The Annual Meeting of the Association for Education Communications and Technology (AECT) provides a forum for interchange of ideas around designing technological support for learning and training. Its Early Career Symposia provide an avenue for early career scholars to receive mentoring from established researchers.
The 2012 Annual Meeting has the theme, "Learning in an Age of Globalization," and mentors for the Early Career Symposium are among the leaders in this area and, more generally, instructional and educational technology. This project supports travel for advanced graduate students and new faculty from U.S. universities to attend the Annual Meeting and Early Career Symposium. Sessions during the Symposium are designed to help collaborators imagine forward-looking and viable technology-oriented research agendas, identify the types of collaborators who complement their strengths, and identify the funding agencies and programs that might support their work. An important goal of the Symposium is to add to the community of researchers interested in ways that technology can transform teaching and learning.
This activity supports the mission of NSF to train more advanced professionals in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. This conference is one among many that researchers in the cyberlearning community regularly attend. Mentors come from the AECT community as well as from the learning sciences community.
In 2011 the National Science Foundation provided funding for a highly successful Early Career Symposium at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education Communications and Technology. Due to the success of the previous two symposia, AECT continued this effort for another cadre' of scholars. This symposium provided an avenue for early career scholars to receive mentoring from established researchers. The NSF AECT Early Career Symposium took place at the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) Annual International Convention in Louisville, Kentucky on October 30-31, 2012. The Early Career Symposium was built from our observation that synergistic collaborations are one of the fundamental elements for sparking innovative research endeavors. After all, good ideas are stimulated by conversations with others who share interests. The Early Career Symposium created these conversations in a way that was supportive across all stages of career growth. The intended outcomes of the Early Career Symposium included: mentoring of advanced doctoral students into the social/professional network as partners in idea-making supporting advanced doctoral students and early career faculty in developing viable technology-oriented research agendas providing specific feedback and guidance to advanced doctoral students and early career faculty about their research agendas ? providing information about building a research agenda, pursuing funding, and building collaborations developing a community of researchers interested in ways technology can transform teaching and learning Symposium Schedule Day One 8:00-8:30 Introductions & Getting Started 8:30-11:00 Panel Discussion 1: Creating a Research Agenda (Veletsianos) 11:00-12:30 Small Group Follow-up Discussion and Mentoring with Individual Feedback 12:30-1:30 Working Lunch: Community Building 1:30-3:00 Panel Discussion 2: What counts as good research? (Hokanson) 4:00-5:00 Small Group Follow-up Discussion and Mentoring with Individual Feedback Day Two 8:00–9:30 Panel Discussion 3: Securing Funding for your Work (Wiley) 9:30-11:00 Work with Mentor 11:00-12:00 Discussion with Yong Zhao (Opening Keynote Speaker): Future of Learning with Technology, Future Research Trends 12:00-1:00 Working Lunch: Community Building – Early Career Symposium Alumni and past mentors will be invited Evaluation Nine early career faculty and nine advanced doctoral students were grouped with three mid-career or senior mentors. Participants were satisfied with the symposium and gained valuable information on how to construct a technology-oriented research agenda, how to apply for research project funding, as well as how to be productive as an academic professional. Mentoring themes resulting from the symposium included: Develop a Clear Research Agenda Conduct Research that has a Broader Impact on the World Network and Collaborate with Established Scholars Publicize Research Agenda and Ideas Design Interdisciplinary Research Projects Be Consistent about Writing. Set Priorities Find Balance
