Data-Intensive Research to Improve Teaching and Learning - An Ideas Lab to Foster Transformative Approaches to Teaching and Learning

The goal of this activity is to foster novel, transformative, multidisciplinary approaches that address the use of large data sets to create actionable knowledge for improving STEM teaching and learning environments (formal and informal) in the medium term, and to revolutionize learning in the longer term. These approaches will involve the work of learning scientists, STEM disciplinary experts, computer scientists, statisticians, database experts and educational researchers who design and study learning environments. Among the potential benefits of integrating approaches from these disciplines are improving student learning and engagement, optimizing personalized instruction, and supporting rapid decision making to help educators respond more effectively to the learning needs of individuals and groups of learners in multiple settings. These approaches may be risky but should have the potential to rapidly advance the field. The scope of this activity does not include infrastructure development focused on data base design and development for education domains. The new approaches envisioned in this solicitation will require the generation and use of data that range from micro-level data on individual learners, to data from online learning sources (such as massively open online courses), to meso-level data from the classroom that provide information to students and teachers about how learning is progressing, to macro-level data such as school, district, state, and national data, including data from federal science and policy agencies. Participants in the Ideas Lab, selected through an open application process, will engage in an intensive five-day residential workshop, the development of multidisciplinary collaborative proposals through a real-time and iterative review process, and, for the participant teams invited to submit full proposals, the subsequent submission of full proposals.