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Information on IES-Funded Research
Grant Closed

Assessing Complex Performance: A Postdoctoral Training Program Researching Students Writing and Assessment in Digital Workspaces

NCER
Program: Research Training Programs in the Education Sciences
Program topic(s): Postdoctoral Research Training Program in the Education Sciences
Award amount: $659,375
Principal investigator: William Cope
Awardee:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Year: 2011
Award period: 3 years (07/01/2011 - 06/30/2014)
Project type:
Training
Award number: R305B110008

Purpose

Researchers trained six postdoctoral fellows for 2 years each to become well-rounded researchers. 

Project Activities

The research opportunities offered to fellows included (1) innovations in formative and summative assessment, (2) the development of methods for assessment of complex performance (such as writing), (3) the disciplinary practices of discipline areas captured in written reports and essays, and (4) the evaluation of a large-scale assessment tool used by the state of Illinois. Fellows selected a research project for concentrated involvement. Senior faculty/project members provided regular mentoring sessions, including individualized assistance with research and writing activities.

The fellows were involved in both individual and collaborative activities including auditing courses, participating in monthly College of Education seminars/discussion groups (with opportunities to present), involvement in team research activities (including developing research proposals and conducting pilot projects), making conference presentations, and writing and publishing research results.

Key outcomes

As of 2020, Dr. Bagley was the director at Project Drawdown, Dr. Blanken-Webb was an assistant professor in the School of Education at Wilkes University, Dr. Carlin-Menter was a research assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University at Buffalo-SUNY, Dr. Magnifico was an associate professor of English teaching at the University of New Hampshire, Dr. Olmanson was an associate professor of instructional technology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Dr. Smith was an assistant professor of secondary education at Illinois State University.

People and institutions involved

IES program contact(s)

Meredith Larson

Education Research Analyst
NCER

Project contributors

Hua-Hua Chang

Co-principal investigator

Mary Kalantzis

Co-principal investigator

Sarah McCarthey

Co-principal investigator

Katherine Ryan

Co-principal investigator

Hua-Hua Chang

Co-principal investigator

Dan Roth

Co-principal investigator

Completed fellows

Elizabeth Bagley

Jane Blanken-Webb

Shannon Carlin-Menter

Alecia Magnifico

Justin Olmanson

Anna Smith

Products and publications

Publications:

Book

Mills, K.A., Stornaiuolo, A., Smith, A. and Zacher Pandya, J., Editors. (2018). Handbook of Writing, Literacies, and Education in Digital Cultures. New York: Routledge.

Smith, A. (2015). Review of the One-on-One Reading and Writing Conference: Working With Students on Complex Texts. Teachers College Press, Columbia University.

Book chapter

Blanken-Webb, J. (2017). Metacognition: Cognitive Dimensions of e-Learning. In B. Cope, and M. Kalantzis (Eds.), e-Learning Ecologies: Principles for New Learning and Assessment. New York: Routledge.

Blanken-Webb, J. (2015). The Pedagogical Subject and Liberal Learning. In E. Durarte (Ed.), Philosophy of Education 2015 (pp. 93-95). Champaign, IL: Philosophy of Education Society.

Blanken-Webb, J. (2017). Dewey and the Self. Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. New York: Springer.

Halverson, E.R. and Magnifico, A.M. (2013). Bidirectional Artifact Analysis: A Method for Analyzing Digitally-Mediated Creative Processes. Handbook of Design in Educational Technology. Routledge, Taylor and Francis, Ltd.

Lammers, J.C., Magnifico, A.M., and Curwood, J.C. (2014). Exploring Tools, Places, and Ways of Being: Audience Matters for Developing Writers. In K. Pytash, and R. Ferdig (Eds.), Exploring Technology for Writing and Writing Instruction (pp. 186-201). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

McCarthey, S.J., Magnifico, A.M., Woodard, R.L., and Kline, S. (2014). Situating Technology-Facilitated Feedback and Revision: The Case of Tom. In K. Pytash, and R. Ferdig (Eds.), Exploring Technology for Writing and Writing Instruction (pp. 152-170). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Smith, A., and Kennett, K. (2017). Multimodal Meaning: Discursive Dimensions of e-learning. In B. Cope, and M. Kalantzis (Eds.), e-Learning Ecologies (pp. 88-117). New York: Routledge.

Smith, A., and Seglem, R. (2018). Emerging Media, Evolving Engagement: Expanding Teachers' Repertoires of Literary Study and Response. In J.S. Dail, S.Witte, and S.T. Bickmore, (Eds.). Toward a More Visual Literacy: Shifting the Paradigm with Digital Tools and Young Adult Literature (pp. 79-90). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Smith, A., Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (2018). The Quantified Writer: Data Traces in Education. In K.A. Mills, A. Stornaiuolo, A. Smith, and J. Pandya, (Eds.) Handbook of Writing, Literacies, and Education in Digital Cultures (pp 235-248). New York: Routledge.

Smith, A., D., J., and Zamora, M. (2017). Massive Open Online Courses. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Out-of-School Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Smith, A., McCarthey, S., and Magnifico, A. (2017). Recursive Feedback: Evaluative Dimensions of e-learning. In B. Cope, and M. Kalantzis (Eds.), e-Learning Ecologies (pp. 118-142). New York, NY: Routledge.

Stornaiuolo, A., Phillips, N., and Smith, A. (2017). Transliteracies. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Out-of-School Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Stornaiuolo, A., Smith, A., and Phillips, N. (2017). Transliteracies. Springer Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. New York, NY: Springer.

Journal article, monograph, or newsletter

Blanken-Webb, J. (2014). Expanding the Deweyan Self: Revisiting an Underexplored Past to Inform Future Inquiry. Philosophical Studies in Education, 45: 146-156. Full text

Blanken-Webb, J. (2017). Big Data's Call to Philosophers of Education. Philosophical Inquiry in Education, 24(4), 310-322. Full text

Chesler, N., Arastoopour, G., D'Angelo, C., Bagley, E., and Shaffer, D.W. (2013). Design of a Professional Practice Simulator for Educating and Motivating First-Year Engineering Students. Advances in Engineering Education, 3(3): 1-29.

Curwood, J.S., Magnifico, A.M., and Lammers, J.C. (2013). Writing in the Wild: Writers' Motivation in Fan-Based Affinity Spaces. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 56(8): 677-685. doi:10.1002/JAAL.192

Flewitt, R., Pahl, K., and Smith, A. (2015). Editorial: Methodology Matters. Literacy, 49(1): 1-2. doi:10.1111/lit.12047

Lammers, J.C., Curwood, J.S., and Magnifico, A.M. (2012). Toward an Affinity Space Methodology: Considerations for Literacy Research. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 11(2): 44-58. Full text

Magnifico, A.M. (2013). "Well, I Have to Write That:" A Cross-Case Qualitative Analysis of Young Writers' Motivations to Write. International Journal of Educational Psychology, 2(1): 1955. doi:10.4471/ijep.2013.17

Magnifico, A.M., Olmanson, J., and Cope, W. (2013). New Pedagogies of Motivation: Reconstructing and Repositioning Motivational Constructs in the Design of Learning Technologies. E-Learning and Digital Media, 10(4): 483-511. doi:10.2304/elea.2013.10.4.483

Olmanson, J., and Abrams, S. (2013). Constellations of Support and Impediment: Understanding Early Implementation Dynamics in the Research and Development of an Online Multimodal Writing and Peer Review Environment. E-Learning and Digital Media, 10(4): 357-377. doi:10.2304/elea.2013.10.4.357

Olmanson, J., Kennett, K., Magnifico, A., McCarthey, S., Searsmith, D., Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (2016). Visualizing Revision: Leveraging Student-Generated Between-Draft Diagramming Data in Support of Academic Writing Development. Technology, Knowledge and Learning, 21(1): 99-123.

Olmanson, J.D., Kennett, K.S., and Cope, B. (2015). The Techno-Pedagogical Pivot: Designing and Implementing a Digital Writing Tool. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, International Journal of Social, Behavioral, Educational, Economic, Business and Industrial Engineering, 9(7): 2273-2276.

Smith, A. (2015). The Serious Work of Writing. English Journal, 105(1): 81-84.

Smith, A. (2016). Your Voice in Mine. Digital Pedagogy Lab.

Smith, A., Hall, M., and Sousanis, N. (2015). Envisioning Possibilities: Visualising as Enquiry in Literacy Studies. Literacy, 49(1): 3-11. doi:10.1111/lit.12050

Smith, A., Stornaiuolo, A., and Phillips, N. C. (2018). Multiplicities in Motion: A Turn to Transliteracies. Theory Into Practice, 57(1), 20-28.

Smith, A., West-Puckett, S. Cantrill, C. and Zamora, M. (2016). Remix as Professional Learning: Educators' Iterative Literacy Practice in CLMOOC. Education Sciences, 6(1). doi:10.3390/educsci6010012

Stornaiuolo, A., Smith, A., and Phillips, N. (2017). Developing a Transliteracies Framework for a Connected World. Journal of Literacy Research, 49(1): 68-91. doi:10.1177/1086296X16683419

Woodard, R.L., Magnifico, A.M., and McCarthey, S.J. (2013). Supporting Teacher Metacognition About Formative Assessment in Online Writing Environments. E-Learning and Digital Media, 10(4): 442-469. doi:10.2304/elea.2013.10.4.442

Proceedings

Huang, C.K., Olmanson, J., Sung, W., and Chen, Y.H. (2012). FunWritr: An Open-Ended Language Exploration Playground Based on a Sextet of Design Parameters for CALL. In Proceedings of the 15 International Computer Assisted Language Learning Research Conference (CALL 2012), Volume 1 (pp. 277-283). Taichung, Taiwan: Providence University: University of Antwerp.

Magnifico, A.M. (2012). Audience Effects: A Bidirectional Artifact Analysis of Adolescents' Creative Writing. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of the Learning Sciences, Volume 2 (pp. 411-415). Sydney, Australia: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Magnifico, A.M., and Halverson, E.R. (2012). Bidirectional Artifact Analysis: A Method for Analyzing Creative Processes. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2012), Volume 2 (pp. 276-280). Sydney, NSW, Australia: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Magnifico, A.M., Lammers, J.C., and Curwood, J.S. (2013). Collaborative Learning Across Space and Time: Ethnographic Research in Online Affinity Spaces, Volume 2. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (pp. 81-84). Madison, WI: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Olmanson, J., Huang, C.-K., Scordino, R., and Lee, J. (2013). Designing FunWritr: Unpacking an Affinity-Based, Professionalizing, Graduate-Level Educational Technology Design Experience. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference for Design Education Researchers, Volume 1 (pp. 129-142). Oslo, Norway: Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences.

Olmanson, J., Huang, C.K., Sung, W., and Chen, Y.H. (2012). Writing to Learn: L2 Writing as a Gateway to Effective Implicit Vocabulary Learning and Language Acquisition via CALL. In Proceedings of the 15th International Computer Assisted Language Learning Research Conference (CALL 2012), Volume 1 (pp. 510-514). Taichung, Taiwan: Providence University, University of Antwerp.

Questions about this project?

To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.

 

Tags

Data and AssessmentsEducation TechnologyPolicies and StandardsWriting

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Questions about this project?

To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.

 

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