June 2012 CTL Research Update

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How Do Schools Use Khan Academy Resources? Over the last few years, the Khan Academy has become one of the most popular online resources for math instruction. The Khan Academy website has over 4.5 million unique users per month (two-thirds of whom are in the United States). Since Khan Academy made its debut on the Web, users have viewed more than 125 million videos and solved over 400 million individual math problems. The sheer volume of the traffic that Khan Academy is generating is evidence of the worldwide hunger for free online instructional resources for the teaching of primary and secondary mathematics. SRI International’s Center for Technology in Learning (CTL), with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is studying the adoption of Khan Academy in a wide variety of primary and secondary schools and classrooms in Northern California during the 2011–12 school year. Twenty-one public, charter, and independent schools are participating in the study.  CTL’s research encompasses Case studies to understand how Khan Academy is being used to support math instruction in different school settings Quasi-experimental designs to measure the potential impacts on student learning An analysis of the costs of adoption A report summarizing the findings for the 2011-12 school year will be available in December. Building a New Evidence Framework for Innovation and Excellence in Education Jeremy Roschelle, Director of the Center for Technology in Learning and Karen Cator, Director of Educational Technology for the U.S. Department of Education, hosted a forum at Software & Information Industry Association’s (SIAA) Industry Summit on May 7, 2012, to discuss strategies for evaluating new technologies that quickly gain tens of thousands of users and have the opportunity for very rapid cycles of iterative improvement. Approximately 50 industry leaders were energetically engaged in the discussion. Their input will inform the Evidence Framework for Innovation and Excellence in Education, which explores the range of research approaches that can be appropriate in the study of emerging learning technologies. Learn more about this topic and submit your input by following us @EdEvidence and by visiting evidenceframework.org. SRI Teams Up to Evaluate the Efficacy of Online Homework SRI, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), and the University of Maine have launched a $3.5 million evaluation of the efficacy of online homework using ASSISTments, a system that offers students instant feedback and support on homework, gives teachers daily reports, and enables adaptive instruction. This research, which builds on numerous smaller scale studies testing various aspects of the system and its implementation conducted over several years, offers the opportunity to combine a rigorous randomized controlled trial with learning analytics based on the comprehensive data recorded as students and teachers use ASSISTments. Read more on previous studies of ASSISTments. Stay Connected    The Latest News SRI’s Innovative approach to middle school math learning is highlighted in the SmartPlanet.com article How SRI Aims to Improve Middle School Math Skills. Read about the CTL-designed prototype science assessment task in the Education Week article A Glimpse of Technology-Enhanced Tests. The Journal of School Psychology selected the paper by SRI’s Ximena Dominguez, The Role of Context in Preschool Learning: A Multilevel Examination of the Contribution of Context-Specific Behaviors and Classroom Process Quality to Low-Income Children’s Approaches to Learning, as article of the year. Videos of Cyberlearning Research Summit Talks are available on You Tube. These 25 TED-style talks, organized across five talk sets, present a range of visions for the future of learning with emerging technologies and serve as a high-quality resource for researchers, practitioners, and students to engage with the thoughts of leaders in cyberlearning. American Educational Research Association (AERA) 2012 Conference Highlights SRI led an international symposium with research partners from Finland, Australia, Indonesia, and Brunei to describe global and national results from Innovative Teaching and Learning (ITL) Research. Louise Yarnall presented Using Evidence-Centered Design to Broaden the Range of Cognitive Performances in College Tests and Expert Teaching of Developmental Education: Case Studies of Lesson Features From an Online Knowledge Base. Coming in Our September Issue! Learn about the recent results of the Contingent Pedagogies project, which designs tools that help Earth science teachers promote students’ productive participation in scientific practices. Results show that students in the treatment group classrooms scored significantly higher than students in comparison groups on assessments. Subscribe to the CTL Research Update Enter your email:  Read past issues of The CTL Research Update

SRI International (www.sri.com) is an independent, nonprofit research institute. The mission of SRI’s Center for Technology in Learning (CTL) is to improve learning and teaching through innovation and inquiry. Much of our work is conducted in educational settings such as classrooms, afterschool programs, and teacher education programs. Visit ctl.sri.com.

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