This NSDL Targeted Research project is part of a four-way collaborative effort involving 1043638, U. Colorado (lead institution); 1043858, Utah State University; 1043660, UCAR; and 1043717, the University of Utah. The investigators seek to understand the impact, replicability, and scalability of the NSDL Curriculum Customization Service (CCS) across four different school district deployment sites. CCS is a web-based software tool that enables teachers to: (1) customize their science instruction using digital library resources, formative assessments, and district-developed materials to aid student learning and (2) share these customizations as part of an online learning community. Three major themes guiding this research are: (i) impact on students (e.g. study of learning outcomes and self-reported engagement with science content); (ii) impact on teachers (e.g. examination of teachers' attitudes, beliefs, practices, and knowledge surrounding curriculum customization, integration of digital library resources in the classroom, and teacher learning) and (iii) how differences in deployment site characteristics (districts and schools) influence student learning outcomes and teachers' knowledge. The intellectual merit of the project lies in its grounding in a successful pilot study in which the Denver Public Schools adopted the CCS system for all its earth science teachers district-wide. With respect to broader impacts the project offers a model for the dissemination of educational technology through a key "unit" of the K-12 educational enterprise, namely adoption by the local school district.
Federal Award ID: 1043858 Overview The Curriculum Customization Service is an online cyberlearning tool that enables teachers to: (1) customize their science instruction using digital library resources, formative assessments, and district-developed materials to aid student learning and (2) share these customizations as part of an online learning community. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the educational impact of the CCS as an online digital planning tool for STEM education. Evaluation of impact was focused on student learning and teacher practice. Figure 1. Screenshot of the CCS interface, with identifying user information removed. Research The CCS was made available to Earth Science teachers in six major school districts in the U.S. intermountain west. Over 150 teachers received either face-to-face or online training in using the CCS to differentiate their instruction for diverse students and to integrate high-quality, interactive digital resources into their teaching. Data were gathered via a variety of rich methods to provide a complete picture of CCS usage and the contexts (e.g., school and district factors) that influenced adoption of the technology. These methods included weblogs of tool usage (providing detailed clickstream data of every user action in the CCS), phone interviews, online surveys, student assessments, classroom observations, and collection of demographic data published for each school district. Student assessment data was collected from over 2500 students across the course of this research. Findings Results demonstrated that the Curriculum Customization Service embodies a very effective model for significantly increasing teachers’ awareness and use of digital library resources in mainstream teaching. Over 90% of teachers reported that the CCS had changed their teaching practices and the ways in which they used interactive resources for science instruction. Results suggest that teachers’ interactions with specific components of the CCS may be most beneficial for student learning: analysis of students’ multiple choice and open-ended assessments demonstrates that focused interactions with interactive resources may support positive learning outcomes. Conclusions Overall, results from this research demonstrated that the CCS is an effective tool for meeting the goal for which it was designed: helping teachers plan and teach more efficiently and effectively, thus benefiting students. This project has informed the field’s understanding of how and when cyberlearning tools can be integrated into authentic STEM learning environments. It also has identified critical factors that influence the scalability, adoption, and assessment of cyberlearning tools in classroom environments. These factors include district support, professional development opportunities, availability of teacher-created materials, and smaller student-teacher ratios in science classrooms. This project has resulted in a promising cyberlearning model to support teacher planning and curriculum implementation; several publishers and developers of inquiry-oriented, research-based curricula have expressed interest in exploring the applicability of the model to other curricula. Publications Conference Proceedings Leary, H., Lee, V. R., & Recker, M. (2014). More than plain old technology adoption: Understanding Variations in Teachers’ Use of an Online Planning Tool. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference of the Learning Sciences, International Society of the Learning Sciences. Conference Papers and Presentations Leary, H., Lee, V. R., & Recker, M. (2014). A "Use Diffusion" Perspective on Teachers’ Adoption and Use of a Social Teaching Platform. Paper presentation at the. American Educational Research Association annual conference, Philadelphia, PA. Ye, L., Leary, H., Min, Y., Walker, A., and Recker, M. (2014). Expanding Approaches for Understanding Impact: Integrating Technology, Curriculum, and Online Resources in Science Education. American Educational Research Association Conference, Philadelphia, PA, USA Sellers, L., Recker, M., Lee, V., & Leary, H. (2013). A Tale of Two Teachers: An Exploratory Study of Internet Resource Use. Association for Educational Communications and Technology International Convention, Anaheim, CA. Anaheim, CA. Lee, V., Leary, H., Sellers, L., Recker, M. & Olsen, W. (2013). Examining the Role of District Science Coordinators in the Implementation of a Web-based Lesson-planning Tool for Teachers. American Educational Research Association annual conference, San Francisco, CA. Ye, L., Walker, A., Recker, M., Leary, H., Devaul, H., Butcher, K., & Sumner, T. (2013). Integrating Technology, Curriculum, and Online Resources: A Multilevel Model Study of Impacts on Science Teachers and Students. American Educational Research Association annual conference. San Francisco, CA. Sellers, L., Leary, H., Olsen, W., Lee, V., Recker, M., & Sumner, T. (2013). Understanding Teacher Use of an Online Curriculum Planning Tool. American Educational Research Association annual conference, San Francisco, CA. Lee, V., Recker, M., & Sumner, T. (2013). Variable Appropriate of an Online Resource Sharing Tool. CSCW & Education Workshop. San Antonio, Tx. Journals Lee, V. R., Leary, H. M., Sellers, L., & Recker, M. (2014). The role of school district science coordinators in the district-wide appropriation of an online resource discovery and sharing tool for teachers. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 23 (3), 309.
