Overview
The Digital Learning Platforms to Enable Efficient Education Research Network, now known as SEERNet, is designed to facilitate the education research field's ability to leverage existing, widely used digital learning platforms (DLPs) for rigorous education research and replication. In particular, the network aims to increase the number of DLPs that support research and to provide the infrastructure needed to enable education technology industry leaders and developers, education researchers, and education practitioners to work together to conduct relevant, rigorous, equity-focused research.
This network was developed over multiple competitions, starting in FY 2021. Initially it was comprised of a network lead and multiple platform teams to create the environment for subsequent research. In FY 2023 and FY2024, IES invited applications for research teams to join the network to conduct research using the network's DLPs.
SEERNet currently includes a network lead, five platform teams, and six research teams, as follows:
Network lead team
The SEER Research Network for Digital Learning Platforms
Principal Investigator: Jeremy Roschelle, Digital Promise Global
The network lead will help platform developers, researchers, and educators share ideas, build knowledge, and strengthen dissemination.
Platform teams
The ASU Learning at Scale (L@S) Digital Learning Network
Principal Investigator: Danielle McNamara, Arizona State University
This platform team will develop a digital learning network platform with the capacity to connect, access, and examine undergraduate student data and courses within the scope of Arizona State University (ASU) online and digital classrooms (ASU Online).
The Canvas+Terracotta LMS-Based Experimental Education Research Platform
Principal Investigator: Benjamin Motz, Indiana University
This platform team will develop Terracotta, a plug-in to Canvas that enables a teacher or researcher to collect informed consent, assign different versions of online learning activities to students, and export deidentified study data.
Efficient Education Research via the OpenStax Learning Platform
Principal Investigator: Richard Baraniuk, Rice University
The platform team will build Kinetic, a rapid iteration and testing learning environment integrated with OpenStax digital platform designed to conduct research faster and at scale, cultivate an inclusive research community, and deploy insights to improve student outcomes that lead to equitable student success.
MATHia: A Digital Learning Platform Supporting Core and Supplemental Instruction in Middle and High School Mathematics
Principal Investigator: Steven Ritter, Carnegie Learning, Inc.
The platform team will integrate MATHia with UpGrade, an open-source platform that supports fair and rigorous randomized field trials that compare innovative practices with current approaches.
Revisions to the ASSISTments Digital Learning Platform to Expand Its Support for Rigorous Education Research
Principal Investigator: Neil Heffernan III, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
The platform team will build the infrastructure to enable researchers to run studies using open education resources within the ASSISTments platform.
Research teams
Now I See It: Supporting Flexible Problem Solving in Mathematics through Perceptual Scaffolding in ASSISTments
Principal Investigator: Avery Closser, Purdue University
The research team will use ASSISTments to explore whether exposure to perceptual cues, referred to as perceptual scaffolding, in mathematics notation (for example, using color to highlight key terms such as the inverse operators in an expression) may lead learners to pause and notice structural patterns and ultimately practice more flexible and efficient problem solving.
Investigating the Impact of Metacognitive Supports on Students' Mathematics Knowledge and Motivation in MATHia
Principal Investigator: Cristina Zepeda, Vanderbilt University
The research team will use UpGrade/MATHia to explore the effects of evidence-based enhancements implemented during mathematics problem solving on middle school students' metacognitive skills, mathematics knowledge, and motivation.
The Educational Divide: Transition, Retention, and Course Selection in Digital and On-Campus Immersion Students
Principal Investigator: Burhan Ogut, American Institutes for Research (AIR)
The research team will use the ASU Learning at Scale (L@S) platform to examine differences in course taking and degree persistence between the online and on-campus programs at Arizona State University.
Examining the Relationship Between Individual Characteristics and Self-Regulated Learning Across Multiple OpenStax Courses
Principal Investigator: Ryan S. Baker, University of Pennsylvania
The research team will work with the OpenStax/Kinetic platform team to explore why interactive tools like digital highlighters and notetaking tools for digital textbooks support some learners' comprehension and knowledge retention but are not beneficial for other learners. The team will use this information to design scaffolds to help students self-regulate their learning and experience the benefits of these interactive tools.
Effects of Enhanced Representations in Digital Mathematics Practice Items
Principal Investigator: Michele Carney, Boise State University
The research team will explore how to improve the design of practice items in a digital learning platform (ASSISTments/E-TRIALS) so that they better support students' conceptual and procedural knowledge of proportional reasoning.
A Multipronged Approach to Small-Teaching Interventions for Reducing Academic Procrastination: A Randomized Control Study via Terracotta
Principal Investigator: Akira Miyake, University of Colorado, Boulder
The research team will work with the Terracotta platform team to develop and test interventions for postsecondary academic procrastination, which will be implemented within the Canvas learning management system.
Related projects and programs
Precision Education: The Virtual Learning Lab
XPRIZE Digital Learning Challenge