News &amp; Events

Orly Fuhrman, PhD, is a researcher, lecturer, and developer of techno-pedagogical solutions, specializing in embodied learning. She is passionate about creating physical interfaces that allow technology to preserve the physical, social, and emotional contexts of learning.

Bernice d'Anjou

ECT Brownbag: High Achievement in Middle School: Is it a Blessing or a Curse for Adolescent Girls and Their Relationship with Themselves as Learners?

October 31, 2024, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST

370 Jay St, 522 | Hybrid Format

Originally from the Netherlands, Bernice d’Anjou has a background as both a middle school teacher and a designer/researcher of EdTech tools for elementary and middle school classrooms, for which she received a national award. She is passionate about understanding girls’ psychological process related to their educational development and she is currently a PhD candidate in Educational Communication and Technology at NYU. (Bernice holds a Masters in Science Education and Communication and a Masters in Industrial Design from University of Technology Eindhoven).

Prof. Mads Haahr, Dr. Svetlana Rudenko, and Artist Geri Hahn

ECT Brownbag: Launch of Locative Augmented Reality App in Central Park, NYC: Digital Gallery of New Jersey’s Artist Geri Hahn

October 22nd, 2024, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST

370 Jay St, 540 | Hybrid Format

Prof. Mads Haahr, School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, Course Director for the MSc in Interactive Digital Media (IDM). Prof. Haahr conducts research into serious games with a focus on interactive digital narrative for cultural heritage. Dr Svetlana Rudenko, is a researcher and composer at Haunted Planet Studios, Dublin. Educator, Concert Pianist, Researcher on Music Art Perception, Neuroesthetics, Creative Synaesthesia, Cognitive Musicology, Multisensory Design for Digitally Enhanced Realities, AR/ MR for Education & Mental Health, aesthetics for Sensory Substitution Devices, new forms of multimedia for music and cultural heritage.

Dr. Mia Shaw

ECT Brownbag: A Black Feminist-Womanist perspective on expanding STEM imaginaries through narrative-based, speculative design literacies

October 17, 2024, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST

370 Jay St, 522 | Hybrid Format

Dr. Mia Shaw is an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the Department of Administration, Leadership, and Technology, as part of New York University Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. She earned a PhD in Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was advised by Dr. Yasmin Kafai. In addition, Mia earned an MEd in Curriculum & Instruction from University of Nevada-Las Vegas and BAH in Human Biology (with a focus in Adolescent Development) from Stanford University.

Past Speakers - Spring 2024

Xiaomeng Huang

ECT Brownbag: Charting the Development of Collaboration Skills through Analytics-Supported Feedback

April 25, 2024, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

370 Jay St, 522

Xiaomeng Huang is a PhD candidate in Educational Communication and Technology. She is passionate about enhancing the development of 21st-century skills through multimodal learning analytics. Her current research centers on collaborative learning analytics, within which she seeks to use insights from fine-grained learning traces to create automated and actionable feedback for students to develop their collaboration skills. Xiaomeng holds a Master of Education in Technology, Innovation, and Education from Harvard University.

Jeff Brenneman

ECT Brownbag: Forging a Path for Researching Narrative Design and Emotional Design in Game-Based Learning

April 18, 2024, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

370 Jay St, 522

Jeff is a PhD candidate in the ECT doctoral program at Steinhardt, and a senior instructional designer for the Digital Learning team at Tandon. He earned his BA in Mathematics from Michigan State University, his MEd in Curriculum & Instruction from American College of Education, and his MS in Games For Learning at NYU. He currently teaches the Narrative, Digital Media, and Learning course for the LTXD/G4L masters programs. Jeff's research interests include narrative design and emotional design in games for learning. Prior to his instructional design work, Jeff taught mathematics for several years at a project-based learning high school in Illinois. Outside of school and work, Jeff enjoys running, reading books, taking his dog for long walks, and spending an embarrassing number of hours playing Final Fantasy XIV.

Jonathan Martinez

ECT Brownbag: DistruptED: Fulfilling the Promise of Technology and Education through a Critical Digital Pedagogy

April 11, 2024, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

370 Jay St, Room 522

Jonathan Martinez (he/him//el) currently works at the intersection of International Education, Critical Pedagogy, and Technology. At NYU's Office of Global Programs, Jonathan currently works supporting all efforts for academic planning and faculty engagement at NYU's global sites. He is a recently minted PhD candidate in NYU Steinhardt's Educational Communication and Technology Program.

more info

Jennifer Meyer

ECT Brownbag: Bringing Automated Feedback into the Classroom: Exploring the Potential of (Generative) AI

April 9, 2024, 1:00 pm -2:00 pm EST

370 Jay St, Room 540

Jennifer Meyer is a postdoctoral researcher and Junior Research Group Leader at the Department of Educational Science and Educational Psychology at the Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education in Kiel, Germany. Her research is on the role of students‘ individual differences in learning, academic motivation, automated writing assessment, and the use and impact of (generative) AI in education. She received a diploma in psychology from the University of Kiel in 2019. She is a Jacobs Foundation Research Fellow.

Dani Snyder-Young

ECT Brownbag: Civic Data Theatre: Moving Embodied Community Data Analysis into Action

April 5, 2024, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

370 Jay St, Room 540

Dani Snyder-Young is a scholar of applied theatre and contemporary US activist performance. She studies the ways socially engaged performance projects impact their audiences and their participants.

Her books include: Privileged Spectatorship: Theatrical Interventions in White Supremacy (2020, Northwestern University Press); Theatre of Good Intentions: Challenges and Hopes for Theatre and Social Change (2013, Palgrave Macmillan); and Impacting Theatre Audiences: Methods for Studying Change, co-edited with Matt Omasta (Routledge, 2022). She has published articles in Theatre Journal, TDR, Theatre Survey, Theatre Research International, Theatre Topics, RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre Research, Applied Theatre Researcher, Qualitative Inquiry, and Youth Theatre Journal. Her current project focuses on performances manipulating stigma to shift the boundaries of social acceptability.

W. Russell Neuman

ECT Brownbag: Next Generation Artificial Intelligence

April 4, 2024, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

370 Jay St, Room 522

W. Russell Neuman is a specialist in new media and digital education and the Professor of Media Technology in Administration, Leadership, and Technology at New York University. He was the John Derby Evans Professor of Media Technology in Communication Studies and Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan and also taught at the University of Pennsylvania where he directed the Information and Society Program of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. He served as a Senior Policy Analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy working in the areas of information technology, broadband policy and technologies for border security. His recent books include The Digital Difference: Media Technology and the Theory of Communication Effects (Harvard University Press, 2016), Media, Technology, and Society: Theories of Media Evolution (University of Michigan Press, 2010). He also taught at Harvard and Yale and was one of the founding faculty of the MIT Media Laboratory. His Ph.D. is from the University of California, Berkeley and his undergraduate degree is from Cornell University. Professor Neuman’s teaching and research focus on educational outcomes, information overload, information economics, modalities of learning, learning assessment and learning outside the classroom.

Susanne Narciss

ECT Brownbag: Formative Tutoring Feedback Strategies: Research Issues and Challenges viewed from the Interactive Two-Feedback Loops Model

March 28, 2024, 12:30 pm -1:30 pm EST

370 Jay St, Room 522

Susanne Narciss is a professor of Psychology of Learning and Instruction at Technische Universität Dresden. Her research Interests include desing and evaluation of interactive learning tasks, designing and evaluating feedback in instructional contexts, multimedia tools for learning and instruction, psychological processes in academic writing, and self-regulated Learning with web-based learning environments. To learn more about her work, check this website: https://tu-dresden.de/mn/psychologie/ipep/lehrlern/die-professur/inhaberin?set_language=en

David F. Feldon

ECT Brownbag: Using mixed methods in measurement: New psychometric tools to advance critical quantitative research

March 14, 2024, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

370 Jay St, Room 522

David F. Feldon is a professor of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences in the College of Education and Human Services at Utah State University. His scholarship identifies mechanisms of learning and postsecondary education that facilitate the equitable development of expertise – specifically in STEM disciplines. His research attempts to build bridges from a deep understanding of motivation and cognition to broader cultural and structural influences that shape divergent pathways to expertise and professional success. Dr. Feldon was the 2019 recipient of the American Educational Research Association’s Division D Award for Significant Contributions to Educational Measurement and Research.

Upcoming Brownbags:

TBA

Past Speakers - Fall 2023

Olga Viberg

ECT Brownbag: Designing Culturally Aware Learning Analytics: A Value Sensitive Perspective

November 14, 2023, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

Zoom: Click Here to RSVP

Olga Viberg has obtained her PhD in Informatics at Örebro University School of Business (Sweden) in December 2015. She has been a lecturer at the School of Languages and Media Studies and at the School of Technology and Business Studies at Dalarna University, Sweden between 2008-2016. Currently she is an associate professor and docent in Media Technology with specialization in Technology-Enhanced Learning at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at KTH.

Viberg's research includes a focus on learning analytics in higher education, the application of mobile technology in education, mobile learning analytics, integration of formal and informal learning environments, design for learning, self-regulated learning, computer-assisted collaborative learning, cross-cultural research and responsible use of student data in education, focusing on the issues of privacy and trust. Olga is currently supervising 4 PhD students. She supervised one PhD candidate (A. Agelii Genlott, finished in 2020), 2 postdoctoral researchers, several visiting researchers, 30 master thesis projects, and > 50 bachelor degree projects during the last few years. She is currently (2023) supervising 6 master thesis projects, several bachelor degree theses, and is supervising two postdoctoral researchers (Digital Futures).

Viberg coordinates the Bachelor Degree course in Media Technology, two PhD courses: Introduction to Learning Analytics and Research Methods in Technology Enhanced Learning and teaches several other courses at different educational levels. Viberg is an active member of the Digital Futures group on Educational Transformation at KTH, https://www.digitalfutures.kth.se/about/governance/working-groups/engineering-education/ and several international networks (SIG Responsible Learning Analytics, EUROCALL, MALL etc.) She has served as the keynote speaker at several prestigious international conferences (e.g. EDUCON, IMCL). Viberg has also contributed to the UNESCO policy work on quality of online education and gave a keynote speech in Nov.2021.

Viberg is the main organizer of the Nordic Learning Analytics Summer Institute (2021 & 2022) and a part of the organizing committee of the 12th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference. She has served as the PC chair for the two high-ranked conferences in 2023: Learning@Scale 2023 (https://learningatscale.acm.org/las2023/) and ECTEL2023 (https://ea-tel.eu/ectel2023/registration).

Click here: Recording Link

César A. Collazos
ECT Brownbag: Collaborative Games as a Mechanism Supporting Monitoring and Evaluation of Collaborative Learning Processes

November 7, 2023, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

César A. Collazos is a Full Professor of the Computer Science Department at the University of Cauca-Colombia. He is also the Head of HCI-Collab, a collaborative network supporting HCI education in Iberomerican countries. His research areas of interest include: Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, and HCI. To learn more about his work, contact him through this email address: ccollazo@unicauca.edu.co.

Fabian Froehlich
ECT Brownbag: VR and Learning - An Immersive Relationship

October 24, 2023, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST
370 Jay Street, Room 542

Fabian Froehlich is an academic with a diverse background in film and media studies. Prior to pursuing his graduate studies, Fabian worked in the film industry, using his creativity and technical skills to entertain audiences. After transitioning to academia, he turned his attention to the use of media for educational purposes. His presentation focuses on the relationship between sense of presence, metacognition in educational VR.

Al Olsen
ECT Brownbag: SoundCheck: Audio and Emotions for Learning

October 17, 2023, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST
Click Here: Recording Link

Al Olsen is a digital media designer and senior software developer. He works as an assistant research scientist at CREATE Lab, and in his spare time he produces music and spends time with his family.

As an ECT PhD Candidate at NYU, Al’s research focuses on the question: how does audio affect emotions in learners in a learning context? And moreover, can positive emotions be mediated to improve cognition using audio designs in a virtual reality learning environment?

Past Speakers - Fall 2022

TANESIA BEVERLY

Dr. Tanesia Beverly, Measurement Fellow in the Assessment Sciences department at the Law School Admission Council (LSAC)

November 15th, 2022

Tanesia Beverly earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology with a concentration in Research methodology, measurement, and evaluation from the University of Connecticut. Her dissertation research focused on modeling the relationship between pacing and achievement on timed tests. Currently, Dr. Beverly is a Quantitative User Researcher at a social media company. She uses survey methodology to conduct and manage quantitative consumer research.

SHADÉ SOLOMON

ECT Brownbag: Dancing the Elements: Engaging funds of knowledge as a pathway to learning science

Thursday, October 27, 2022, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

Zoom Recording here

Folashade Cromwell Solomon (Ed.D., Harvard 2011) has over 20 years of experience in education. Currently Dr Solomon is an Associate Professor of Education at Framingham State University, and a Senior Scientist at TERC, a STEM think tank in Cambridge, MA. Her teaching and research focuses on learning, identity and exploring the connections between the arts and STEM. Her recent work, Embodied Physics: Using the Lenses of Physics and Dance to Investigate Learning, Engagement and Identity Development for Black and Latinx Youth (funded by the National Science Foundation,2115921), explores how dance can be a site for learning physics for urban youth. The study shows the potential for dance practices to allow youth to experience physics as alive in their bodies, to make personal and culturally relevant connections, and to see themselves and their worlds as part of the domain of physics, giving them new paths forward into learning science. Implications suggest that utilizing such practices contribute to more inclusive and equitable learning environments for all. Most recent article related to this work is Embodied Physics: utilizing dance resources for learning and engagement in STEM was recently published in the Special Issue on “ Learning in and through the Arts” in the Journal of the Learning Sciences.

MIKE TISSENBAUM

ECT Brownbag: The role of technology and the physical space in supporting distributed intelligence and collaboration across multiple social planes.

Tuesday, October 11, 2022, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

Zoom Recording here

Mike Tissenbaum is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Mike's research, which focuses on collaborative learning and knowledge communities, aims to understand how children develop STEM and computational literacies when engaged with technology-enhanced learning. More broadly, Mike's work focuses on how to design transformational learning environments that combine interactive physical spaces, digital information, and collaboration between learners to envision the future of learning both in and out of schools.

Past Speakers - Spring 2022

MARISOL VILLACRES

ECT Brownbag: From Needs to Strengths: Reflecting on an Assets-Based Design Journey with Latin* Immigrant Parents in the United States

Tuesday, April 12, 2022, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

Zoom Recording here

Marisol is an Associate Professor at Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral in Ecuador. She explores how cultural and learning science theories can inform an assets-based participatory design of technologies that support historically marginalized groups, such as immigrant parents from developing regions, in pursuing sustainable, emancipatory transformations.

ANANDA MARIN

ECT Brownbag: “What do you believe in? Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot?”: The Role of Place and Stories in the Co-Creation of Learning/Teaching Contexts

Tuesday, April 5, 2022, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

How are human societies, plant societies, and animal societies connected? How do we as humans understand these connections? Sociocultural theories of development center cultural practices and between-person activity as a primary context for learning. In this talk, I build with these orientations, to ask how learning can be further conceptualized as a cultural process that includes re-making nature-culture relationships. To do so, I share findings from a video-ethnographic study of Indigenous family’s forest walks and narrate the story of my methodological decision-making. I describe how pairing the tools of interaction analysis and Indigenous research paradigms led to the theorization of ambulatory sequences as a unit of analysis and walking, reading, and storying land as a framework that explains the ambulatory methodologies that people use for the purposes of learning about, with, and from the natural world. Then, providing an account one family’s forest walks, I describe how analytically attending to the boundaries of question-asking and story-telling led to new inquiries about how sensemaking is contextualized within the micro-geographies of place (e.g., the forest canopy, cross roads, pond).

Anna Amato

ECT Brownbag: Participating in Critical Data Literacy Through The Arts

Tuesday, March 29, 2022, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

How communities are represented through data is a social and ethical challenge that cuts across data science and the arts. While a photograph can tell a story about people and places, it can also be interpreted out of context or used to overgeneralize. Alternatively, patterns in quantitative data and statistics can be hard to make sense of in terms of everyday life. Data science draws on practices from multiple disciplines to support new ways of knowing. Yet, the arts have traditionally served only as a means to widen engagement with STEM literacies. I propose that arts-integrated approaches, which foreground discussion about representation and cultural narratives, offer opportunities to think critically about how data are produced and used in the real world. I draw on a critical data literacy framework, which challenges the perception of data as neutral and objective by situating data in real world contexts and consequences. I ask: How does storytelling generate opportunities to (1) integrate data science and art practices, (2) situate data in broader social relationships and patterns, and (3) center critical questions about how data are produced and used in society?

Andrew MacNamara

ECT Brownbag Refining Emotional Design Research for Educational Multimedia

Tuesday, March 22, 2022, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

Research has found emotions to impact a wide variety of cognitive mechanisms, making the utilization of designs that elicit emotions an important consideration for educational multimedia. This is especially true considering that emotions can be affected through relatively simple design choices. However, due to research on emotion and learning often having a narrow focus on learning outcomes, creators of educational content are more so equipped to mimic past designs rather than to create novel means for inducing emotions to enhance learning.

Aleata Hubbard

ECT Brownbag: Supporting Secondary CS Teachers' Professional Learning with a Focus on Content and Equity

Tuesday, March 8, 2022, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

The field of computer science suffers from issues of inequity. Along the pipeline from elementary school to industry, notable differences exist in who has access to and who succeeds in the discipline. The news is replete with stories of algorithms biased against particular groups of people. Educators can play an integral role in helping more students to pursue computer science and to acquire skills in building unbiased computational tools. This talk examines how two current research studies, CS Teachers Talk and MENTORS in CS, are supporting secondary teachers in developing an equitable approach to CS education.

Melanie Stegman

ECT Brownbag: How can we design games to not only teach players abstract concepts but also to translate their understanding to the real world?

Tuesday, February 22, 2022, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST

I am a biochemist who designs, evaluates, and develops video games for teaching molecular and cellular science. I have created a strategy game designed to teach fundamentals of molecular cell biology: Immune Defense. Thousands of players enjoy the game, but anyone I ask insists that they did not learn anything. What links to the real world are possible to add to the game without breaking the immersion? I will present examples found in commercial and education research games, as well as any data I can find about how well these features helped players translate what they learned into real life and how well they maintained immersion. Play Immune Defense ahead of time to be ready to participate. It is free, PC only, https://melanieanns.itch.io/immune-defense

I look forward to this opportunity to present my designs and hear your perspectives and suggestions.

Dr. Daniele Di Mitri

ECT Brownbag: Restoring Context in Distance Learning with Artificial Intelligence and Multimodal Learning Experiences

Tuesday, February 1st, 2022, 12:00 pm -1:00 pm EST, Open To The Public

The COVID-19 pandemic forced more than 1.6 billion learners out of school, becoming the most challenging disruption ever endured by the global education systems. In many countries, education institutions decided to move their regular activities online, opting for remote teaching as an emergency solution to continue their education. Meanwhile, physical distancing and learning in isolation heavily challenge learners and hinder their study success. There is a compelling need to make education systems more resilient and less vulnerable to future disruptions in such a critical landscape. In particular, we have to reconsider how digital technologies can support online and hybrid teaching. If digital education technologies such as video conferencing tools and learning management systems have improved to make educational resources more available and education more flexible, the modes of interaction they implement remain essentially unnatural for the learner due to a substantial lack of context. Modern sensor-enabled computer systems allow extending the standard human-computer interfaces and facilitate richer multimodal interaction. Furthermore, advances in AI allow interpreting the data collected from multimodal and multi-sensor devices. These insights can be used to support online teaching and learning in isolation with personalised feedback and adaptation through Multimodal Learning Experiences (MLX). This guest lecture elaborates on existing approaches, architectures, and methodologies. I illustrate use cases that employ multimodal learning analytics applications that can shape the online teaching of the future.

Carolyn Sloan

ECT Brownbag: The Importance of Targeted Feedback in the Digital Learning Space

Tuesday, November 16, 2021, 12:00 – 1:00 pm on Recording Here

Digital learning, a viable and alternative way to learn has rocketed into the forefront of education for many reasons, but namely because of the worldwide pandemic started in 2020. This unlikely world event has forced the question, “ What are the necessary components for students to learn successfully online?” And others such as, “ How do we engage students deeply and keep them learning despite differences in things like economic status, broadband access, language barriers and giving feedback?”

This presentation will answer the questions regarding feedback and engagement and how it is imperative that in the digital world of 2021 and beyond, we are not only encouraged but mandated to supply appropriate feedback to students in ways we have not yet explored nor deployed in the mass market of digital education and education products.

Formative Assessments are timely, specific dynamic ways to assess the learner’s capacity to understand material within a particular domain. Often teachers or programs in general lack the time, feedback skill set or the opportunities for observational feedback. How do we build programs and products that inherently focus on formative assessments and create a more dynamic relationship between teacher/instruction and student learning?

Yeonji Jung

ECT Brownbag: Learning with Analytics: Engaging Students as Co-designers, Sense-makers, and Action-takers

Tuesday, October 19, 2021, 12:00 – 1:00 pm | Recording here

Learning analytics leverage data about student learning processes with the goal of improving them as a route to better educational outcomes. Historically, the information generated has not been offered to students directly but has been mediated by educators who use it to inform instructional modifications and institutional decision-making. Recently, however, the situation has changed, with greater attention given to the importance of, need for, and creation of student-facing analytics. This shift aligns with the ethical position that students, as both the primary source of data and the main beneficiaries of its use, should be more involved in analytical processes. However, several issues about student use of analytics are raised, including its actual educational value, students’ trust in analytics and difficulty in making decisions and actions based on it. In this talk, I will share my dissertation project by first unpacking the current state of research on student use of analytics and then proposing a set of approaches that will engage students as co-designers of the actionable analytics and examine their in-situ use of the co-designed analytics with the focus on their sense-making, decision-making, and action-taking.

Dr. Vanessa Echeverria

ECT Brownbag: Human-centered Design for Collaboration Analytics User Interfaces

Tuesday, September 21, 2021, 12:00 – 1:00 pm | Recording Here

Nowadays, there has been a growing interest in adopting multimodal learning analytics solutions, such as user interfaces, to support collaboration activities in the classroom. Ideally, these user interfaces may help students reflect on and learn from their own experiences, closing the feedback loop of the learning analytics process. Current research in CSCW and CSCL has focused on broadening the understanding of collaboration theories in various domains using multimodal data. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to collaboration analytics user interfaces to help students reflect on their group work processes.

Marc Lesser

No Such Thing: Education in the Digital Age Podcast: A Learner Like You: Unsolicited job advice for life after ECT/DMDL

Thursday, April 29, 2021, 10:00 – 11:00 am Watch Zoom Recording Here |

This brownbag talk will feature the fewest multi-syllable words of any this year. I've spent nearly 20 years now in K16 learning as a designer, non-profit leader, and technologist. In this talk that I'm still working on a few weeks earlier, I'll aim to tell you some good stories about what I know (mostly a result of surrounding myself with incredibly smart people) in the field of digital learning. But, mostly, I want to talk about what I wish I knew when I left ECT, some lessons that I think are useful no matter what you do, and open a Q&A where I will overtly and shamelessly uncover all that I still have to learn. If a brownbag lunch was Free Jazz with a Google Presentation, this is it.

Tamara Galoyan

Postdoctoral Research Associate at The University of Utah: Performance and Mental Workload in a Spatial Navigation Transfer Game

Thursday, April 15, 2021, 10:00 – 11:00 am Watch Zoom Recording Here | More info >>

This presentation will focus on a study that examined the effects of task-related variables, such as the difficulty level, problem scenario, and experiment week, on performance and mental workload of 27 adult subjects during problem solving in the Spatial Navigation Transfer (SNT) game. The game was designed by the researchers of this study using Cognitive Load Theory as a conceptual framework.

Naomi Thompson
Weaving Together STEAM and the Spaces that Surround It

Thursday, April 1, 2021, 10:00 – 11:00am Watch Zoom Recording Here |

The transdisciplinary space of STEAM has the potential to break down disciplinary boundaries to create room for underserved learners to participate in new ways of learning and knowing. In this talk, I will think across two research projects to draw connections between designing equitable STEAM learning experiences as well as the environments and communities surrounding those experiences. In one project, I argue that there is unique promise in the craft of weaving for supporting broader ways to engage in mathematics. I conducted semi-structured interviews with adult weavers and an intervention designed to expose middle-school youth to the mathematical practices inherent in weaving. I found that understanding math engagement in broader ways makes it possible to better recognize and value youths’ intellectual work.

Suraj Uttamchandani

The Learning Sciences and LGBTQ+ Lives: Questions, Then Answers, Then More Questions

Thursday, March 25, 2021, 10:00 – 11:00 am Watch Zoom Recording Here

As the learning sciences increasingly thinks through the political and ethical dimensions of learning, renewed opportunities arise to consider the learning experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Asexual, and other gender and/or sexuality minoritized (LGBTQ+) people. First, I outline the need for learning research that takes seriously gender and sexual diversity. Next, I discuss what I learned by working alongside a group of LGBTQ+ youth advocates who sought to teach teachers and other youth-serving professionals about how to work most effectively with LGBTQ+ youth. I talk through findings from this long term ethnography, including how youth developed a sense of what I call educational intimacy, reflecting a queer lens to their relational learning. I conclude with potential future directions of inquiry for the learning sciences to attend to plurality in gender and sexuality.

Corinne Brenner

Methods of examining data from user gameplay to predict outcomes on executive function tasks

Thursday, March 18, 2021, 10:00 – 11:00am

Corinne Brenner is a PhD candidate in Educational Communication & Technology at NYU working in the CREATE Lab, and the Director of Learning at Killer Snails, an educational games company. Corinne's research interests include applying quantitative methods to understand human behavior and cognition, impact evaluation, and examining the affordances of immersive technology for education and entertainment. She received her BA in Psychology from Cornell University, and MSc in Social Psychology and Psychological Methods from the University of Amsterdam. Her work includes using clustering methods to understand gameplay for digital games, the design of virtual reality experiences, and integrating virtual reality into educational experiences.

Barry Joseph

The Revolution has Been Digitized: A Toolkit for the Future of Museums

Thursday, March 11, 2021, 10:00 – 11:00am / Watch Event (zoom)

This Brown Bag will present materials in development for one of the book’s feature case studies, focused on digital design in cultural halls. Together we will look at two projects designed for the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians (with support by ETC interns) and explore how together we applied these Five Tools of Digital Design.

Ioana Literat

LAMBOOZLED: A Game-Based Approach to News Literacy Education

Thursday, March 4, 2021, 10:00 – 11:00am / Watch Event (Zoom)

Given the need for innovative, engaging, and youth-centered approaches to media literacy, games emerge as a particularly promising and under-utilized avenue for news literacy education. This research asks, how might we use game-based learning to stimulate news literacy among a youth audience? Here, I reflect on the process of designing and evaluating LAMBOOZLED!

Marcelo Worsley

Data in Motion: Putting Multimodal Tools in the Hands of Youth

Thursday, February 25, 2021 ,10:00 – 11:00am /. Watch Recording

Sports and technology are often pitted as being at odds with one another. While there are several educational activities that make reference to sports, we seldom see sports used as an authentic context for learning computing. In this talk, I discuss the design of Data in Motion, a curriculum that considers the bi-directional opportunities for sports to improve learning of STEM and for STEM to help improve participants’ athletic performance. We implemented Data in Motion as a five-day summer camp with 33 participants, grades 2–6. We observe the ways that the experience changes students’ perceptions of the connection between sports and technology through student surveys, observations and artifact analyses. Across the pool of participants, we saw significant changes in the ways that students conceptualized the connection between technology and athletic performance.

Shiri Mund

Data Literacy: What is it, how do we measure it, and how might we cultivate it?

February 18, 2021 ,10:00 – 11:00am / Watch Recording

The last decades have seen an unprecedented growth in the availability and accessibility of digital data. Data influence opinions and decision making in all areas of daily life (Prado & Marzal, 2013), ranging from government policy and professional hiring to university admissions, sports analytics, and shopping. As society contends with data’s impact on the nature of knowledge, communication, and privacy, it faces a pressing need for students and citizens who are intelligent producers and cautious consumers of this data. In short, we need data-literate individuals who “understand, explain and document the utility and limitations of data by becoming critical consumer[s] of data, controlling their personal data trail, finding meaning in data, and taking action based on data” (Oceans of Data Institute, 2015).

David Wiley

Open Educational Resources: What They Are and How to Leverage Them to Improve Student Learning

February 11, 2021 ,10:00 – 11:00am/ Watch Recording

During this presentation and Q&A we will define open educational resources and talk through examples of ways the unique affordances of OER can be leveraged to improve student learning.

Frankie Tam

The Impact of Game Design Elements on Motivation and Performance in Cognitive Skills Training Games

February 4, 2021 ,10:00 – 11:00am / Watch Recording

Executive functions are a set of cognitive processing skills required for regulating individuals’ thoughts and behaviors. Three fundamental components of executive function include shifting between tasks, updating and monitoring of working memory, and inhibition. Executive functions are found to be an important factor in behavioral development, social-emotional development, and academic achievement. Given the importance of executive functions, there is an increasing interest in identifying and developing effective cognitive skills training interventions. Games have shown promising results in promoting motivation and improving executive functions. However, research on designing effective games for teaching executive functions is limited.