Two shifts mentioned by Mishra, Koehler, and Greenhow (2015) feel highly relevant to my future trajectory as a scholar. First, their discussion of how technology brings about new and emergent phenomena to study reminded me of some of the key reasons I entered graduate school. I worked in a world of print mathematics curricula for a long while. When digital versions of curriculum components (manipulatives, textbooks, assessments, and so on) started to become common, I quickly realized I had many new questions. The questions started as, “Which is better: physical or digital?”, but as noted by Mishra, Koehler, and Greenhow, the boundaries between the physical and digital categories are became more and more blurred. Soon my questions became much more nuanced, for example, “What’s the advantage of having digital tangram pieces automatically snap together, and when is this useful for whom?”
Relatedly, Mishra, Koehler, and Greenhow’s (2015) discussion of the availability of new kinds of data, such as user data and eye-tracking data, has the potential to greatly impact how I design future studies. Past studies of students’ use of physical manipulatives tended to rely on observation data filtered through an observer and then coded (Carbonneau, Marley, & Selig, 2013); now user data can track students’ mouse clicks and movements with virtual manipulatives. Similarly, past studies of teachers’ use of curriculum materials tended to rely on self-report of what teachers read (Remillard, 2005); now eye-tracking data could be used to help design custom curriculum materials that only show the information teachers use.
References
Carbonneau, K. J., Marley, S. C., & Selig, J. P. (2013). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of teaching mathematics with concrete manipulatives. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(2), 380–400.
Remillard, J. T. (2005). Examining key concepts in research on teachers’ use of mathematics curricula. Review of Educational Research, 75(2), 211–246.
Hi Katie,
I am interested the last sentence of your response when you state that, “…now eye-tracking data could be used to help design custom curriculum materials that only show the information teachers use.” In what way do you see eye-tracking helping to design these custom curriculum materials? I agree that eye tracking could create useful data to investigate a wide range of phenomenon in virtual environments. I am interested in engagement in virtual settings, and eye-tracking may help to illuminate students’ level of engagement when working within such environments. Do you have any other ideas about technological tools which may be used to enhance our understanding of how digital manipulatives might be useful for students?
Matthew,
That last sentence stems from my experience as a writer of teacher’s guides. We wrote pages and pages of material for teachers to read, and knew full well not all of it got read. Still, when we asked for feedback generally users told us that the info was useful to have there. The tension was in seeing it at the moment it was useful — but it was generally hard for teachers to articulate what those moments were. I think eyetracking data might help us better understand how to make the most useful information accessible to teachers at the point of use.
As to VMs, my first thought is that we could examine records of the evolution of students’ work with VMs while solving a problem. We can do this with video data to a limited extent now, but digital traces from the tools themselves would be much easier to collect at high volumes. Much like teachers like kids to show their work, I would like to see kids’ “work” with VMs instead of just seeing or hearing about the results of that work.
Hi Katie – I was happy to see you are considering eye-tracking technology. I used this before when I was doing research on Miranda waivers. We had participants read a standard Miranda waiver and tracked their eye movements to determine which parts were unclear. The hope was to design better waiver forms that were easier to understand. I think this would be super cool to do with digital manipulates. As a teacher, you HOPE students are paying attention to this important thing (whatever it may be) but you never know. I think this technology provides a great opportunity to understand how students use these tools and how they can be made better!
Hi, Katie. I think you’ve identified a great research opportunity: using new kinds of digital data to study various learning phenomena. Although Mishra, Koehler and Greenhow (2015) wrote about this a couple years ago, there still aren’t a lot of studies tapping into this potential trove of interesting research material.
Chris may have mentioned that she is leading a research team reviewing research over the past 14 years connected to social media and learning. Sarah and I are part of that team. We have been disappointed to see so few studies using analytics. Instead, many studies are still relying on surveys to ask people how they’re using social media versus collecting information on posts and clicks that would honestly portray how people are using social media.
Here’s one study that’s an exception; it’s among the few in our dataset that does use analytic data:
Goodyear, V. A., Casey, A., & Kirk, D. (2014). Tweet me, message me, like me: using social media to facilitate pedagogical change within an emerging community of practice. Sport, Education and Society, 19(7), 927-943.
Perhaps you may find it interesting.
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