Cl2-18

Ido

1. What are 1-3 best examples of PSLC accomplishments? How have these been “transformative” (NSF buzzword) for the learning sciences or education?

1. Technological infrastructure for course implementation and evaluation
2. Framework for comparison and meta-analysis of studies
3. Surviving 4 years of NSF big-brotherhood without anyone loosing their minds permanently

2. What are 1-3 best of PSLC accomplishments that results, at least in part, because of having a center (these could be the same as #1)? For each, why was this accomplishment less likely to have happened without the center (i.e., why couldn’t a regular grant have resulted in the same outcome)?

1. Individual technological projects are islands of afordability - it is the center that bridges between them to create an infrastructure.
2. It is through the on-going discussion and the breadth of projects that the framework was created. The framework emerged from this combination of top-down and bottom up processes, and was possible due to having more researchers than the critical math.

3. Building off what we have accomplished, what are 1-3 ideas for where PSLC research should go in the future and how would these ideas be “transformative” for learning science or education?

1. More meta-analysis should be conducted on existing results using the existing framework. This meta-analysis should be done in two levels:

• • Integrating results from different studies
  • Looking at learning phenomenas across existing data-sets
• This analysis should be informative in two ways:
  • Generating better science
  • Generating better instructional principles.
• Integration is the keyword here. Just like it required a center to turn the technological islands of affordability (e.g., CTAT) into a complete infrastructure, the next task of the center should be to bridge between the local islands of knowledge and principles to a more complete picture, or sheet.
• From a collection of 0-D local principles to a sheet of 2-D knowledge.

2. We talk about new Pittsburgh but take relatively few risks. A center can allow itself to be more innovative, compared with individuals. I would vote for a Google-type of center rather than a Microsoft one. I would push harder on ill-defined domains, novel technologies, beyond cognition (emotion, motivation), methodologies (fMRI, etnography).

3. stronger connections with educational practice

• • More teacher involvement
  • Doing more teaching in the PPS
  • Doing much more outreach in inner-city Pittsburgh