The Assess-As-You-Go Writing Assistant will be an online writing environment which, via a combination of tagging, social networking, and natural language processing technologies, gives learners constant feedback on their writing in the form of on-demand, as-you-go formative assessment. The Writing Assistant will also track individual learner progress, the progress of cohorts, and the progress of individuals in relation to cohorts—thus providing summative assessment data which meets teacher, school, parent, and community accountability requirements at least as rigorously as—and we would hope potentially more rigorously than—today’s summative assessments.

The Postdoctoral Fellows Program provides a breadth and depth of research-related experiences to prepare fellows for full engagement in academic professional life. Senior faculty/project members will provide mentoring. Researchers will train four Postdoctoral Fellows for 2 years in this program. The research opportunities offered include: (1) innovations in formative and summative assessment; (2) development of methods for assessment of complex performance; (3) disciplinary practices of discipline areas captured in written reports and essays; and (4) exploration of the affordances of social media for peer-to-peer learning. Fellows will select a research project for concentrated involvement.

This study assists educators in conducting an inquiry into the very purposes and values of an education intended to shape students to be citizens of the United States and informed participants in global matters. To this end, the project researchers will describe the various ways in which teachers, school boards and administrators understand the nature and purpose of teaching about religion, evaluate the extent to which teachers provide accurate understanding of religious ideas, and probe the concepts of citizenship implicit in these courses. The role courses in religion could play in public education in the United States will be assessed.

The project's goal is to enable Fudan University's School of Philosophy to establish philosophy of education as a discipline in China and to philosophically inform Chinese educational research and policy. Fudan is working to shape a scholarly tradition in China, a new philosophy of education, one that will have its own association, journals, and graduate program.

This project creates a national portal and online resource center for professional and research ethics in science, mathematics, and engineering. The portal provides information and expertise for instructors, students, researchers, administrators, and scholars incorporating existing resources and developing new materials. Project goals include: 1) sustainable access to online digital library; 2) bridge across areas of research and professional ethics; 3) creation of innovative research and ethics curricular materials; and, 4) forums and discussion boards that promote communities of practice. The synergistic component technologies for the hybrid technical infrastructure will serve as a model for other comprehensive online resource centers.

This project contributes to understanding of key factors affecting underrepresented students’ matriculation and degree completion in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. It seeks insights on how postsecondary institutions can use interventions to promote persistence and attainment. Findings will inform policymakers and postsecondary administrators about “successful” interventions. Programmatically, the results can help inform the development and implementation of interventions to attract and retain underrepresented students. The study aids in identifying how interventions offered by institutions impact underrepresented students’ enrollment, persistence, and success in STEM fields.

This three-year study examines the matriculation, persistence, and degree attainment of full-time, first-time enrolled women, minorities, and low-income undergraduate students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields at a consortium of large research universities. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used to comprehensively examine factors and programs that impact underrepresentation in these fields at universities that are significant producers of the nation’s STEM degrees. Consideration is given to individual, institutional, and cross-cutting factors. This study contributes to institutional effectiveness by identifying structural impediments to persistence in STEM fields and suggesting changes in practice and policy.