Targeted, Tailored, and Timely Interventions through Mobile Technology
PI: Geoffrey Cohen
Research has made it increasingly clear that brief interventions can have large effects when they are well-targeted, tailored, and timed. That is, the “right” person receives the “right” message at the “right” time (Cohen & Sherman, 2014; Cohen, Garcia, & Goyer, in press). For example, a high school student who is intimidated by the application process for financial aid might receive, a few days before the deadline, a reassuring word of encouragement and a reminder to apply. The intervention seems small but, because it occurs at a critical moment, it can have disproportionate impact. Apps permit a high degree of targeting, tailoring, and timeliness at an unprecedented scale, offering the possibility of large-scale, impactful, and scientifically-informed social change. TELOS funds will be used to complete development of our app, currently a prototype, and to support the experimental evaluation of its efficacy. Once developed, we anticipate the app will offer a cost-effective way to close opportunity gaps at scale while still maintaining the personalization of small-scale psychological interventions.
Playful Science for Families
PI: Shelley Goldman
Ideas about what science is and how to engage in science learning tend to be based on the science people have been exposed to in school. Many parents worry that they do not “know” enough science to be “helpful” and “correct” with their children. Using TELOS funds to design a mobile app called “Playful Science for Families,” we aim to introduce a “playful” version of science for families with children ages 4-9. The app helps families engage science, introducing activities that are easy to carry out in everyday activities and contexts. The activities emphasize exploration, observation, sensemaking, and questioning. The app also enables families to create their own science activities that they can use and submit to us for possible publication to other families in updated versions. The hope is that the app will prompt playful science learning for thousands of families so that children have many opportunities to build foundational practices and dispositions that complement the science they will engage in school. Our team’s research focuses on understanding how families take up and enact science on their own terms and in their own spaces. The app platform enables research with a larger number of families, as we can collect anonymous user data within the app.
Bringing Online Computer Assisted Learning to Rural Areas in China
PI: Prashant Loyalka
We have proven in randomized trials that computer assisted learning (CAL) works. However, we have not proven why it works. TELOS funds will be used to develop and evaluate an online CAL package that is tailored to China’s national curriculum. Since we will have control of the delivery environment and the content of the software, we will be able to determine what mechanism best produces student gains when using CAL. We have thousands of CAL questions provided by the most trusted educational institutions in China and our software allows us to match questions to individual students. This unique capability to adapt learning material allows our software to determine which dynamics are most important to each student, and to respond by driving up exercises according to those parameters. This individualization is important in China’s fast-paced, rigid curriculum. In rural areas, where there is more danger of children falling behind their urban peers, remedial tutoring is often unavailable. Because of this, we want to move CAL forward and make it available and useful for millions of students in rural China to help close the gap.
Science in the City: The Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Approach to Virtual Reality Science Lessons
PI: Bryan Brown
Many of the current projects associated with virtual reality focus on taking students out of their community to explore the possibilities of faraway locations. In contrast, this project proposes taking students through three contexts, including their own community. From a macro perspective we take students to places they are physically unable to experience. On a meso level, students experience locations in their own surroundings to study scientific concepts. Finally, on the micro level students are taken inside micro phenomena to understand how they work. TELOS funds will be used to study the implementation of virtual reality science lessons to understand how students and teachers respond to, and are impacted by, culturally relevant virtual reality in their classrooms. This project furthers the TELOS goals by supporting traditionally underserved communities. The participating schools are minority-serving institutions comprised of mostly low-income African-American and Mexican-American communities. The project anticipates having a lasting impact on these schools even after its completion. We will provide participating teachers with professional development in teaching science, emphasizing how to use technology for science teaching and modeling ways to integrate culturally empowering pedagogy with tech-based education. Additionally, we anticipate a potential product of this project to be a series of culturally relevant science lessons that can be distributed to urban elementary schools nationwide.
