What a Paper Trail!
One thing that hasn't changed in the history of the Center for Educational Technologies is the amount of research our educational experts do each year and the many presentations we do and papers we write to disseminate our findings. 2010 was no different. However, perhaps the biggest accomplishment in 2010 was creating a thorough database of all our papers and presentations we could gather over the last 15-plus years that we've been in business. Now when you visit the Publications section of the Center for Educational Technologies website, you'll find that work organized by year. It's voluminous. Nearly 250 papers, presentations, book chapters and the like are listed. Many of them are linked to the actual paper and presentation so that you see the source document.
Here are some of the presentations and publications we did in 2010:
- Dr. Laurie Ruberg, associate director of the Center for Educational Technologies, presented "Process Evaluation of an Immersive Learning Experience for Grades K-4 Youth," an evaluation of the new Micronauts facility, at the annual meeting of the American Evaluation Association. Coauthors were Dr. Debra Burkey Piecka, Jackie Shia, Cassie Lightfritz, and Annie Morgan of the Center for Educational Technologies.
- Curriculum writer Tamie Shiplett presented "NASA Data, Students, and the Climatic Impact of Volcanoes" at the West Virginia Science Teachers Association (WVSTA) annual conference.
- Dr. Debbie Denise Reese, senior educational researcher, presented "To the Moon Through Virtual Worlds and Game-based Learning" at WVSTA.
- Dr. Chuck Wood, director of the Center for Educational Technologies, presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Rome a poster session on the MoonWorld virtual environment developed by the NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future. The poster, "MoonWorld: Exploring the Moon in Virtual Worlds," was coauthored by Reese and Ruberg.
- Reese is coauthor of an article published in the journal, Educational Psychology. The article is titled, "Elaborated Metaphors Support Viable Inferences About Difficult Science Concepts." The lead author is Dr. Virginia Diehl of Western Illinois University.
- The 2011 Educational Media and Technology Yearbook (Vol. 36), which is still in press, will feature a chapter from Reese. Her chapter will be entitled "An Instructional Design Approach to Effective Instructional Game Design and Assessment."
- Reese spoke about MoonWorld to participants at the Technology Training for Science Teachers for San Antonio College online session in April.
- Reese presented the best practices of the MoonWorld development in the guise of her Second Life virtual world avatar, Frecka Salsman, at a presentation delivered in March via virtual technology for the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VW-BPE) conference, in which participants of virtual worlds shared current teaching, learning, and research practices in 3D virtual environments.
- The flowometer tool used in the Selene videogame to measure players' engagement in the game is the subject of a chapter by Reese in a newly published book investigating the effect of videogames on human cognition. The book is titled Gaming & Cognition: Theories and Perspectives from the Learning Sciences. Reese's chapter is "Introducing Flowometer: A CyGaMEs Assessment."
- Reese presented "Learning New Things Through Gaming: One Company's Journey Toward CyGaMEs Expertise" at the Games, Learning, and Society Conference 6.0.
- Wood presented "MoonWorld: Implementation of Virtual Lunar Exploration" at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The paper was coauthored by Reese, Ruberg, Andrew Harrison, and Cassie Lightfritz, along with Avatrian, the software developer working on the MoonWorld project.
- The article, "Effect of Live Simulation on Middle School Students' Attitudes and Learning Toward Science," was published in a special issue of the Journal of Educational Technology and Society. The article was written by two former researchers at the Center for Educational Technologies, Dr. Bruce Howard and Dr. Ching-Huei "Karen" Chen.
- Reese presented "CyGaMEs: A Full-service Instructional Design Model Harnessing Game-based Technologies for Learning and Assessment" at the Third Biannual Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) Research Symposium.
- Reese's CyGaMEs research at the Center for Educational Technologies was one of only four projects funded through the National Science Foundation REESE program invited to present at the 2010 annual conference of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness.