A role for a technology community within a research field.
Creators: name: University Of California Office Of The President
Publisher: name: University of California Office of the President
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/00dmfq477
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2024

description: We propose to establish a sustainable community for technology developers in the learning sciences, a relatively new scientific discipline that investigates learning in all its forms. Research in our field addresses a wide range of questions related to pedagogical models, classroom-based and online learning environments, the role of the teacher, and the structure of teachers knowledge. The field relies heavily on computer technologies to provide structure and functionality to research materials and methodologies. Technology developers play a vital intellectual role in our field. Once relegated to simply programming our materials, these talented individuals are now core members of our intellectual community, engaged in some of the most exciting conceptual and technological revolutions in recent history (e.g., Web 2.0; cloud computing; social networks; open source and open content models). Yet, the technologists are typically isolated from their peers in other labs, communicating only with the researchers who are within their own research group. Recently, the rise of open source development has produced new norms relating to peer exchange and collaboration amongst developers. Our field can benefit greatly by embracing such patterns of exchange. A scientific discipline will progress more quickly if it supports the exchange of materials and methods amongst its researchers. In order to promote such sharing of technologies and materials, our technology developers must form working relationships, and ultimately establish a professional community. Yet nowhere in our funded research projects is there any support for such interchange amongst the technology professionals. The CCSIP Collaborative Event program is ideally suited for this purpose. Our proposal will bring together technologists from UC Berkeley, The University of Toronto, and other labs in the U.S.A., Canada and Europe. We will engage these professionals in reflective discussions and focused design activities to create a sustainable community for technology developers. We will hold two workshops, one in Toronto and one in Berkeley, that will serve to establish this community, in terms of its ongoing membership, mechanisms, and functions. During the time between workshops, participants will engage in collaborations that put the online community to the test and help us refine its functionality. Canada and California will benefit greatly from the transfer of technologies, the support of human resources, and the growth of a knowledge community. Our team is uniquely qualified for this effort. We build on 15 years of collaboration between the two investigators, including our co-direction of the NSF-funded center: Technology-Enhanced Learning in Science (TELS). We also leverage an existing open source framework called the Scalable Architecture for Interactive Learning (SAIL) and numerous existing collaborations, including a major partnership with a European Union funded research center.