Volume 6, No. 2, Fall 2002

Contents | PDF Version

Accelerating Educational Research

By Bob Tinker

Much of the research in education is undertaken by individuals, often junior researchers under the direction of senior faculty at universities. However, this solo approach is an inappropriate model for research on educational technologies, which often involve complex projects requiring a range of skills.

Yet society is increasingly demanding technology-rich materials that can be applied to large numbers of diverse students. This requires larger scale research, operating at a higher level of sophistication, than individual researchers can achieve.

The Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT) brought toge-ther leading researchers at SRI International, Berkeley, Vanderbilt, Stanford, and the Concord Consor-tium. During its 5-year lifetime, CILT stimulated collaboration within the educational technology research community through conferences, workshops, online resources, direct grants, and a post-doctoral program.

CILT demonstrated convincingly the importance of collaboration in educational technology research. Through its auspices researchers who were previously unaware of each others' interests have made advances that would have been unattainable had they worked separately.

Even more benefit could be realized at a permanent national facility for collaborative research in educational technology. We have dubbed this the "Educational Accelerator," analogous to shared facilities in science such as the Fermilab particle accelerator. Scientific labs like these are critical to advancing science because they enable researchers to collaborate on large-scale projects. Individual researchers can make important contributions without needing to create all the equipment, master all the sub-specialties, or administer the huge resources required.

An Educational Accelerator could provide exactly the same functions by combining in one place all the expertise needed in the following areas:

Software

Much of the innovation in educational technology requires new software with increased capacity and function. Projects need programmers who are familiar with education and cutting edge software development, and who can quickly generate new applications.

Materials

Testing with students often requires that new technologies be integrated with good materials using exemplary instructional strategies. This requires experts in instructional design, software design, and media integration who can generate the best possible materials. Most projects require the engagement of teachers, which demands expertise in professional development, often at a distance.

Schools and Students

Technology-rich materials can be tested with individual students, small numbers of classrooms, or entire schools. Schools need to be actively engaged in the research design, and committed to using the results. Recruiting, supporting, and retaining the schools and students, as well as providing the technology, is a major task facing all researchers.

Back-end Services

Most projects require servers to deliver the materials, collect student results and provide appropriate access to the materials for students, teachers, and researchers. These services need to be highly reliable and secure.

Research Expertise

Many researchers will need assistance in research design, the selection of sophisticated analysis tools, and help in data mining. Embedded assessment and other technology-based evaluation techniques are becoming a vital component of modern research in educational technology.

Through an Educational Accelerator facility, technologies and experts in all these areas would be available to qualified researchers. The actual research undertaken would be determined by the individual researchers within bounds set by the community of users. This natural evolution of the CILT experience could contribute the innovations and knowledge necessary to help schools realize the educational potential of technology.

Robert Tinker (bob@concord.org)
is President of the Concord Consortium

Article Links & Notes

Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT) - http://www.cilt.org

CILT is supported by National Science Foundation grant #EIA-0124012.

The projects described in this newsletter are supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the Noyce Foundation and others. All opinions, findings, and recommendations expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies. Mention of trade names, commercial products or organizations does not imply endorsement.

All Contents Copyright © 2002 The Concord Consortium. All rights reserved.