| NSF Org: |
IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 30, 2012 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 30, 2012 |
| Award Number: | 1239605 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Christopher Hoadley
IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | January 1, 2013 |
| End Date: | December 31, 2015 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $49,982.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $49,982.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
450 JANE STANFORD WAY STANFORD CA US 94305-2004 (650)723-2300 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
CA US 94305-2023 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Cyberlearn & Future Learn Tech |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
This Cyberlearning Capacity-Building project brings together learning scientists, experts in media creation, experts in child development, producers of public media assets, parent, and educators in an effort to build social infrastructure that will support bringing what is known about how people learn to the design of public media that can effectively connect school learning and out-of-school learning for young children. The team's theoretical framing and working hypothesis highlights the importance of media as a catalyst for collaboration and learning conversations; according to the theoretical base, these collaborations and learning conversations, when carried out across peers and in families, can play a powerful role in connecting children's school and outside-of-school experiences. Two workshops are being convened for the purpose of shedding light on the pragmatics of doing this -- the R&D partnerships needed, the methods that might be used, and the issues that need to be addressed for success. Through partnerships with children's educational media producers, the team is building capacity for interdisciplinary teams that include learning scientists and media producers to engage in research around how to use public media assets to promote the kinds of learning conversations in and out of school that will connect home and school settings into a distributed learning environment.
This project is laying the groundwork for new interdisciplinary research efforts addressing issues in early learning. The team's theoretical framework points to media as a catalyst for the kinds of collaborations and conversations that might promote learning and connect children's school and out-of-school experiences. Thus, this project is bringing together learning scientists and children's educational media producers (PBS, Sesame Workshop, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center) to seed future collaborations. The goals of this initial collaboration are to work together to establish new methods for studying learning with media and advance understanding of how public media assets can be leveraged to support the learning and interest development of young children and their families.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Educational media content is increasingly being developed for new platforms, including online websites, mobile telephones, and touch-tablet computers like the iPad. Producers of this type of content need more basic research on what forms of media engagement can promote learning with these new tools. Simultaneously, research is needed to better understand how people use media together and how individuals interact with and around all forms of media, especially those that dominate young people’s time and experience.
This Cyberlearning Capacity-building project made an effort to address these issues by building social infrastructure to bring what is known about how people learn to the design of public media that can effectively connect school learning and out-of-school learning for young children. The theoretical framing and working hypothesis of this intervention highlights the importance of media as a catalyst for collaboration and learning conversations across peers and within families. Specifically, building on collaborations formed through an NSF Science of Learning Center (LIFE), the project brought together learning scientists, experts in media creation, experts in child development, producers of public media assets, parents, and educators for discussion and collaboration.
Over the course of this project, three research and design workshops were implemented. The first workshop, at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, brought together leading multidisciplinary researchers to discuss existing and emerging methods needed to study social engagement with digital media and learning across media platforms, settings, and times. The second and third workshops, held at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the d.school Institue of Design, each brought together over 50 people from universities, think-tanks, children’s media production companies, and child advocacy organizations (including representatives from Common Sense Media, Sesame Workshop, WGBH, KQED, PBS KIDS Digital, Google, SRI International, Launchpad Toys, Motion Math, Kidaptive, and EDC) to work in interdisciplinary teams to co-design solutions to specific design challenges and to explore possibilities for partnerships and future work. The third workship focused in specifically on issues of equity, highlighting cases of families from underserved and underrepresented communities. This event was was a collaborative effort and included organizations who have the potential to impact research, design, and practitioner populations, including the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, the research arm of the Sesame Workshop in NYC, Mission Graduates, a community organization serving lower income families in the Mission district of San Francisco, and PBS Kids, a primary developer and distributor of children’s media..
Outcomes from this project include fostering research and design capacity by convening and supporting an interdisciplinary collaborative, laying the groundwork for new grants to fund basic research in this area of study. Through the meetings, progress was made to establish new ways of studying learning with media in this age of transmedia and mobility and advancing our understanding of how public media assets can be leveraged to support the learning and interest development of young children and their families.
The final two workshops also supported the development of new approaches to collaborattive design. In particular, deep, case-based ethnographic research was used in a rapid design process to both generate fresh design ideas and catalyze new collaborations among researchers, educators, and designers. A public report entitled, Diverse Families and Media: Using Research to Inspire Design, was developed and widely distributed through the website of project partners at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. This research-based guide is created for educators and media designers who create programs for children and families. Diverse Families and Media offers stories of family media use that were documented in our studies, and raise design-relevant questions as well as suggest design principles that can be applied more broadly. The goal of the guide is to help producers and designers gain insight from our research with families, particularly those from underserved groups, and help refine existing programs or give rise to new concepts.
Last Modified: 08/18/2016
Modified by: Brigid Barron
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