Workshops & Tutorials

Anyone can analyze quantitative data (with a little help)

In this workshop, participants will be taken through an end-to-end data cleaning, manipulation, visualization and presentation pipeline, starting with raw data and focusing primarily on Learning Sciences research data. We envision four different roles for participants: (1) data presenters (2) methods experts, (3) python programmers and (4) general attendees. Data presenters will be responsible for bringing data that can be shared amongst participants; methods experts will bring with them a deep understanding of at least one quantitative analytic technique, and programmers will bring their expertise in implementing analyses in python. All participants will leave with Jupyter notebooks suitable for reflection, review, and future analyses. The use of GPT-based models as AI pair-programmers will be demonstrated.

Emerging Approaches to Collaborative Education Research: Learning, Unlearning, and Relearning through Critical Attention to Tensions

Are you interested in engaging in collaborative educational research and have a passion for learning? Do you value equity, justice, and social change but face partnership constraints or struggle to make space for self-care or community care?

In this half-day workshop, we will come together to name the tensions that arise when we center justice and equity in research and knowledge production processes, including the design and implementation of inclusive and equitable learning environments. Through individual storytelling and collective performances, we invite you to grapple with tensions inherent in existing academic conventions and ideologies, to imagine new possibilities that will allow us to center diverse ways of knowing in design research and expand our professional identities as learning scientists. We hope to generate new forms of learning and engineer social change processes that will build our collective capacity to address social justice and equity issues through collaborative education research within and beyond this community. The workshop will be split into 3 phases:

• Phase 1 – Build Community and Create a Sense of Belonging. In the beginning phase, we’ll create ground rules to build a safe space in the workshop.
• Phase 2 – Experience Tensions through Storytelling and Reflections. In this phase, performers and the audience will have a chance to observe and reflect on the consequences and possibilities that arise when rules are breached during collaborative education research.
• Phase 3 – (Re-)Shape Future Directions. In this phase, the group will sit in tension once more to reinforce that leaning into the discomfort enables us to learn more about ourselves, our relationships, and our collaborations.

In response to the theme of “Building knowledge and sustaining our community,” we invite all early scholars, practitioners, activists, artists, and professionals across disciplines to join our conversation and help us reflect on these two big questions, “Who produces knowledge and knowledge for whom?” and “Whose voices are we missing in our community?” All are welcome to share what is learned, unlearned, and relearned through our collective performances. We will reflect and brainstorm possible tools and artifacts – such as vision statements, working documents, dialogue excerpts, and artwork – and publish them on the RESHAPE website.

The workshop organizers are members of an inter-institutional network of early career education scholars & practitioners dedicated to enacting anti-racist, equitable, and transformative community-driven partnerships called Rising Educational Scholars Helping Advance Partnerships & Equity (RESHAPE). We have invited Dr. Indigo Esmonde (Daydreams and Associates) to co-create novel and creative ways to engage with tensions along the spectrum of activities involved in collaborative education research.

Engaging with Learning Experience Design [Tutorial]

Over the past few years, the term “learning experience design” has crept into the instructional design lexicon. But what is it really and how does it contrast with the longer-known instructional design? This tutorial provides an overview. Taking a design-sprint approach, this tutorial engages participants in performing some the essential design challenges and uses the debriefing of those experiences to explore instructional design approaches of analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation with learning experience design approaches like use cases, personas, learning journeys, and prototyping. When doing so, this tutorial explores the relationship of learning experience design to instructional design, the benefits of learning experience design, and ways to integrate practices of learning experience design into existing instructional design processes to strengthen the overall effectiveness of instructional programs.

K-12 Data Science Education: Outcomes of a National Workshop; International Perspectives; & Next Steps for the Learning Sciences

Data Science Education is fast becoming a topic of interest, but like many “hot topics,” a rush-to-market of standards, content frameworks, and curricula is outpacing careful examination of how and why students ought to learn about data. The ISLS community is well-positioned to offer important insights on this emerging field. Research in the learning sciences has explored the ways that learning about data and data science intersects with certain social and civic discourses and everyday literacies. In parallel, the computer-supported collaborative learning community has explored ways to support Data Science Education through examinations of tools, instructional frameworks, and studies of professional practice. Participants at this workshop will come together to consider what should be major future topics of study at the intersection of ISLS and Data Science Education.

This half-day, hybrid workshop on Sat, Jun 10 will build on recent efforts to map the space of Data Science Education (including a recent National Academies workshop on the topic; emerging findings from the International Collaboration for Research on Statistical Reasoning, Thinking, and Literacy; and more). Participants will come together to begin to address the questions:

• What can the Learning Sciences as a field uniquely contribute to the growing discourse around Data Science Education?
• How does this emerging field challenge and grow our understanding of learning in society amidst a fast-changing world?

The LS+DS Workshop will begin with brief reviews of the current “state of the field” before creating topic-driven working groups in which participants explore the unique insights, approaches, and perspectives that Learning Sciences can bring to open questions and needs in this disciplinary space. We especially invite emerging scholars including graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and early career researchers to participate. Hybrid and limited asynchronous options for participation will be available, and we will work hard to create a vibrant intellectual space across these modalities.

Maybe we should talk: Bringing together diverse perspectives on supporting teachers’ reflective dialogue

Teachers’ reflective dialogue can take place in settings of a formal and informal nature, and research on this topic is taking place in various subfields that foreground different manifestations, such as collaborative discourse, video clubs, visualisation tools for video-based PD, video coaching etc. While teachers’ reflective dialogue about practice is regarded as a key aspect of many learning interventions designed for teachers, the field is fragmented and could benefit from community building to enhance the quality of research. Sparking dialogue and exploring synergies between related but different lines of research could inspire new ways of thinking about this important area of research.

Consequently, this workshop aims to (1) to build a community of learning scientists and researchers who are (starting to) investigate ways to support teachers’ reflective dialogue, and (2) to explore synergies, divergence and convergence across the various fields where this learning mechanism is studied. The workshop will consist of a prolonged series of discussion activities (before, during, after the conference) where participants are invited to share their perspectives on issues related to the theme.

Navigating the “In-Between”: Making a Place for Early Career Scholars to Share and Connect Across Borders

We invite early career scholars in their first positions post-Ph.D. in the Learning Sciences, Educational Research, and beyond who are interested in building an international community, sharing their experiences, and supporting each other to navigate academia in relation to academic research, teaching and service engagements. In this workshop, participants will map the space of early career scholars and work toward capturing the approaches to sustaining and continuing to build the learning sciences within and across international academic settings. We aim to bring together a diverse international group of scholars whose interests and experiences are diverse and are interested in building a nurturing and healthy international community of early career scholars.

Orchestrating Hybrid Learning Scenarios: Challenges and Opportunities

We hereby invite ISLS 2023 participants to join us for a half-day workshop titled, “Orchestrating Hybrid Learning Scenarios: Challenges and Opportunities”. The goal of this workshop is twofold: bringing together and comparing theoretical perspectives on the notion of orchestration load in the context of hybrid teaching and learning scenarios, and bringing together different approaches of teacher support tools to lower the teachers’ orchestration load. The workshop consists of several types of activities aimed at sharing and synthesizing participants’ perspectives on and experiences with researching orchestration load.

Applicants are required to complete a survey in order to participate. The survey seeks to collect data about participants’ experiences with orchestrating hybrid learning scenarios, any experience with using software tools for such activities, features of those tools they find useful for orchestration as well to indicate whether they would like to share their experiences in the form of a lightning talk during the workshop. In addition, we will also share relevant reports, scientific articles and video materials that attendees can peruse before the workshop to become acquainted with the relevant background information.

Demystifying Text-to-Image generation for K12 educators [Tutorial]

There is currently a proliferation of digital platforms to perform text-to-image generation. These platforms are breaking new ground in AI tools that let anyone, even beginners, easily create images with professional quality appearance. Are you an educator or a K12 learning researcher interested in bringing these tools to your classrooms and encouraging responsible use of these technologies by young learners? This tutorial will explore these text-to- image generation platforms with an emphasis on opportunities in K-12 education. In this tutorial, participants will review recent technological development that has led to the rapid advancement of text-to-image generation, explore the components of text-to-image generation – including transformers, latent space, and diffusion – and discuss ethical and societal implications of this technology. Participants will prototype learning activities for a target K-12 age group (concepts for the professional development of teachers is also encouraged) including learning goals, age appropriate tool introduction, and assessment. The main goal of the tutorial will be to create curricula for text to image generation capability that’s aligned with our approach of constructionism and computational action.

Doing quantitative research in the learning sciences and CSCL – current developments and applications

Invitation to participate in a full day workshop focusing on how we can improve the use of quantitative methods in LS and CSCL research.

In this workshop we will discuss recent developments in quantitative research methodology of our disciplines of origin covering the three themes in empirical research: (I)obtaining data, (II) analysing data, and (III) sharing data, replicating and integrating findings. The main goal is to identify to what extent recent developments in quantitative research methods are relevant for the learning sciences and CSCL; to develop strategies on raising methodological standards in quantitative research in the learning sciences and CSCL where needed; to discuss to what extent the standards and developments of other fields are relevant to improve our own research, the supervision of PhD students and the development of our research community, including the publishing process in our journals. Suggested methodological developments to be discussed include: (1) Issues with underpowered studies, (2) Increasing interest in person-centered approaches, (3) Advances in “measurement” theory, (4) Methods from machine learning/learning analytics, (5) Bayesian testing, (6) Complexity and interdependence of data, (7) A productive relationship of quantitative and qualitative methods, (8) Replicability and reproducibility of research, (9) Open data, FAIR, and research data management. (10) Meta-analytic methods. A link to the full description of the topics will be provided.

In their application for the workshop, potential participants will have the opportunity to suggest further issues and developments in using quantitative methods in the contexts of justification and discovery in some of their disciplines of origin.

Before the workshop we will share important methodological papers published in other disciplines that elaborate the issues and solutions introduced above. In the first part of the workshop, we will discuss the different issues with respect to their relevance and importance for quantitative research in the learning sciences and CSCL. An outcome of this first part could be a grouped and prioritized set of issues and developments, together with lists of participants interested in further working on these. In the second part, we identify and discuss possible consequences and recommendations for using quantitative methods in contexts of discovery and justification. As a follow-up activity, the participants of the workshop may co-author a series of short articles, e.g., squibs for ijCSCL; reports for JLS, bringing the issues to the attention of the broader research community, and posit their recommendations on advancing quantitative research in the learning sciences in this respect.

Techniques for Investigating Collaboration with Multimodal Approaches

Collaborative learning is based on a series of multimodal interactions between people. This Multimodal Learning Analytics (MMLA) workshop aims to bring together diverse fields that combine educational, computational, psychological, and related research into how people learn and how this complex process can be supported with technology. The workshop will explore methods and techniques for how various stakeholders can capture, analyze, and make sense of these multimodal learning interactions. The core challenge is to capture these interactions in a meaningful way for learners and teachers for improved learning and teaching at scale. MMLA combines the power of affordable sensor technologies and advances in machine learning to observe and analyze learning activities. The workshop is planned for a full day and will include data collection, processing, analysis, visualization, and knowledge exchange. The workshop is designed for researchers interested in collaboration analytics that range from theoretical to methodological and technical.

The workshop requires a 1-page abstract that needs to include one or more of the following, but not limited to:

• Description of Open Datasets from their work that they are willing to share (Open Data means the kind of data which is open for anyone and everyone for access, modification, reuse, and sharing)
• A description of Sensor/Data gathering setups and prototypes: Data analysis/annotation methods and tools (e.g., Visual Inspection Tool and coding schemas that can be used), willingness to demo and collect data
• Description of Learning activities and Pedagogical designs that could benefit significantly from MMLA techniques
• Examples of MMLA research designs or case studies

Cultivating Ensembles in Education and Research

You are invited to co-create moments of collaboration, exploration and learning with fellow ISLS 2023 conference attendees in the Cultivating Ensembles (CE) in Education and Research Workshop.

In this workshop, consisting of a series of interactive coffee chats, we will gather and share what we are learning in ways that build new relationships to conference content and with each other. Embracing the “Certainty of Missing Out” (COMO), Cultivating Ensembles (CE) organizers will facilitate conversations that invite participants to share experiences from different conference sessions.

Registering for the CE in Education and Research Workshop will enable your participation throughout the conference, including access to co-created content. The first CE coffee chat will be held on Zoom on Monday, June 5, 11:30–13:00 Eastern Time (Montreal) and will focus on meeting other conference participants and exploring expectations for ISLS 2023. The remaining CE coffee chats will be facilitated in a playful hybrid format during the morning health breaks of the in-person conference (June 12–15, 10–10:30am on each day) to continue building with other participants and learn about what we may have missed.