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National Research & Development Center on Instructional Technology: Center for Advanced Technology in Schools

Year: 2008
Name of Institution:
University of California, Los Angeles
Goal: Multiple Goals
Principal Investigator:
Baker, Eva
Award Amount: $9,833,451
Award Period: 5 years
Award Number: R305C080015

Description:

Topic: Education Technology

Purpose: The purpose of the National Center for Advanced Technology in Schools (NCATS) is to create materials that will lead to improved learning of critically important math concepts such as pre-algebra and algebra, commonly referred to as "gateway" concepts, because they are necessary for successfully performing higher-level math.

The team will leverage advances in instructional technology (e.g., "serious games") in order to challenge and motivate 9th grade students, particularly underperforming ones, to participate and succeed in math competence. The initial intervention to be developed will be a 2-dimentional (2D) game so researchers can better understand how variables such as reasoning, practice, and feedback affect outcomes. A commercial game design partner, Tabula Digita, will then create a 3-dimensional (3D) game based on the 2D efficacy findings. To succeed in the game, students will use math skills to maneuver through various levels, whose difficulty will vary online via an embedded self-assessment component.

Established through a five-year, $9.8 million grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education, the NCATS is staffed by nationally-recognized experts in cognitive psychology, education, instruction, assessment, and advanced technologies.

Projects

Professional Development
In addition to designing "serious games" for student use, the Center team will also examine the teachers' views of the games and their content strengths and gaps, and then provide the teachers with professional development and other supports to increase their knowledge and receptivity to games, which will be studied experimentally. The Center team will conduct in-depth investigation of students' interests, knowledge, and expectations through focus groups, cognitive task analyses, and other qualitative protocols and tests of their background knowledge. The Center team will also produce guidelines for researchers and practitioners at key points in the program of research, culminating in a set of comprehensive guidelines.

Efficacy Study
The efficacy study includes 45 classrooms from 15 schools, whereby classrooms will be randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) students will use the game in the classroom; (2) students will use the game in the classroom and practice homework using the game at home; and (3) students will receive the standard curriculum (control group). A variety of standardized measures will assess the impact of the intervention on students' math learning. Supplemental measures will assess students' self-concept and teachers' attitudes. Hierarchical linear models will be employed to examine the effect of the intervention on students' achievement.

Key Personnel: James Stigler, Gregory Chung, Dennis Cheek, Eva Baker, Richard Wainess, Noelle Griffin, Harry O'Neil, Tracy Fullerton, Merrilea Mayo, Robert Mislevy, Keith Holyoak, Robert Bjork, Ronald Dietel, Ntiedo Etuk, Alan Koenig, and Taehoon Kang.

Center Website: http://cats.cse.ucla.edu/.

IES Program Contact: Dr. Erin Higgins
Email: Erin.Higgins@ed.gov
Telephone: (202) 208-3749

Publications

Book chapter

Baker, E.L. (2014). Learning and Assessment: Twenty-First Century Skills and Cognitive Readiness. In H.F. O'Neil, and R.S. Perez (Eds.), Teaching and Measuring Cognitive Readiness(pp. 53–70). New York: Springer.

Chung, G.K., and Delacruz, G.C. (2014). Cognitive Readiness for Solving Equations. In H.F. O'Neil, and R.S. Perez (Eds.), Teaching and Measuring Cognitive Readiness(pp. 135–148). New York: Springer.

Holyoak, K.J. (2012). Analogy and Relational Reasoning. The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning (pp. 234–259). New York: Oxford Press.

Mislevy, R.J., Behrens, J.T., Dicerbo, K.E., Frezzo, D.C., and West, P. (2012). Three Things Game Designers Need to Know About Assessment. Assessment in Game-Based Learning (pp. 59–81). New York: Springer.

Stripling, R., and Chang, G. (2013). Brain Activity Based Assessment (BABA). Foundations of Augmented Cognition, Volume 8027 (pp. 390–398). Berlin Heidelberg: Springer.

Journal article, monograph, or newsletter

Kerr, D., and Chung, G.K. (2012). Identifying Key Features of Student Performance in Educational Video Games and Simulations Through Cluster Analysis. Journal of Educational Data Mining, 4(1): 144–182.

Mislevy, R., Behrens, J.T., Dicerbo, K.E., and Levy, R. (2012). Design and Discovery in Educational Assessment: Evidence-Centred Design, Psychometrics, and Educational Data Mining. Journal of Educational Data Mining, 4(1): 11–48.

O'Neil, H.F., Chung, G.K., Kerr, D., Vendlinski, T.P., Buschang, R. E., and Mayer, R.E. (2014). Adding Self-Explanation Prompts to an Educational Computer Game. Computers in Human Behavior, 30: 23–28. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2013.07.025

Richland, L.E., Stigler, J.W., and Holyoak, K.J. (2012). Teaching the Conceptual Structure of Mathematics. Educational Psychologist, 47(3): 189–203.

Rupp, A.A., Levy, R., DiCerbo, K., Sweet, S., Crawford, A.V., Calico, T., Benson, Martin; Fay, D., Kunze, K.L., Mislevy, R.J., and Behrens, J.T. (2012). Putting ECD Into Practice: The Interplay of Theory and Data in Evidence Models Within a Digital Learning Environment. Journal of Educational Data Mining, 4(1): 49–110.

Proceeding

Kerr, D., and Chung, G.K. (2013). Identifying Learning Trajectories in an Educational Video Game. In Proceedings of the 2013 Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence Application Workshops, Volume 1024 (pp. 20–28). Seattle, WA: UAI.

Lee, H.S., Thompson, B.J., Holyoak, K.J., and Stigler, J.W. (2010). Learning Inter-Related Concepts in Mathematics From Videogames. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the Learning Sciences, Volume 2 (pp. 445–446). online: International Society of the Learning Sciences.