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Dynamic Digital Text: An Innovation in STEM Education

A radical rethinking of content, organization, and interaction of digital STEM content for school and college level education.

Spell out acronym here. 

– Funded by The National Science Foundations DRK-12 Program.

This project aims to design the next generation of digital STEM content for school and college level education which we call a dynamic digital text by radically rethinking content, organization, and interaction. To realize this vision, this project aims to:

  1. Develop a theoretical framework for dynamic digital text, with concept maps as the foundation for knowledge organization and navigation, embedded interactive exercises and engaging visualizations as
    the foundation for on-line assessments, and an inquiry-based pedagogy designed specifically around digital text as the foundation for teaching and learning in the classroom.
  2. Test the theory by developing digital texts with rich interaction and navigation functionalities, with content for two domains (science and computing), for two levels (middle school and college), and in two
    languages (Finnish and English). We will design and conduct appropriate evaluation studies in two cultural/educational contexts (United States and Finland).
  3. Develop a novel design and architecture for dynamic digital textbooks for STEM using data and knowledge created in the previous steps.

Collaborators include:
Dr. Ari Korhonen (Senior Research Scientist in Computer Science, Aalto University)
Dr. Mirjamaija Mikkila-Erdmann (Professor of Education, University of Turku)
Dr. Hari Narayanan (Professor of Computer Science & Software Engineering, Auburn University)
Dr. Jenni Paakkonen (Senior Researcher, Government Institute for Economic Research),
Dr. Roope Raisamo (Professor of Computer Science and Human-Technology Interaction, University of Tampere)
Dr. Cliff Shaffer (Professor of Computer Science, Virginia Tech).