Grant Open

The SEER Research Network for Digital Learning Platforms

NCER

Program: Research Networks Focused on Critical Problems of Education Policy and Practice

Program topic(s): Digital Learning Platforms to Enable Efficient Education Research Network

Award amount: $2,999,874

Principal investigator: Jeremy Roschelle

Awardee:

Digital Promise Global

Year: 2021

Award period: 5 years (09/01/2021 - 08/31/2026)

Project type:

Other

Award number: R305N210034

Purpose

The Network Lead will help platform developers, researchers, and educators share ideas, build knowledge, and strengthen dissemination. SEERNet will (a) maximize the distinctive advantages of organizing research around Digital Learning Platforms, (b) align to IES's goals by focusing activities around the Standards for Excellence in Educational Research ("SEER"), and (c) achieve deeper and broader national impacts by leveraging extensive, existing networks of education partners, researchers, and other educational stakeholders. Compared to typical field-generated education research grants, research conducted on a digital learning platform can be more agile, efficient, replicable, and cumulative and can better connect research to practice. The Network Lead will shape the work of the network to emphasize meaningful outcomes in the eyes of district leaders, educational policymakers, and other key stakeholders, in addition to being meaningful to the platform developers and to research teams. The Network Lead will organize the network to address all eight SEER Principles, thereby emphasizing generalizability and scaling across varied contexts and settings, enabling cost analysis, and also making findings, methods, and data open and widely available. They will organize platform developers and researchers to tackle challenges around ensuring availability of data needed to ask and answer research questions about equitable learning. Significance will be enhanced by intentionally leveraging Digital Promise's existing networks of school districts (such as the League of Innovative Schools) and their network of learning technology researchers (i.e., the Center for Integrative Research in Computing and Learning Sciences). Network Lead partner, Empirical Education, will likewise expand connections to important industry associations of educational technology companies. Further, to intentionally broaden participation of diverse scholars, the Network Lead will invite, include, and support emerging scholars who reflect the greater diversity sought in learning technology and educational research.

Project Activities

Network Leadership Activities: The Network Lead will undertake activities that strengthen the alignment, coherence, and productivity of network participants. First, the Lead will convene Network participants, enabling them to make plans for broad impact; coordinate, prioritize, and act on commitments; access additional expertise; and collectively coordinate with IES program officers. Second, the Lead will produce research summaries that all research projects can use to strengthen their work (e.g., in alignment with SEER principles). The Network Lead will clarify meaningful outcomes as they relate to digital learning platforms, summarize relevant methodological techniques, and communicate findings to broader audiences. Third, the Lead will organize educator and researcher recruitment activities to grow interest and involvement of researchers and educators in the network. Finally, the Lead will engage in ongoing communication activities that maximize national impact through a shared website, active social media engagement campaigns, and an intensive dissemination strategy.

People and institutions involved

IES program contact(s)

Elizabeth Albro

Commissioner of Education Research

NCER

Project contributors

Denis Newman

Co-principal investigator

Products and publications

Products: The Network Lead will create products to support stronger research by network members and enable them to reach broader audiences. These products will include a database of school districts with willingness to participate in research; an accessible, informative website; a series of summary reports on key research issues; and accessible forms of communication that widely disseminate findings of the network to educators and the public.

Additional project information

This project is the Network Lead of the Digital Learning Platforms to Enable Efficient Education Research Network (Digital Learning Platforms Network), which aims to leverage existing, widely used digital learning platforms for rigorous education research.