The purpose of the Working Sessions at Cyberlearning 2017 is to bring together groups of people to work on issues relating to the future of the cyberlearning community. The sessions will produce an artifact and lead to concrete next steps for the groups.

This year, the two sessions (day one and day two) will focus on different agendas. On day one, we will convene groups around six selected topics that reflect the Big Ideas of NSF and other pertinent topics for our community. Each participant should select the topic that best matches their interest and together work on a writing project (e.g., writing a primer or blog post, editing a NSF solicitation). On day two, we will convene groups that will be tasked with focusing on a future-oriented project (e.g., a workshop proposal, a journal for the cyberlearning community). Some groups will be new groups and some will carry-over from day one depending on interest.

Working Sessions: Day One

The day one working session groups will be working on writing tasks around six different topics. Four of the topics are closely related to NSF’s Big Ideas and the last two are other topics of interest for our community. Possible writing projects include:

• Suggesting edits for a relevant NSF solicitation that will benefit (or reflect the priorities of) the cyberlearning community (this can include either changing wording/language in the solicitation or identifying gaps that need to be addressed)
• Writing a primer for the CIRCL website on this topic
• Writing a blog post for researchers interested in new work in this area
• Writing something for teachers, other practitioners, or ed tech developers that gives a perspective on cyberlearning research that has been done in this area
• Write testimonials about how the cyberlearning community has impacted your work in this area

INCLUDES – Diversity and Broadening Participation
Salon 2
This NSF Big Idea topic is focused on issues relating to expanding and diversifying the composition of the science and engineering workforce. This topic has its own NSF proposal call and so there is an opportunity to suggest edits to the solicitation that will better reflect the perspectives of the cyberlearning community and our research.

Data Science for 21st Century STEM Learning
Ballroom D
This topic is closely related to the NSF Big Idea of harnessing data for 21st century science and engineering. While some of the work in this topic area is focused on students using publicly available datasets for learning, other work is focused on students learning and using data science ideas and techniques.

Human-Technology Frontier
Ballroom E
The Big Idea is focused on workforce issues, but we hope that this topic can inspire more cyberlearning applications for classrooms and informal learning settings. This topic covers areas like collaboration, robotics, and tools for use in classroom learning.

Convergent Research
Salon 3
This topic is focused on the challenges and affordances of research that converges across disciplines. While cyberlearning work is inherently convergent, there is work to be done about how best to seek out good opportunities for innovative convergent research and then foster those interdisciplinary working relationships.

Media and Computational Literacy
Ballroom C
This topic is more relevant than ever, with the proliferation of online media and content that students (and adults) must be able to sift through to effectively make sense of the world around us.

Smart and Connected Communities
Salon 1
This topic has its own NSF solicitation call and the community around this topic has grown over the last few years. This working session group can focus on refining ideas and developing priorities for the smart and connected communities research agenda.

Working Sessions: Day Two

The day two working sessions will be focused on future-oriented (short-term, in the next year) projects. (Room assignments will be announced during the morning overview.)

• Workshops. A small number of follow-on workshops will be funded for later in 2017 and early 2018 that will convene groups of researchers focused on an area of research or cyberlearning genre.
• CIRCL is looking to fund approximately four workshops at around $50,000 each. The workshops will need to produce a written report as one of the outcomes. The proposals for the workshops will be due in May and will be notified of acceptance in early summer.
• Journal or society for cyberlearning. One way to continue the community around CIRCL is to formalize it through a journal and/or a society that will foster this kind of work into the future.
• Special issue to a journal. Work on a special issue to an established journal about the cyberlearning community.
• Webinars. Work on the plan/outline for a webinar (or series of webinars) to help continue the community/knowledge sharing.