Projects

Brief Description

This collective effort seeks to identify the factors that encourage frontline service workers to engage in workplace-sponsored learning activities that support development of 21st century skills, including specific workplace skills, digital literacy, English language and literacy, problem solving, and adult basic skills. Central to this study is elevating the voice of the working learner. The study includes an expansive and iterative approach. Data include semi-structured interviews of frontline service workers and employers, analyses of learning opportunities, and digital surveys. The iterative nature of our data collection and analysis ensures that our questions and processes are relevant to stakeholders and working learners.

Key accomplishments to date

• Established web page & blog for communication and community building
• View Website
• Published a series of blog posts
• View Blog
• Over 25 conversations and meetings with interested colleagues from multiple organizations across the US
• Presented early work at: Open edX Conference, San Diego, March, 2019; Coalition on Adult Basic Education (COABE) in New Orleans, March, 2019; Net Inclusion, Charlotte, April, 2019; Western Pathways Conference, Portland, May, 2019; Digital US meeting, Washington, June 2019; Metro Denver Retail Partnership Event, Denver, September, 2019; ProLiteracy Conference, San Diego, September, 2019
• Proposals to: American Education Research Association Conference (AERA), San Francisco, CA for conference in April 2020 (accepted); Coalition on Adult Basic Education (COABE) in Baltimore, MD, in April 2020
• Collecting and analyzing data: -Conducted semi-structured interviews or focus groups with 26 individuals at five different sites, including: 20 frontline service workers; -3 managers, supervisors, or employers; 3 educators or education organizers; Conducted three observations & site visits; Initial data analysis; Convened stakeholder expert advisory group

Links for More Information

• Twenty First Century Learning Ecosystem News (LENS)

Brief Description

How can school districts be supported at various stages of a digital conversion journey, to ensure success and best use of resources? The partnership of the UR Warner School of Education with East Irondequoit made us aware of the many pitfalls a school can encounter along that journey, and the value for schools engaging in digital conversion to network and learn from each other. This realization led to the creation of the K-12 Digital Consortium (originally named Western New York K-12 Digital Conversion Consortium), with the mission to advance efforts towards digital conversion across local K-12 schools through collaborative efforts to facilitate sharing of information, resources and services. The Consortium was originally launched in 2016, with Warner, East Irondequoit, and Monroe BOCES 1 and 2 as founding members, and since 2018 is being “incubated” within the Center for Learning in the Digital Age.

Key accomplishments to date

• A half-day “Kick-off Workshop” has been designed and offered to date to a total of over 200 participants from over 20 school districts.
• A $3M grant has been awarded by the National Science Foundation to develop a cadre of 20 teacher leaders in 6 high-need districts within the Consortium.
• Develop an interactive website (K12Digital.org) to serve as a clearinghouse for resources, as well as a vehicle for communication and collaboration, for districts within the Consortium.

Links for More Information

• Website
• Video featuring this k12-university partnership for the 2019 NSF STEM for All Video Showcase

Brief Description

Digitally-rich teaching requires a radical transformation of teaching practices and expectations, which is very challenging for K-12 schools. Teacher leaders can play a key role in this process – by modelling best practices in their classrooms, mentoring colleagues, facilitating high-quality professional learning, and spearheading innovation. How can we prepare teachers to play this new important leadership role? Combining the Center for Professional Development and Education Reform’s expertise in preparing teacher leaders, and the LiDA Center’s expertise in digitally-rich teaching, we applied for and were awarded a Noyce Master Teaching Fellowship grant from the National Science Foundation. This 5-year $3M grant will support the development of 20 STEM digitally-rich teacher leaders across six high-need districts that are part of the K-12 Digital Consortium.

A collaboration between the Warner School’s Center for Professional Development & Education Reform and LiDA Center, supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation

Collaboration Opportunities

• STEM faculty and doctoral students with ideas about how to integrate computational thinking and STEM
• Education faculty and doctoral students interested in co-researching this unique group of teachers

Key accomplishments to date

• Recruited 22 fellows across six high need schools
• Developed an innovative “recruitment workshop” as an integral part of the recruitment and selection process
• Designed the first in a sequence of three innovative courses on digitally-rich STEM education specifically targeted to this group

Links for More Information

• MTF program
• Video for 2019 NSF Showcase

Brief Description

What kind of online teacher you aspire to be and how you perceive yourself as an online teacher – that is, your online teacher identity – can have a significant impact on what, how, when and why you choose to teach online. Yet most programs preparing online teachers ignore this important aspect. How can we design online teacher preparation programs and courses that support identity development so as to purposefully prepare a certain kind of online teacher? This project started with a dissertation study involving the in-depth study of a section of an introductory course preparing to teach online, whose design had been informed by identity theory. Building on the data collected in this study, and continuing to expand it, we aim to shed further light on how one’s professional identity affects the aspirations and choices of novice online teachers, and what kind of professional learning experiences may impact those aspirations and choices.

Collaboration Opportunities

• Looking for students who took EDE484A: Online Teaching & Learning and are willing to share their experience in that course as well as information about the online courses they designed and taught after taking the course

Key accomplishments to date

• Completed a dissertation study entitled Investigating Teachers’ Identity Development in a Hybrid Course to Prepare Online Teachers, producing 7 individual case-studies of course participants (all but one of those enrolled in the course) as well as a cross-case analysis that document the significant impact the course had on the participants’ views of the kind of online teacher they aspired to be.
• The dissertation study documented the value of engaging participants in a variety of experiences as online learners to illustrate affordances and limitations of online spaces as well as of specific online teaching practices.
• The dissertation study also documented the value of having participants, as part of an introductory course, engage in experiences as online teachers, scaffolded in a number of complementary ways to ensure their success; this especially highlighted the value of an early Group Project, where students designed and delivered an online module on topics related to online teaching and learning to the rest of the class.
• Engaging in a follow-up study with selected participants to document the impact of the course on the design of specific online courses.

Links for More Information

• Dissertation – key findings
• Dissertation – full text
• Syllabus of the introductory course informed by identity theory

Brief Description

Nurses, physicians and other health care professionals have been among the first to use online as their preferred means for professional learning, given the constraints of their job. They can also greatly benefit from applications of digital technologies to enhance learning such as simulations involving virtual or augmented reality. To keep up with these new developments in the field, we redesigned the core courses preparing health professional educators at the UR to ensure that our students are prepared to leverage technology in their future teaching.

A collaboration between the Warner School of Education, School of Nursing, and School of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Rochester, supported by the LiDA Center

Collaboration Opportunities

• Welcoming doctoral students interested in studying/ evaluating these experiences

Key accomplishments to date

• Designed an innovative sequence of three hybrid-online courses – EDU580: Foundations of Health Professions Education. EDU497: Teaching & Learning in Higher Education and Health Care Settings, EDU581: Clinical Teaching.
• Since their redesign in Fall 2016, over 50 students have taken these core courses – with consistent student satisfaction, as documented by the course evaluations.
• One of these students is Dr. Ghazi, a UR surgeon who has developed innovative learning experiences for residents taking advantage of 3D printing of real patients’ organs.

Links for More Information

• UR Health Professions Education Programs
• EDU497 syllabus
• Ghazi’s Virtual Surgery video

Brief Description

Digital technologies have the potential to create new learning opportunities for K-12 students, and as such can further enhance any other reform initiative (such as the East EPO and Horizons) and lead to increasing achievement for all. However, realizing this potential will depend on what K-12 teachers actually do with these technologies. How can we effectively prepare K-12 teachers to leverage digital technologies in their classrooms? To meet this need, Warner developed courses as well as an Advanced Certificate that pre-service and in-service K-12 teachers can take as non-matriculated students or as part of another Warner degree program – and is continuing to enhance these offerings.

Initiative directly supported by the LiDA Center

Collaboration Opportunities

• Welcoming doctoral students interested in studying/ evaluating this program

Key accomplishments to date

• Designed an innovative graduate course and accompanying practicum – EDE484A: Digitally-Rich Teaching & Learning in K-12 School (hybrid-online) and EDF490: Practicum in Digitally-rich Teaching.
• Our Advanced Certificate in K-12 Digitally-Rich Teaching was the first of its kind registered with New York State Education Department.
• 77 students have taken EDE484A since the 2016 launch of this course, including 30 teachers from the Auburn, Geneva, and Groton school districts as part of a NYS Learning Technology grant awarded to their schools.
• A $1.2M Noyce Scholarship grant has been awarded by the National Science Foundation to support full scholarships for 26 math and science pre-service teachers who will add the Advanced Certificate in K-12 Digitally-Rich Teaching to their teacher preparation program; 5 of these scholarships have currently ben awarded.

Links for More Information

• Warner programs preparing digitally-rich K-12 teachers
• EDE484A syllabus
• Brief description of Noyce Scholarship grant (2017)

Brief Description

Learning in online courses depends highly on the quality of the course design and implementation – and yet this quality varies significantly across online courses. How can we prepare instructors to design and facilitate engaging and effective learning experiences? Recognizing this unmet need, Warner developed a sequence of courses to learn how to teach online, as well as an Advanced Certificate and a Master’s degree in Online Teaching – and is continuing to enhance these offerings. These programs are among a handful of online teacher preparation programs registered with New York State Education Department.

Initiative directly supported by the LiDA Center

Collaboration Opportunities

• Welcoming doctoral students interested in studying/ evaluating these experiences

Key accomplishments to date

• Designed an innovative sequence of three courses – EDE484: Online Teaching & Learning (hybrid-online), EDE486: Designing Online Courses (fully-online), EDE488: Practicum in Online Teaching (hybrid-online).
• Since its launch in Fall 2013, over 200 students took the first course in Online Teaching & Learning – with consistent student satisfaction, as documented by the course evaluations; more than 30 students have completed one of Warner’s programs preparing online teachers.
• 22 of these students designed and implemented new online courses at Warner, and as such were instrumental to the rapid growth of our “online start-up”.
• Building on the training received in these courses, 8 of these students are involved in LiDA projects, as either paid graduate assistants or volunteers.
• A dissertation study on the first course in the sequence has shown its effectiveness in engaging participants in valuable identity work; case-studies of 7 out of the 8 students enrolled in the course have been conducted, articulating the “kind of online teacher” each aspired to be by the end of the course, and the impact key design elements of the course had on them.
• A fully-online version of EDE484 and EDF488 have been created
• An adaptation of the sequence has been created specifically for UR faculty

Links for More Information

• Warner programs preparing online teachers
• EDE484 syllabus
• Dissertation (Hafsa, 2019)

Brief Description

What does it take to successfully launch high-quality online offerings? How can this process be supported? As Warner began offering its first online courses in 2013, we grappled with these questions as we worked toward developing a robust set of very high-quality online offerings with limited human resources and funding – in true “start-up” fashion. Recognizing that other institutions would face similar challenges, we systematically monitored and documented our experience to conduct a case study of our “online start-up,” as a way to share lessons learned.

Key accomplishments to date

• Warner now offers over 40 online courses a year, with high enrollment and high student satisfaction. Since the first online courses were launched in summer 2013, almost 2,000 students have enrolled in online courses at Warner.
• Our K-12 school leadership preparation program is now accessible to students living in underserved areas across the Southern Tier. A dozen other programs have been registered with NYS as offering a “distance option” that reduces time on campus by at least half.
• Findings from our “online start-up” case-study have been disseminated in presentations as well as in a book chapter published in the 2016 Handbook on Research on Building, Growing and Sustaining Quality E-Learning Programs.

Links for More Information

• Current Warner online offerings
• Abstract of “0 to 60” book chapter

Brief Description

As the internet becomes more integrated into daily life, young people spend increasingly more time learning, interacting, and communicating in online spaces. Contrary to popular media reports that youth are reading and writing less as a result of digital distractions, research shows that teens spend a great deal of time writing online – as they maintain a blog or Tumblr account, create “fanfiction” (writing stories around popular characters such as Harry Potter or The Sims), or participate in a range of interest-driven pursuits in online communities. What can we learn from these youth digital literacy practices “in the wild”? What are potential implications for literacy learning in schools? Warner faculty Jayne Lammers’ research helps us better understand what motivates youth to engage in these practices and how these practices may affect learning, suggesting concrete implications for schools.

Collaboration Opportunities

• Open to external collaborations about digital literacy and interest-driven online learning. Welcoming doctoral students interested in apprenticing in specific studies.

Key accomplishments to date

• In keeping with the goal of this research to inform classroom practice, findings from these studies have been shared at professional conferences (such as the New York State Reading Association conference and the European Conference on Literacy), as well as on the International Literacy Association’s Literacy Daily blog:
• Navigating tensions when connecting classrooms to online communities
• Considerations of privacy in connecting youth to digital literacy spaces
• Connecting classrooms with online fanfiction communities
• Leveraging participation in online fanfiction spaces to collaborate in writing
• Guiding youth to write for and with online audiences
• Online fan fiction spaces as literacy tools
• Adolescent writing in online fan fiction spaces
• In July 2019, Lammers co-facilitated“Writing in the Wild: Fanfiction as a Classroom Practice” - a week-long professional learning opportunity for teachers as part of the University of New Hampshire’s Literacy Institutes.
• Key Publications resulting from the project to date:
• Lammers, J. C., & Van Alstyne, J. H. (2019). Building bridges from classrooms to networked publics: Helping students write for the audience they want. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 62 (6), 653-662. DOI: 10.1002/jaal.93
• Magnifico, A. M., Lammers, J. C., & Fields, D. (2018). Affinity spaces, literacies, and classrooms: Tensions and opportunities. Literacy, 52(3), 145-152. DOI: 10.1111/lit.12133
• Lammers, J. C. & Marsh, V. L. (2018). “A writer more than…a child”: A longitudinal study examining adolescent writer identity. Written Communication, 35(1), 89-114.
• Abrams, S. S., & Lammers, J. C. (2017). Belonging in a videogame space: Bridging affinity spaces and communities of practice. Teachers College Record, 119(11), 1-34
• Lammers, J. C. (2016). “The Hangout was serious business”: Leveraging participation in an online space to Design Sims fanfiction. Research in the Teaching of English, 50, 309-332.
• Lammers, J. C., & Marsh, V. L. (2015). Going public: An adolescent’s networked writing on Fanfiction.net. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 59, 277-285. DOI: 10.1002/jaal.416.
• Lammers, J. C. (2013). Fangirls as teachers: Examining pedagogic discourse in an online fan site. Learning, Media and Technology, 38, 368-386. DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2013.764895.

Links for More Information

• Lammers’ Fulbright project