CIRCL News
“Ambitious mashups.” In a phrase, that’s what the CIRCL team is seeing as we review your current cyberlearning projects. Our project tag map indexes the breadth of our cyberlearning community via keywords like AI & Machine Learning, Collaborative learning, Augmented Reality, and learning about Engineering. But scratch beneath the surface and you’ll find surprising and innovative ways in which these and other themes are being juxtaposed in today’s cyberlearning innovations. And that’s exciting to us. Cyberlearning is the opportunity to explore frontiers of learning with technology that were unimaginable yesterday, are edgy today, and represent possible futures of learning tomorrow.
Looking for inspiration? Check out the 2020 STEM for All Video Showcase on May 5-12 for a stellar collection of three-minute videos from NSF projects. We’re expecting more than 50,000 people to attend. In the filter area, selecting the “cyberlearning” keyword can help you find relevant videos.
Need funding for a new ambitious mashup? We’ve got NSF funding opportunities, listed below.
Reflecting on your own ambitious mashup? We’re looking to publish rapid community reports that are design reflections on ambitious mashups in cyberlearning. Write us with your idea and we will give you guidance on how to write one.
2020 STEM For All Video Showcase – May 5-12
We’re looking forward to the cyberlearning presentations at the 2020 Video Showcase, where more than 170 federally-funded projects will share 3-minute videos of their innovations in STEM and computer science education in formal and informal settings. Browse the videos, lend your perspective, network with presenters and leaders in the field, and vote for your favorites. We hope you will join us in supporting your colleagues by viewing videos about their work and joining in the conversations.
Funding Opportunities
NSF Small Business Funding for Learning Technologies. Attend a webinar on May 5, 2020 from 11am-12pm PT / 2pm-3pm ET to learn more about small business funding from NSF to support research and development of technologies to enhance cyberlearning, learning engineering, and applications of learning modalities.
NSF Convergence Accelerator Phase I and II Track D, AI-driven Innovation via Data and Model Sharing, is of interest to the IIS community. Note in particular that the solicitation mentions the creation of a “Model Commons”. Phase I Preliminary Proposals due by May 11, 2020; Phase I Full Proposals (invitation only) due July 10, 2020.
NSF DCL: Cybersecurity Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence encourages new collaborations between the AI, cybersecurity, and education research communities. Research concept outlines due by May 15, 2020.
NSF DCL: Research Collaboration Opportunity in Europe for NSF Awardees invites current NSF grantees to submit supplemental funding requests for research visits to an appropriate ERC-funded European research group. Requests must be received by May 15, 2020.
NSF Multimodal Sensor Systems for Precision Health Enabled by Data Harnessing, Artificial Intelligence, and Learning (SenSE) invites proposals for research on innovative methodologies, theory, algorithms, and enabling technologies that will address the fundamental scientific issues and technological challenges associated with precision health. Proposals dues by June 8, 2020.
NSF Program on Fairness in Artificial Intelligence in Collaboration with Amazon invites proposals for computational research focused on fairness in AI. Specific topics of interest include transparency, explainability, accountability, potential adverse biases and effects, mitigation strategies, algorithmic advances, fairness objectives, validation of fairness, and advances in broad accessibility and utility. Proposals due by July 13, 2020.
World Bank Call for Proposals: Can technology accelerate learning and skills. The Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund (SIEF) invites proposals for evaluations that examine the extent to which technology can accelerate learning and skills for children and adults in low- and middle-income countries. Applications due June 1, 2020.
Conferences & Calls: LearnLab, NSF STEM DIVE, ICLS 2020, ICQE20
Simon Initiative’s LearnLab Summer School will be held remotely July 27-31, 2020. This intensive 5-day course will provide conceptual background knowledge on advanced technology for learning and hands-on experience with state-of-the-art development tools, as well as training in how to design, run, and analyze in vivo experiments. Apply by midnight on May 17, 2020.
The NSF STEM Diversity and Inclusion Video Exhibition (DIVE) Challenge will showcase short (1-3 minute) videos that illustrate how grantees have encouraged and supported diversity and inclusion in STEM preK-12, higher, and informal education. PIs/CoPI’s on any previous or currently funded NSF award are eligible to submit a video. Experts’ Choice awards ($2500) and People’s Choice Awards ($1250) will be given for the most compelling videos describing partnerships in the following categories: Informal STEM Education, PreK-12 STEM Education, STEM Higher Education, and STEM Alliances. The deadline for submission is June 25, 2020.
ICLS 2020 is moving to an online format due to COVID 19. Learn more.
The Second International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography (ICQE20) will take place October 24-27, 2020 at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. ICQE brings together scholars from any discipline interested in conducting rich qualitative analyses at scale. The submission deadline is June 15, 2020.
Featured Perspective: Meet Ana-Paula Correia
Ana-Paula Correia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and a faculty member with the Human-Computer Interaction graduate program at Iowa State University. Before that, she was a middle and high school science teacher in Portugual and also worked as an Assistant Professor in the Curriculum and Educational Technology department at the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal.
If there were ten million dollars for a new research center in cyberlearning, what would you want that center to focus on?
For starters, I would never want a ten million dollar center. If I get ten million dollars as a fund, I’m going to split that money and create one thousand hubs of innovation and creativity. These people—these young people—are so talented that get out of college so hungry with so much ambition. They might not want to work for someone. What if we spread out money and we are one thousand hubs, where two or three people that are hungry and ambitious and smart work? We can get out—even if we have only half of the people being really successful, we’re going to have five hundred solutions to problems. Read more of Ana’s perspective.
Job Opportunities
Also see #learningsciencesjobs and NSF EHR Job Openings
NSF invites applications for a permanent Program Director in the Cyber-Human Systems program to support research and education in artificial intelligence, data science, and human-computer interaction.
The Lynch School of Education at Boston College seeks a Visiting Assistant Professor to be affiliated with its new MA Program in Learning Engineering.
Utah State University seeks an Assistant/Associate Professor in the Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences department with scholarly and applied expertise in one or more of the following areas: games studies, learning experience design, and/or library and information studies.
Resource & Tech Corner
The ACM Digital Library is open (no access fees) through June 30, 2020 to help support research, discovery, and learning during this time of crisis. ACM hopes this will help researchers, practitioners, and students maintain access to our publications as well as increase visibility and awareness of ACM’s journals, proceedings, and magazines.
CADRE offers online learning resources to support remote learning collected from their DRK-12 community, including activities (online curricula, modules, and/or simulations), tools (apps and general resources), and tips, filterable by discipline and grade level.
STELAR offers COVID-19 resources to help NSF projects, including items provide by NSF and colleagues at Education Development Center (EDC), the Community for Advancing Discovery Research in Education (CADRE), the Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) and CIRCL.
Publications
The White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) has released the report American AI Initiative: Year One Annual Report to mark critical milestones made since February 2019. Many of the milestones reflect work supported by IIS. Learn more about AI R&D across the federal government.
Following on their Digitally-Mediated Team Learning workshop whitepaper, Ronald DeMara and colleagues have a new poster in Proceedings of the 2019 ASEE conference and a new, related NSF award.
Share Your News
Have some news (project highlights, publications, resources, job opportunities, etc.) that you want to share in our next newsletter? Contact CIRCL.
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CIRCL is supported by NSF grants IIS-1233722, IIS-1441631, and IIS-1556486. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.