reflect on the quality of this discourse,” Borge said. “We operationalized what quality collaborative discourse looks like by drawing on theory. The system helps students monitor and regulate collaborative processes by having them assess and reflect on key processes.”

“Students have to scroll through and look for certain patterns that are associated with higher quality sense-making and then evaluate where they are compared to where they would like to be and come up with strategies for them to improve next time around,” she said. The system then helps students make plans on how to correct problems in a future session and provides awareness features they can use to track their processes.

Borge said she is working with Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) because TLT would like to turn her prototype into a University-wide system. The team at TLT includes TK Lee, Audrey Romano, Robin Smail, Serena Epstein, Heather Harter, Jason Heffner, Kathy Jackson and Bart Pursel.

“There are a lot of folks excited about the CREATE extension, particularly those working with team-based analysis” including business schools and information sciences, Borge said.

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Research exploring race and gender in video games is first of its kind

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by Jessica Buterbaugh

xamining gender and race in video games is nothing new. But one aspect researchers failed to look at previously is the intersection of gender and race in the gaming world and how that affects the ways users learn.

“I study gaming from a Learning Sciences, educational lens and I believe that people learn in practice,” said Gabriela T. Richard, assistant professor of learning, design and technology in Penn State’s College of Education. “A big aspect of how we learn is through cultural practice and, for many years, the Learning Sciences has been investigating the ways that people learn through culture and their surrounding environments,” she said.

“There have been studies showing the disparities of gender in technology and gaming, but people weren’t really looking at how this intersected with race,” she said.

“That was a big concern for me because, as a woman of color, I am someone who has not 14 Theme Report

only played games and worked in tech but am also a researcher.”

In 2009, Richard decided to address her concerns and initiated a first-of-its-kind study where she applied intersectional theory to understand the different types of exclusionary practices in gaming across gender and race.

“I found that there were significant barriers across gender and race, and that certain supportive communities, specifically female supportive communities, actually served as a buffer for women, while showing measurable benefits for men as well,” she said, explaining that the communities also promoted women in the gaming industry.

After this initial study, Richard worked with researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to take her research one step further. They knew, she said, that women faced barriers in the gaming world and knew that people of color faced similar barriers, but

Photo: submitted

Gabriela Richard, assistant professor of learning, design and technology, is leading the way for researchers interested in studying the intersections of race and gender in gaming.

there was no research exploring that.

Richard and her colleagues decided to change that and edited a book that looked at the intersections of race and gender. The book — “Diversifying Barbie and Mortal Kombat: Intersectional Perspectives and Inclusive Designs in Gaming” — was published in early 2017 and was the third in a seminal series that presented different perspectives on gender and gaming. The first volume was released in 1998 by researchers from MIT and looked at leisure spaces and how they impact women’s participation in the tech industry, Richard said.

“We continue to see declining numbers of women who are working in STEM ... and we know that being part of these early sort of leisure activities has an influence on who eventually feels like this might be something they would really enjoy doing.”

— Gabriela Richard

“Almost nobody was looking at race,” she said. “Nobody was exploring what sort of barriers people of color were facing in gaming and we knew that needed to change.”

“We all have these intersecting identities so we really wanted to promote this idea of intersectional theory, which seeks to understand the various way we may experience privilege and marginalization,” Richard said.

When putting the book together, the researchers collaborated with scholars from multiple disciplines, including the Learning Sciences, media studies, gender studies, game studies and computer science, among others, to provide an intersectional perspective on the experiences of those who play games as well as those who design games.

“Working on the book was basically our way of saying that there is this whole area of gender and race in gaming that still needs to be explored,” Richard said. “Research is behind the curve when it comes to gender and race in gaming.”

Because gaming is considered a leisure activity, many fail to see its relevance in our greater society, she said.

“It’s important to understand what’s happening in leisure spaces because many of

these things have ramifications.”

For example, in 2014 the Gamergate controversy grew into a racist and sexist campaign geared toward women game developers, female players and women in the tech industry.

“There was a lot of misinformation floating around that started in the gaming world but found its way onto social media,” Richard said. “A lot of this stuff happens in smaller hobbyist or leisurely communities, and we ignore it because we think it’s not important.

Nobody thought it mattered because gaming was just a leisure activity so how would that have ramifications on the ways that we interact with each other and discuss information?”

Richard said she finds this topic area to be important because it emphasizes the significances of supportive communities in online environments.

“Think about how we could put these supportive structures in some of our techenhanced learning environments. We have a ton of online communities that we utilize in our online courses or in games we are designing or using in our classrooms,” she said. “What are the best features and ways we can manage communities to be

supportive and culturally engaged in these environments?

“Additionally, we continue to see declining numbers of women who are working in STEM, other than the biological sciences, and we know that being part of these early sort of leisure activities has an influence on who eventually feels like this might be something they would really enjoy doing,” Richard said. “So, in order to increase those numbers we also have to increase the support that we provide along with a wider array of opportunities for women and people of color who have those interests.”

Although Richard is one of just a few researchers looking at the intersection of race and gender, she is hopeful that others will follow suit. In the meantime, she has been expanding her research to include makerspaces, e-sports and game design communities, as well as exploring ways to design and create learning opportunities that are equitable for youth of various backgrounds.

“I try to focus primarily on ways that we can increase cultural diversity and women’s participation,” she said. “Those are the areas that are important to me as a researcher of color in an area where both people of color and women are woefully underrepresented.”

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Virtual reality lessons can help students become better teachers in real life

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By Jim Carlson

ecause Associate Professor of Education Mary Catherine Scheeler has spent her career concentrating on ways to make special education teacher preparation as effective as possible, she spent her recent sabbatical speaking with individuals — some human and some not — who could help her heighten that effort.

What’s reality, Scheeler said, is when new teachers leave Penn State’s College of Education “they are ready to hit the ground running, they are good. But we’re always looking for ways to improve what we do.”

That’s where the virtual reality comes in. Scheeler invested some time getting to know a quintet of avatar friends (pictured above) named Ed, Sean, Maria, CJ and Kevin.

They are the stars of the educational show named TeachLivE™, which originated at the University of Central Florida in Orlando and is an avatar-based simulation for teaching skills 16 Theme Report

that is being used at about 50 universities domestically and globally.

Scheeler hosted a workshop on July 18 in CEDAR Building for Education Psychology, Counseling and Special Education faculty and doctoral students to form an opinion on whether such cutting-edge technology is worth pursuing. The simulation stemmed from that used to train airline pilots and military personnel, according to Scheeler.

“My research is in providing immediate feedback to teachers using Bug-in-Ear

technology and also in how can we better teach our pre-service teachers to generalize what they learn in the university setting to K-12 classroom settings,” Scheeler said. “This just fit in beautifully with those two areas in what I’ve been interested in since I came to Penn State. Here’s a way to enhance what we are currently doing in our teacher preparation program.”

The concept behind TeachLivE™ is elementary: Technology that includes a computer screen with Skype capabilities

and a prospective teacher on one end and the program’s avatars on the other. They have personalities that vary from Sean’s love of incessant chatter and attention-seeking behaviors to Maria’s quiet, shy demeanor.

Ed is scholarly, CJ is obsessed with her cell phone and has a quick, sarcastic response to everything and Kevin is the cyberspace Mr. Social who will comment about your clothes or the look on your face or anything that he notices in the classroom before he’ll answer an academic question.

Only one can speak at a time but all answer quickly with different moods and varying voice inflection. It provides a future teacher with a look at how interactions can go south if he or she is not prepared with not only conversation of some sort but discipline as well.

The level of challenge that the avatars can deal out to a prospective teacher varies from ordinary all the way up to verbal provocation, and sessions only need to last about seven to 10 minutes to be an effective learning tool.

The avatars can be elementary age, they can age a few years to middle-school level and add a few more years for high school simulation. The company is creating a preschool simulation and there are adults available as well. If a session gets out of hand, the student teacher or instructor can pause the program and restart from scratch, with no lasting memory of what just happened moments before.

The ‘teachers’ who stepped in front of the

classroom avatars for two to three minutes on July 18 discussed the legislative branches of our government, some talked about the proper use and possible uses of cell phones in the classroom, one asked what the students did the previous weekend, one asked what they were going to do on the upcoming weekend.

time. We have a lot to teach our pre-service teachers before they leave.”

She also thought the technology was versatile. “I could see where it could be applied in several different courses,” she said.

“The good thing about using this to prepare teachers is that you could work on accuracy and fluency with their newly acquired skills.

They could practice and if it’s not going well, you could shut it down, correct the practice and start it back up again as if it’s a brand-new scenario.

“It’s not a replacement for practicum or work in a real setting with children, but a way to supplement not supplant.”

“It’s not to replace (pre-service teaching) but it’s really to enhance what we’re doing. It’s not a replacement for practicum or work in a real setting with — Mary Catherine Scheeler children, but a way to supplement not supplant. The avatars allow for more practice with targeted teaching skills and more opportunities for feedback from the Another purposely tried to not do a good instructor. I’m dedicated to preparing the best job in front of the class and she did indeed teachers that I can and I was a teacher, I was lose their interest, even in just two minutes. a student-teaching supervisor, so I’m always The avatars acted like typical, excitable looking for ways we can do that,” she said. middle school students, and they answered Scheeler said she might plan another questions that allowed their personalities to demo as well as speak with administrators reign. in the College to gauge interest. In addition Scheeler studied TeachLivE™ at UCF and to practical application of TeachLivE™ in watched it used at SUNY-Buffalo State with courses, she also cited potential research Penn State alumna Shannon Budin, who opportunities for faculty and doctoral presented at the recent workshop along with students. special education doctoral student Andy “I thought it would be useful to share Markelz. what I learned in my sabbatical with “My interest in my work is to make teacher others,” Scheeler said. “That was one of the preparation as effective as it can possibly be,” objectives, go learn about it, bring it back Scheeler said. “And we want it to be efficient here and see if people are interested and if we because we need to teach a lot in not a lot of should we pursue it.”

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Quality Talk increases critical thinking in high school science classrooms

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By Jessica Buterbaugh

ifteen years after its creation, Quality Talk has continued to expand and now includes high school physics and chemistry curricula.

Designed to promote highlevel comprehension and content-area learning, Quality Talk teaches students to generate oral and written arguments via smallgroup discussions. Discussions are led by students and facilitated by the teacher. The approach has seen success in improving elementary students’ comprehension of text as well as argumentative writing skills.

Researchers now are applying the model to increase critical thinking and analysis in STEM classes.

“The central features of the approach haven’t changed,” said P. Karen Murphy, principal investigator of the Quality Talk project. “It’s very similar to the language arts project except we do it with science teachers and learners, and we provide scaffolds that are useful in understanding scientific phenomenon.

Regardless of the content, the discussions still emphasize deeper thinking about, around and with the text and content, which is the key element of Quality Talk.”

Following the widespread adoption of the Next Generation Science 18 Theme Report

Standards (NGSS) by many states, school districts were required to redesign their science curriculum to increase students’ understanding of scientific concepts and processes.

“With NGSS, students are supposed to think more like scientists and engineers. It’s all about talking about the phenomenon,” said Ana Butler, who directs the Quality Talk project. “While the standards say ‘this is what you need to do,’ they don’t educate teachers on how to do it. That’s where QT Science comes in.”

Like other Quality Talk projects, QT Science comprises four components — instructional frame, discourse elements, teacher modeling and scaffolding, and pedagogical principles. Each component helps students and teachers to use talk as a tool to contribute to critical thinking and high-level comprehension.

Quality Talk follows a unique studentled approach where teachers learn to slowly release leadership control of their classroom discussions and allow the students to lead their own discussions on theories and ideas relating to an observation (i.e., a phenomenon) they witnessed. To do this, teachers receive professional development training from QT Science coaches who help with the transition. Butler, who was a teacher for 23 years before coming to

Penn State, said this can sometimes be very difficult.

“I speak for myself as a teacher, you have to be pretty confident with your own knowledge and abilities as well as your students to release the responsibility of providing affirmation and guidance over to students,” she said.

In order for Quality Talk to be successful, students also must learn how to ask questions that promote critical thinking and invite thought-provoking responses. The teacher gives a series of lessons explaining the different types of questions and responses that are used for argumentation to prepare students for their independent discussion.

“As a former teacher, I know what it is like to ask a student ‘Why do you say that?’ and they say, ‘Because,’” Butler said. “So, we provide teachers and students with the tools necessary to help develop more critical thinking skills and we’ve seen tremendous changes from the beginning of our baseline to our QT post-tests.”

Butler also said it is important to understand that Quality Talk isn’t designed to be used for every lesson in every class. For example, she said, a four-day sequence of a 40-minute class could be broken down to include a 10-minute Quality Talk lesson to teach students some aspect of the different types of questions or responses of argumentation. The next day, the teacher could incorporate that lesson into their science lesson.

“We’ve designed a template for our science content lessons that incorporate QT and we have a QT Science catalyst worksheet that helps students get the conversation going by encouraging consideration of potential questions, claims and arguments,” Butler said, explaining that the lessons and worksheets are designed to follow the five E’s — engage, explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate.

“With NGSS, students are supposed to think like scientists and engineers.

While the standards say ‘this is what you need to do,’ they don’t educate teachers on how to do it.

That’s where QT Science comes in.”

— Ana Butler

watching the video is a form of professional development that lets the teacher see what’s working and what needs improvement.”

When starting QT Science four years ago, Murphy and Butler worked primarily with honors and advanced placement classes before moving on to regular academic classes at the request of teachers.

“When you do QT with students that are very driven, you’re going to get strong results, and it was amazing to hear some of the conversations that students were having,” Butler said. “But then teachers wanted to do it in the academic classes — classes where students tend to struggle with science content and it turned out that we had great results in those classes too.”

To collect data, the researchers record classroom sessions, which teachers later view.

“It’s great to hear kids say things like ‘This is the first time I’ve gotten to say what I think about science,’ or ‘Nobody has ever asked my opinion about science before,’” she said, adding that one school has a very high transient rate and it was common for students to come and go frequently.

“The videotaping is very important because it allows the teacher to go back and observe not just the members of the discussion group but also how they as a teacher responded to the group members,” Butler said. “This helps the teacher become a facilitator. Essentially,

QT Science is funded by a $2 million National Science Foundation grant and will conclude next year. However, Murphy and her team are looking to the future and hope to explore the use of Quality Talk in other K-12 classrooms.

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Dual-title degrees provide students with multiple academic options

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By Jim Carlson

enn State is attempting to make its mark on what could be a signature program in the College of Education in which dual-title degrees are conferred upon its graduate students.

The comparative and international education (CIED) program, for example, is a field devoted to the systematic analysis of the operation and effects of the world’s education systems, and the College offers a number of programs under that umbrella.

And while that program is wellestablished, another is in the works as the College is venturing into the realm of dualtitle degrees in the Learning Sciences, which may be next to offer students the capability to graduate with two separate but related degrees.

“The difference with the dual title is that there’s one main program; this is not standalone, and it’s added onto a major program and both of them appear on your diploma,” said Stephanie Knight, who served as associate dean in the College of Education since 2013 before departing Aug. 1 to become dean of the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

“If we were doing this for the Learning Sciences, the programs that felt like this 20 Theme Report

would be compatible,” Knight said. “We’ve pinpointed educational psychology, learning design and technology, science education and math education … the major programs that the Learning Sciences degree would be added to, but you couldn’t get a degree just in Learning Sciences.”

Pursuing a dual-title program in CIED offers a student an opportunity to earn a degree in CIED with a chance to pair it with majors such as higher education, educational leadership, educational theory and policy and curriculum and instruction as well as school psychology, educational psychology and counselor education. Also included are special education; adult education; learning, design and technology; workforce education and development; agricultural and extension education; and entomology.

Knight said the interdisciplinary approach is attractive to prospective graduate students. “That’s valuable in doing cuttingedge research, and it also makes them more marketable as far as positions because they’re able to do what would be traditionally their major program but also this overlay of an additional area that they have expertise in,” she said.

Knight stressed that the CIED dualtitle degree provides a student with global

STEPHANIE KNIGHT

expertise that he or she might not get in an educational theory and policy doctorate.

“What it does is provide evidence of the expertise globally that would be desirable if you were doing any kind of international work,” she said.

That can translate to a successful job search. “Yes, because it extends your expertise and makes a person more flexible in what they can teach and how they can collaborate with other researchers,” Knight said. “It builds in an interdisciplinary approach to what they’re doing that is highly desirable today.

“We’ve decided what we know from new approaches to learning that we can’t look at these subject areas in isolation. The interface is what is most interesting to people.”

Part of the inquiry about the Learning Sciences approach is how digital media can be used to create environments conducive to learning in a particular area, or what the best instructional strategies are for students learning complex science concepts.

“There’s a focus on assessment and how technology can provide assessment that enables us not just to do the summative kind of evaluation but can help us with instruction and zero in on what kind of instruction someone needs to bring them to the next level,” Knight said.

“It’s more precise and there are many assessment programs that have been developed that are not assessing what you know, they’re assessing what you could do with a little additional scaffolding or instruction. Then you can provide that or more precisely move people to higher levels of understanding than was possible with the kind of blanket, standardized assessment that has typically been done; it’s tailored to individuals.”

Overall, Knight said, the dual-focus approach is expanding. “I think this could be a signature program for Penn State that brings together a number of collaborators,” she said.

“The field is still young and we can make our mark very early and become known for it.”

Entrance into NAPLeS aids College’s visibility

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By Jim Carlson

embers of Penn State’s College of Education, in their quest to advance the Learning Sciences project, are learning how to learn about learning, and they want colleagues at other institutions — domestic and worldwide — to learn about the process by which that is occurring.

One method to increase international visibility and opportunities for international collaborations with other Learning Sciences sites is membership in the Network of Academic Programs in the Learning Sciences (NAPLeS).

Penn State’s recent acceptance into NAPLeS fulfilled a College of Education goal to have a footprint within the association and begin to have some leadership roles. Richard Duschl, the Kenneth B. Waterbury chaired professor in secondary education, is spearheading with Scott McDonald the Learning Sciences program initiative at Penn State.

“If I had to pick one phrase that would sort of get at this, it’s that over time we have learned how to learn about learning,” Duschl said.

“And we have learned how to learn about learning both as the process of young children but we’ve also learned about how to learn about the world that we’re living in. There’s been a rapid pace in technology that’s given us a whole new set of tools to observe and measure the world, and that has opened up the opportunity to learn how to learn about the world and learn about learning.”

RICHARD DUSCHL

NAPLeS attempts to foster high-quality Learning Sciences programs internationally through several mechanisms that support teaching and learning. According to its website — www.naples.isls.org — they are: Examples of syllabi used in existing Learning Sciences programs; resources prepared by renowned learning scientists on specific topics in the Learning Sciences; visiting scholarships for students in Learning Sciences programs other than their own; and international supervision of doctoral research.

Membership within NAPLeS already has aided Marcela Borge, assistant professor of education. “I’ve had at least two Ph.D. students contact me because they found our school and the research that I do from NAPLeS,” Borge said.

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