Carlos Monroy

STEMscopes: contextualizing learning analytics in a K-12 science curriculum

In this paper, we discuss a scalable approach for integrating learning analytics into an online K-12 science curriculum. A description of the curriculum and the underlying pedagogical framework is followed by a discussion of the challenges to be tackled as part of this integration. We also include examples of data visualization based on real student and teacher data. With more than one million students and fifty thousand teachers using the curriculum, a massive and rich dataset is continuously updated. This repository depicts teacher and students usage of an inquiry-based science program, and offers exciting opportunities to leverage research to improve both teaching and learning. The growing dataset, with more than a hundred million items of activity in six months, also poses technical challenges such as data storage, complex aggregation and analysis with broader implications for pedagogy, big data, and learning.

A multilingual approach to technical manuscripts: 16th and 17th-century Portuguese shipbuilding treatises

Shipbuilding treatises are technical manuscripts written in a variety of languages and spanning several centuries that describe the construction of ships. Given their technical content, understanding terms, concepts, and construction sequences is a challenging task. In this paper we describe a scalable approach and a multilingual web-based interface for enabling a group of scholars to edit a glossary of nautical terms in multiple languages.

Using an ontology and a multilingual glossary for enhancing the nautical archaeology digital library

Access to materials in digital collections has been extensively studied within digital libraries. Exploring a collection requires customized indices and novel interfaces to allow users new exploration mechanisms. Materials or objects can then be found by way of full-text, faceted, or thematic indexes. There has been a marked interest not only in finding objects in a collection, but in discovering relationships and properties. For example, multiple representations of the same object enable the use of visual aids to augment collection exploration. Depending on the domain and characteristics of the objects in a collection, relationships among components can be used to enrich the process of understanding their contents. In this context, the Nautical Archaeology Digital Library (NADL) includes multilingual textual- and visual-rich objects (shipbuilding treatises, illustrations, photographs, and drawings). In this paper we describe an approach for enhancing access to a collection of ancient technical documents, illustrations, and photographs documenting archaeological excavations. Because of the nature of our collection, we exploit a multilingual glossary along with an ontology. Preliminary tests of our prototype suggest the feasibility of our method for enhancing access to the collection.

Visualizing and exploring Picasso's world

We discuss the preliminary use of a visualization tool called interactive timeline viewer (ItLv) in visualizing and exploring a collection of art works by Pablo Ruiz Picasso. Our data set is composed of a subset of the Online Picasso Project, a significantly sized online art repository of the renowned Spanish artist. We also include a brief discussion about how this visualization tool can help art scholars to study and analyze an artists life and works.

Toward a New Approach to the Evaluation of a Digital Curriculum Using Learning Analytics

Abstract Understanding how an educational intervention is implemented is essential to evaluating its effectiveness. With the increased use of digital tools in classrooms, however, traditional methods of measuring implementation fall short. Fortunately, there is a way to learn about the interactions that users have with digital tools that are embedded into the technologies themselves: user data. The purpose of this article is to outline ways in which researchers can harness learning analytics and user data to gain a deeper understanding of the implementation of digital innovations and their impact on teaching and learning. We discuss four considerations for the integration of learning analytics and user data in implementation research, and we provide an example of integration from an evaluation of a digital science curriculum, STEMscopes.

Digital Donne: workflow, editing tools, and the reader.s interface of a collection of 17th-century english poetry

We describe a multidisciplinary effort in the creation of an electronic repository of poems of John Donne - the renowned 17th-century English poet. We discuss the workflow we have adopted and the Web-based tools we have developed for maintaining a collection of transcriptions and images, a concordance of poems, a list of press variants, and a browsing interface that enables readers to access these materials. A complement to the multi-volume Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, this endeavor shows how a traditional scholarly edition can be enhanced by resources made available by computers and the Internet.

Texts, illustrations, and physical objects: the case of ancient shipbuilding treatises

One of the main goals of the Nautical Archaeology Digital Library (NADL) is to assist nautical archaeologists in the reconstruction of ancient ships and the study of shipbuilding techniques. Ship reconstruction is a specialized task that requires supporting materials such as reference to fragments and timbers recovered from other excavations and consultation of shipbuilding treatises. The latter are manuscripts written in a variety of languages and spanning several centuries. Due to their diverse provenance, technical content, and time of writing, shipbuilding treatises are complex written sources. In this paper we discuss a digital library approach to handle these manuscripts and their multilingual properties (often including unknown terms and concepts), and how scholars in different countries are collaborating in this endeavor. Our collection of treatises raises interesting challenges and provides a glimpse of the relationship between texts and illustrations, and their mapping to physical objects.

Integrating diverse research in a digital library focused on a single author

The works of a significant author are accompanied by a variety of artifacts ranging from the scholarly to the popular. In order to better support the needs of the scholarly community, digital libraries focused on the life and works of a particular author must be designed to assemble, integrate, and present the full scope of these artifacts. Drawing from our experiences with the Cervantes Project, we describe five intersecting domains that are common to similarly focused humanities research projects. Integrating the tools needed and the artifacts produced by each of these domains enables digital libraries to provide unique connections between diverse research communities.

Integrating collections at the cervantes project

Unlike many efforts that focus on supporting scholarly research by developing large-scale, general resources for a wide range of audiences, we at the Cervantes Project have chosen to focus more narrowly on developing resources in support of ongoing research about the life and works of a single author, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616). This has lead to a group of hypertextual archives, tightly integrated around the narrative and thematic structure of Don Quixote. This project is typical of many humanities research efforts and we discuss how our experiences inform the broader challenge of developing resources to support humanities research

Teachers’ Sensemaking and Data Use Implementation in Science Classrooms

Accountability policies assume that educators will use student data to improve student learning, but data use in practice has turned out to be harder than theorized. The purpose of this article was to examine how science teachers in Grades 5 to 8 used data in their classrooms. Utilizing sensemaking theory, we found that teachers decided how to use data based on district and school policies and expectations around assessment and data use, balancing those messages with their own understandings of science education. In practice, this led to the privileging of certain kinds of assessment and data use at the expense of others.