Category Archives: Conferences and Events

SPACES team research papers at ISLS 2023 & 2024

Our team presented several papers and posters from the SPACES research project at ISLS 2023 in Montreal, QC (Canada) and ISLS 2024 in Buffalo, NY (USA). Check out the transforming outdoor places page or the publications page to see copies of these papers!

Heather to chair AERA’s Informal Learning Environments Research group for 2019-20

Heather is chairing AERA’s Informal Learning Environments Research group for 2019-2020. The group is dedicated to furthering educational research in informal learning environments and to promote a community practice interested in establishing and maintaining a better understanding of learning in multiple out-of-school time environments. Members are researchers and practitioners focusing on equity, inclusion, and access to learning in libraries, museums, community-based organizations, hobbies, outdoor education, and everyday settings.

To join AERA, click here to purchase your membership!

 

Informal Learning Environments Research
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Our purpose is to further educational research in informal learning environments and to promote a community practice interested in establishing and ma…
 

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NARST 2019 and AERA 2019 Team Presentations

The Augmented and Mobile Learning Research Group will be in Baltimore for NARST and in Toronto for AERA this week and next week to present our research!

Please see the included PDF for a full listing of presenting authors and where and when to find them: 2019_Conference_Presentation_Flyer-1707143

Heather & Chris presenting at Open Badges in Education workshop

On Monday, March 26, 2015, Chris & Heather are presenting on  an digital badges with their paper An Online Badging System Supporting Educators’ STEM Learning at Workshop on Open Badges in Education in Poughkeepsie, New York, USA.  Download the paper here: Gamrat_Zimmerman_2015_OBIE_Workshop_Long_Paper [pdf].

In our paper, we investigate how a digital badging system was used as part of an informal (i.e., not-for-credit) professional development project. Teacher Learning Journeys was designed for personalized science learning for educators in K-12 schools, museums, universities, and teaching colleges through employing two levels of micro-credentials: lower achievement digital stamps and higher achievement digital badges. We conducted a qualitative collective case study centered on 36 teachers; the primary data were records from learners’ interactions within the digital badge system; secondary data came from a survey at the end of the experience and two interviews with 11 focal teachers. Our findings suggest the following design principles: (a) two levels of assessment can support personalized learning, (b) mastery of learning can be demonstrated and assessed through reflective logs, (c) collaboration during and after badging activities can provide value to the learners, and (d) establishment of relevance of badging experiences can support the application of content outside the badging system.

 

Heather presenting at Research Symposium

Heather Zimmerman is presented emerging research findings from our team’s COIL grant at the 2nd Annual COIL Research Symposium on Thursday, October 16.

The Augmented and Mobile Learning Research Group’s  COIL grant is a 12-month research project on how mobile computers can support engagement with the life sciences in people’s communities. Project Co-Directors Heather Zimmerman and Susan Land began this project to compare forms of technologically enhanced facilitation in regard to supporting learners to think scientifically at the Arboretum at Penn State and Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center. The technologically enhanced facilitation supports observing to encourage deliberate noticing that will lead to the development of scientific concepts as learners coordinate information contained on the mobile computer with the specimens on-site.

Prior to this funded project, our team conducted two small scale qualitative studies (see our Publications Page).  Now with the COIL funds, we engaged in a more rigorous series of qualitative and multi-condition, design-based research studies in summer 2014 that examined various aspects of mobile computing pedagogy. Our publications on this new work are forthcoming.

In addition to Heather and Susan, members of the COIL project team include: Brian J. Seely, Michael R. Mohney, Gi Woong Choi, Jaclyn Dudek, Yong Ju Jung, and Lucy R. McClain.