At a time when our country needs to transform its K–20 schooling system in order to meet the challenge of a global, knowledge-based, innovation-centered economy, scholars working together to diffuse and scale systemic solutions is vital for success. Stokes (1997) urged that research investments center in Pasteur’s Quadrant: deepening theory through gaining traction on pervasive real-world difficulties. However, current incentive structures and funding mechanisms for scholars undercut this goal. Coburn (2003) defined scaling up an educational innovation as encompassing four interrelated dimensions: depth of changes to educational practice and policy; sustainability of maintaining those changes over time; spread to other practice and policy contexts, and shift in reform ownership from innovators to adopters. Dede added a fifth dimension to extend Coburn’s framework: evolution when adopters revise the innovation in a way that it is influential in reshaping the thinking of its designers. Yet scalability is often not considered in funding and developing potential educational improvements. For decades, innovators in other sectors of society have used Rogers’ (2003) strategies for knowledge diffusion to attain rapid adoption of new practices. Opinion leadership, compatibility, simplicity, trialability, and observability are illustrative key components of this approach, yet the research community has not applied these insights to its work. Collaborative technologies provide new mechanisms that provide leverage on these challenges of effective scholarship, if we choose to work together to use them.

This interactive poster session brings together 11 projects using a range of digital computer technologies to improve science and math learning, including simulations, games, and other cyberlearning tools and environments. In addition to increasing communication and collaboration among these researchers, a key goal of this session is to discuss the diversity of research questions that each project (and the community as a whole) is engaged in, the research methodologies used, and the coupling between the research questions and the selected methodologies.

Each projects’ research questions reflect its particular goals and approaches. The research methodologies are, in turn, driven by the research questions of interest. This session allows participants to share the types of research questions that are of interest to them and why, to discuss the advantages and limitations of different research methodologies, to highlight all the different types of data being collected across these research efforts, and to discuss the types of research questions that can be examined with those data. The session provides time to brainstorm about the forefront of the research—what are the biggest questions at this time and how can the community begin to examine them?

The poster session is designed to benefit both the presenters and the participants. By including such a diverse range of projects, presenters aim to share knowledge about research questions, effective research methodologies, and challenges across this group of PIs who do not regularly communicate with each other about their projects. In addition, for participants who seek to include digital computer technologies in their projects, this session brings together a large number of possible partners and provides insight into the goals and active research areas.

The ubiquitous use of the term “authenticity” makes it difficult to not only operationalize the term for the development of learning environments, but also for empirical research into the effectiveness or role of different dimensions and different constructs of context and authenticity. Research on STEM education and underrepresented minorities and women may serve as an example for the significance and impact of authentic learning experiences and the need for more reflection: Data show that STEM fields are not as attractive to underrepresented minorities and girls. While reasons differ, girls are turning away from science/math as early as third and fourth grade, and for the ones persisting, the current climate provided by STEM curricula produces a high level of anxiety and low self-efficacy. Similarly, engineering is considered more object-oriented than people-oriented. As a result, many students who are interested in careers related to increasing the social good may not pursue an engineering-related field, but instead go into a field that is thought to be more people-oriented (e.g. medical fields).

The objectives of this session are to (1) collect and discuss different models of authenticity; (2) highlight similarities and differences on the level and extent pre-college engineering education can be and (perhaps) should be authentic, providing students rich learning experiences; and (3) showcase examples from projects on how authenticity is present. The session includes (a) the introduction and discussion of a model of authenticity for engineering education including context, task, impact, and personal/value authenticity developed by Strobel et al.; (b) a discussion of the study on the intersection of concepts and context for Engineering and Technology Education conducted by Hacker et al. (joint project between Hofstra and Delft University); and (c) an overview of a curriculum module for high school biology that incorporates global issues and concerns using engineering design projects developed by Brockway et al.

This collaborative session brings together four mature projects that use different approaches to develop and validate technology-enhanced STEM assessments. Presenters share their designs, research findings, and implications for measuring STEM standards. All offer evidence addressing four questions: (1) What was the technical quality (reliability and validity) and effectiveness of the assessments for their intended purposes? (2) How feasible were the assessments to implement in classrooms? (3) How can the projects can be scaled up and sustained? (4) What challenges were encountered during the projects and should be addressed in future research and development?

All session participants are asked to raise issues about STEM assessment in their projects.

The Calipers II: Using Simulations to Assess Complex Science Learning project developed simulation-based assessments to be embedded in ongoing curricula intended for formative purposes and unit benchmark assessments as summative measures. The evidence-centered design process is described along with findings from field tests in three states with over 6,000 students. Technical quality of the assessments’ measurement of science-system knowledge and inquiry practices was established by alignments with national standards, cognitive labs, and psychometric analyses. Challenges to broader impact are proposed.

The Assistments for Science Inquiry presentation describes the environment and the physical sciences microworlds for middle school science. The project uses educational data mining on log data to develop detectors to assess students’ inquiry skills in real time.

The third presentation summarizes findings from two projects that apply facet-based approaches to formative assessment practices: Contingent Pedagogies for Middle School Earth Science and Chemistry Facets for high school chemistry. Analyses of student written responses and think alouds established the cognitive and content validity of facet clusters, which describe learning goals and common problematic student ideas, and of diagnostic questions. Both projects tested the value of resources in small-scale, quasi-experimental field trials.

The fourth presentation shares findings from technology-enhanced item types delivered through the UC Berkeley Formative Assessment (FADS) project, which employs automated scoring and the partial credit model. Items were developed based on the Constructing Data, Modeling Worlds curriculum from Vanderbilt University for middle school students in mathematics.

Given technology that enables teachers and learners to express mathematics and science in quite new ways—relative to textbooks and conventional classroom talk—what sorts of representations, activities, and practices provide the necessary structure to guide and develop what students can “say” and “do” so that they develop ways to express themselves more powerfully and meaningfully?

Presenters from six DR K–12 projects, each involved in mathematics or science teaching and learning, describe their approaches:

In the Dynabook project, preservice teachers navigate from video cases of struggling mathematics students to an exercise where they express dialogic scripts that imagine a teacher successfully interacting with a struggling student. The arc of activities in between this beginning and end allows for non-linear branching among different activities that develop preservice teachers’ understanding of mathematics, students’ misconceptions and development, and understanding of pedagogical use of technology.

In the Data Games project, students play simple online computer games that stream game data into a surrounding, browser-based data analysis environment. They analyze the data to create a data model with which they can figure out how to improve their game-playing strategy. A Data Games activity includes movies for the teacher and for students, online worksheets and homework assignments, teacher notes, and a learning analytics assessment module.

In the Digital Media Production project, students and teachers leave their classic roles to join forces as media producers. The basic activity of making a tutorial video grows in stages, and the arcs of activities lead to new form a learning community in the classroom.

In the INK-12 project, students and teachers create and share “digital ink” inscriptions—handwritten sketches, graphs, notes, etc.—via a tablet-based classroom interaction system. Students use the inscriptions, along with other tools such as virtual tiles that snap together, to create explanations of their reasoning, e.g., showing why adding two odd numbers results in an even number. Such explanations can be dynamic and/or static, as students and teachers use the tablet pen and the tools to create both animations and drawings.

In the Dynamic Number project, students are able to build and explore accurate models of any decimal or fraction with The Geometer’s Sketchpad, giving them the opportunity to engage in personal investigations that would otherwise be impossible to conduct. Students are encouraged to take the freedom afforded to them by these software tools to create number challenges and puzzles for each other. These challenges are often more difficult and interesting than those that would be posed by a curriculum author.

The Leonardo project combines an interactive science notebook and intelligent tutor to support exploration of grades 4–5 science concepts via physical and virtual laboratory investigations. Student work is recorded in an iPad-based notebook that combines student-generated text, drawings, and photographs, with interactive graphic elements. Students, for example, create and annotate animations that explain particular scientific phenomena.

In each of these projects, learners have access to new modes of expression. What are the new kinds of expression being targeted? How do activities provide a context for this expression? How do arcs of activities seek to develop learners’ fluency in expressing meaning using new technology and digital media? Based on these initial projects and questions, presenters aim to engage the audience in discussion about what happens—both in designing curricula and in engaging with it in the classroom—when we put learners’ “expressivity” in the center, using technology and media to open up new possibilities for how learners can express meaning and become more fluent in expressing meaning in mathematics and science.