AERA 2016

Washington, DC
April 8–12, 2016
Conference Website

In AERA’s Centennial Year, the Annual Meeting will celebrate and reinvigorate the progressive aspirations that gave rise to our professional community in 1916: hope and determination that research can strengthen public education, society’s most democratic institution. To mark this remarkable moment, the 2016 Meeting will illuminate and enhance the role of education researchers as public scholars who contribute to public understanding, political debate, and professional practice in increasingly diverse democracies in the US and around the globe.

Saturday, April 9

William FinzerStudent Thinking, Learning, and Inquiry With the Common Online Data Analysis Platform

Session Type: Symposium
Paper: William Finzer

8:15 – 9:45 AM, Marriott Marquis, Level Four, Independence Salon A

The level of data literacy required by our society has risen dramatically in the last 20 years. No significant problems facing us today—income inequality, climate change, terrorism, and spread of infectious disease, to name a few—can be found without people who can interpret and reason about data. The goal of the NSF-funded CODAP (Common Online Data Analysis Platform) project is to address the critical need for data literacy by developing and making widely available a free, online data analysis environment. This symposium includes presentations by curriculum developers and researchers analyzing student interactions with CODAP in classroom pilot tests, and cognitive interviews investigating basic questions about how design features influence learners’ perceptions and interactions with tabular and graphic representations of data.

Chad DorseyModeling, Mining, and Visualizing Student Learning of Science and Engineering Practices From Digital Traces

Session Type: Symposium
Chair: Chad Dorsey
Papers: Hee-Sun Lee, William Finzer, Paul Horwitz, Charles Xie
Discussant: Janet Kolodner

10:35am to 12:05pm, Convention Center, Level One, Room 145 A

The objective of this symposium is to introduce learning analytics approaches specifically designed to research student learning of science and engineering practices such as experimentation, argumentation, collaboration, and engineering design. From the perspectives of four research projects, this symposium addresses the need and successful examples for developing and testing analytics in classroom settings. Each presentation will focus on (1) identifying a science or engineering practice, (2) developing learning activities and collecting data relevant to the practice, (3) inventing or applying learning analytics to analyze a large amount of data as effectively and meaningfully as possible, and (4) visualizing analyzed learning data to inform teachers, students, curriculum developers, and researchers.

Monday, April 11

Janet KolodnerConnecting Learners to Place, Space, and Personal Experience With Technology and New Media

Session Type: Structured Poster Session
Chair: Janet Kolodner

7:45 to 9:15am, Convention Center, Level One, Room 102 B

The presentations in this interactive poster session highlight innovative Cyberlearning projects that articulate how new technologies and media can be utilized to better connect learners to place, space, and personal experiences as rich resources for learning. The projects as a whole illuminate: (a) the affordances for learning that are now possible with evolving technologies and media tools, (b) how Cyberlearning strategies can create deeper connections for learners to their environments and life experiences, and (c) common ground in understanding the potential for Cyberlearning to foster deeper learning processes and outcomes (e.g., identity, disposition, collaboration, etc.).

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