The Council for Opportunity in Education, in collaboration with TERC, seeks to advance the understanding of social and cultural factors that increase retention of women of color in computing; and implement and evaluate a mentoring and networking intervention for undergraduate women of color based on the project's research findings. Computing is unique because it ranks as one of the STEM fields that are least populated by women of color, and because while representation of women of color is increasing in nearly every other STEM field, it is currently decreasing in computing - even as national job prospects in technology fields increase. The project staff will conduct an extensive study of programs that have successfully served women of color in the computing fields and will conduct formal interviews with 15 professional women of color who have thrived in computing to learn about their educational strategies. Based on those findings, the project staff will develop and assess a small-scale intervention that will be modeled on the practices of mentoring and networking which have been established as effective among women of color who are students of STEM disciplines. By partnering with Broadening Participation in Computing Alliances and local and national organizations dedicated to diversifying computing, project staff will identify both women of color undergraduates to participate in the intervention and professionals who can serve as mentors to the undergraduates in the intervention phase of the project. Assisting the researchers will be a distinguished Advisory Board that provides expertise in broadening the representation of women of color in STEM education. The external evaluator will provide formative and summative assessments of the project's case study data and narratives data using methods of study analysis and narrative inquiry and will lead the formative and summative evaluation of the intervention using a mixed methods approach. The intervention evaluation will focus on three variables: 1) students' attitudes toward computer science, 2) their persistence in computer science and 3) their participant attitudes toward, and experiences in, the intervention.
This project extends the PIs' previous NSF-funded work on factors that impact the success of women of color in STEM. The project will contribute an improved understanding of the complex challenges that women of color encounter in computing. It will also illuminate individual and programmatic strategies that enable them to participate more fully and in greater numbers. The ultimate broader impact of the project should be a proven, scalable model for reversing the downward trend in the rates at which women of color earn bachelor's degrees in computer science.
The Computational Thinking in Ecosystems (CT-E) project is funded by the STEM+Computing Partnership (STEM+C) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the integration of computing in STEM teaching and learning. The project is a collaboration between the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI), Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network, and Design I/O. It will address the need for improved data, modeling and computational literacy in young people through development and testing of a portable, computer-based simulation of interactions that occur within ecosystems and between coupled natural and human systems; computational thinking skills are required to advance farther in the simulation. On a tablet computer at NYSCI, each participant will receive a set of virtual "cards" that require them to enter a computer command, routine or algorithm to control the behavior of animals within a simulated ecosystem. As participants explore the animals' simulated habitat, they will learn increasingly more complex strategies needed for the animal's survival, will use similar computational ideas and skills that ecologists use to model complex, dynamic ecological systems, and will respond to the effects of the ecosystem changes that they and other participants elicit through interaction with the simulated environment. Research on this approach to understanding interactions among species within biological systems through integration of computing has potential to advance knowledge. Researchers will study how simulations that are similar to popular collectable card game formats can improve computational thinking and better prepare STEM learners to take an interest in, and advance knowledge in, the field of environmental science as their academic and career aspirations evolve. The project will also design and develop a practical approach to programing complex models, and develop skills in communities of young people to exercise agency in learning about modeling and acting within complex systems; deepening learning in young people about how to work toward sustainable solutions, solve complex engineering problems and be better prepared to address the challenges of a complex, global society.
Computational Thinking in the Ecosystems (CT-E) will use a design-based study to prototype and test this novel, tablet-based collectable card game-like intervention to develop innovative practices in middle school science. Through this approach, some of the most significant challenges to teaching practice in the Next Generation Science Standards will be addressed, through infusing computational thinking into life science learning. CT-E will develop a tablet-based simulation representing six dynamic, interconnected ecosystems in which students control the behaviors of creatures to intervene in habitats to accomplish goals and respond to changes in the health of their habitat and the ecosystems of which they are a part. Behaviors of creatures in the simulation are controlled through the virtual collectable "cards", with each representing a computational process (such as sequences, loops, variables, conditionals and events). Gameplay involves individual players choosing a creature and habitat, formulating strategies and programming that creature with tactics in that habitat (such as finding food, digging in the ground, diverting water, or removing or planting vegetation) to navigate that habitat and survive. Habitats chosen by the participant are part of particular kinds of biomes (such as desert, rain forest, marshlands and plains) that have their own characteristic flora, fauna, and climate. Because the environments represent complex dynamic interconnected environmental models, participants are challenged to explore how these models work, and test hypotheses about how the environment will respond to their creature's interventions; but also to the creatures of other players, since multiple participants can collaborate or compete similar to commercially available collectable card games (e.g., Magic and Yu-Go-Oh!). NYSCI will conduct participatory design based research to determine impacts on structured and unstructured learning settings and whether it overcomes barriers to learning complex environmental science.
Reconceptualizing STEM + Computing Literacy is funded by the STEM+Computing Partnership (STEM+C) program, which seeks to advance multidisciplinary integration of computing and computational thinking in K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teaching and learning through applied research and development across one or more domains, and broadening participation in computing and computing-related fields. The project will study the integration of computational thinking as part of a new and more contemporary perspective of STEM literacy, and will design, develop, and beta-test a prototype literacy assessment tool that will measure computational thinking literacy along with measures of literacy in other STEM content areas. The tool will be available to the general public as a self-measurement application (App) that can be used by individuals to test their own literacy, and by teachers, schools, and informal educators and organizations to assess literacy development in their students and in their STEM education programs. This transdisciplinary research project will begin the process of creating an innovative approach and tool for measuring literacy that will expand the definition of literacy to include computational skills along with science reasoning. Literacy is an important concept and measurement that has traditionally been used to assess an individual's knowledge of science. This project will explore a broader literacy perspective that incorporates learning derived from out of school and one that incorporates computational skills and thinking as part of a more contemporary perspective of STEM literacy. A prototype web-based App allowing individuals and education organizations to assess literacy levels, and ways to enhance literacy, will be developed and studied. The methodology will be developed using discussions and knowledge from over 60 experts across computing, education, science, social science, and other STEM fields using a Delphi method to engage in reconceptualization of literacy. The hypothesis is that this new STEM+C literacy framework should be structured along four interacting but semi-independent domains: 1) general STEM+C knowledge; 2) self-defined areas of STEM+C knowledge and expertise; 3) attitudes and beliefs related to STEM+C; and 4) the skills and competencies necessary to participate in STEM+C related pursuits and discussions, including measures of modes of STEM+C thinking. Each of these four domains is likely to include numerous sub-domains and associated descriptors, which collectively describe the different aspects of being a STEM+C literate citizen. The application will be designed to provide feedback to individuals on their knowledge, attitudes and skills compared with those of others and suggest ways to enhance and improve their skills and understanding through an embedded feedback mechanism. This project creates public benefit by providing individuals and organizations with a responsive real-time understanding measuring STEM+C literacy, deepening the dialogue about the value of public engagement in science, engineering, technology, math and computing and revealing the dynamic factors that inform STEM+C literacy.
The Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies Program funds efforts that will help envision the next generation of learning technologies and advance what we know about how people learn in technology-rich environments. Cyberlearning Exploration (EXP) Projects explore the viability of new kinds of learning technologies by designing and building new kinds of learning technologies and studying their possibilities for fostering learning and challenges to using them effectively. This project brings together two approaches to help K-12 students learn programming and computer science: open-ended learning environments, and computer-based learning analytics, to help create a setting where youth can get help and scaffolding tailored to what they know about programming without having to take tests or participate in rigid textbook exercises for the system to know what they know.
The project proposes to use techniques from educational data mining and learning analytics to process student data in the Alice programming environment. Building on the assessment design model of Evidence-Centered Design, student log data will be used to construct a model of individual students' computational thinking practices, aligned with emerging standards including NGSS and research on assessment of computational thinking. Initially, the system will be developed based on an existing corpus of pair-programming log data from approximately 600 students, triangulating with manually-coded performance assessments of programming through game design exercises. In the second phase of the work, curricula and professional development will be created to allow the system to be tested with underrepresented girls at Stanford's CS summer workshops and with students from diverse high schools implementing the Exploring Computer Science curriculum. Direct observation and interviews will be used to improve the model. Research will address how learners enact computational thinking practices in building computational artifacts, what patters of behavior serve as evidence of learning CT practices, and how to better design constructionist programming environments so that personalized learner scaffolding can be provided. By aligning with a popular programming environment (Alice) and a widely-used computer science curriculum (Exploring Computer Science), the project can have broad impact on computer science education; software developed will be released under a BSD-style license so others can build on it.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Shuchi GroverMarie BienkowskiJohn Stamper
This is an Early-concept Grant for Exploratory Research supporting research in Smart and Connected Communities. The research supported by the award is collaborative with research at the University of Colorado. The researchers are studying the use of technologies to enable communities to connect youth and youth organizations to effectively support diverse learning pathways for all students. These communities, the youth, the youth organizations, formal and informal education organizations, and civic organizations form a learning ecology. The DePaul University researchers will design and implement a smart community infrastructure in the City of Chicago to track real-time student participation in community STEM activities and to develop mobile applications for both students and adults. The smart community infrastructure will bring together information from a variety of sources that affect students' participation in community activities. These include geographic information (e.g., where the student lives, where the activities take place, the student transportation options, the school the student attends), student related information (e.g., the education and experience background of the student, the economic status of the student, students' schedules), and activity information (e.g., location of activity, requirements for participation). The University of Colorado researchers will take the lead on analyzing these data in terms of a community learning ecologies framework and will explore computational approaches (i.e., recommender systems, visualizations of learning opportunities) to improve youth exploration and uptake of interests and programs. These smart technologies are then used to reduce the friction in the learning connection infrastructure (called L3 for informal, formal, and virtual learning) to enable the student to access opportunities for participation in STEM activities that are most feasible and most appropriate for the student. Such a flexible computational approach is needed to support the necessary diversity of potential recommendations: new interests for youth to explore; specific programs based on interests, friends' activities, or geographic accessibility; or programs needed to "level-up" (develop deeper skills) and complete skills to enhance youths' learning portfolios. Although this information was always available, it was never integrated so it could be used to serve the community of both learners and the providers and to provide measurable student learning and participation outcomes. The learning ecologies theoretical framework and supporting computational methods are a contribution to the state of the art in studying afterschool learning opportunities. While the concept of learning ecologies is not new, to date, no one has offered such a systematic and theoretically-grounded portfolio of measures for characterizing the health and resilience of STEM learning ecologies at multiple scales. The theoretical frameworks and concepts draw together multiple research and application domains: computer science, sociology of education, complexity science, and urban planning. The L3 Connects infrastructure itself represents an unprecedented opportunities for conducting "living lab" experiments to improve stakeholder experience of linking providers to a single network and linking youth to more expanded and varied opportunities. The University of Colorado team will employ three methods: mapping, modeling, and linking youth to STEM learning opportunities in school and out of school settings in a large urban city (Chicago). The recommender system will be embedded into youth and parent facing mobile apps, enabling the team to characterize the degree to which content-based, collaborative filtering, or constraint based recommendations influence youth actions. The project will result in two measurable outcomes of importance to key L3 stakeholder groups: a 10% increase in the number of providers (programs that are part of the infrastructure) in target neighborhoods and a 20% increase in the number of youth participating in programs.
This is an Early-concept Grant for Exploratory Research supporting research in Smart and Connected Communities. The research supported by the award is collaborative with research at DePaul University. The researchers are studying the use of technologies to enable communities to connect youth and youth organizations to effectively support diverse learning pathways for all students. These communities, the youth, the youth organizations, formal and informal education organizations, and civic organizations form a learning ecology. The DePaul University researchers will design and implement a smart community infrastructure in the City of Chicago to track real-time student participation in community STEM activities and to develop mobile applications for both students and adults. The smart community infrastructure will bring together information from a variety of sources that affect students' participation in community activities. These include geographic information (e.g., where the student lives, where the activities take place, the student transportation options, the school the student attends), student related information (e.g., the education and experience background of the student, the economic status of the student, students' schedules), and activity information (e.g., location of activity, requirements for participation). The University of Colorado researchers will take the lead on analyzing these data in terms of a community learning ecologies framework and will explore computational approaches (i.e., recommender systems, visualizations of learning opportunities) to improve youth exploration and uptake of interests and programs. These smart technologies are then used to reduce the friction in the learning connection infrastructure (called L3 for informal, formal, and virtual learning) to enable the student to access opportunities for participation in STEM activities that are most feasible and most appropriate for the student. Such a flexible computational approach is needed to support the necessary diversity of potential recommendations: new interests for youth to explore; specific programs based on interests, friends' activities, or geographic accessibility; or programs needed to "level-up" (develop deeper skills) and complete skills to enhance youths' learning portfolios. Although this information was always available, it was never integrated so it could be used to serve the community of both learners and the providers and to provide measurable student learning and participation outcomes. The learning ecologies theoretical framework and supporting computational methods are a contribution to the state of the art in studying afterschool learning opportunities. While the concept of learning ecologies is not new, to date, no one has offered such a systematic and theoretically-grounded portfolio of measures for characterizing the health and resilience of STEM learning ecologies at multiple scales. The theoretical frameworks and concepts draw together multiple research and application domains: computer science, sociology of education, complexity science, and urban planning. The L3 Connects infrastructure itself represents an unprecedented opportunities for conducting "living lab" experiments to improve stakeholder experience of linking providers to a single network and linking youth to more expanded and varied opportunities. The University of Colorado team will employ three methods: mapping, modeling, and linking youth to STEM learning opportunities in school and out of school settings in a large urban city (Chicago). The recommender system will be embedded into youth and parent facing mobile apps, enabling the team to characterize the degree to which content-based, collaborative filtering, or constraint based recommendations influence youth actions. The project will result in two measurable outcomes of importance to key L3 stakeholder groups: a 10% increase in the number of providers (programs that are part of the infrastructure) in target neighborhoods and a 20% increase in the number of youth participating in programs.
While the term 'failure' brings to mind negative associations, there is a current focus on failure as a driver of innovation and development in many professional fields. It is also emerging from prior research that for STEM professionals and educators, failure plays an important role in designing and making to increase learning, persistence and other noncognitive skills such as self-efficacy and independence. By investigating how youth and educators attend to moments of failure, how they interpret what this means, and how they respond, we will be better able to understand the dynamics of each part of the experience. The research team will be working with youth from urban, suburban and rural settings, students from Title I schools or who qualify for free/reduced-price lunches, those from racial and ethnic minority groups, as well as students who are learning English as a second language. These youth are from groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM and in making, and research indicates they are more likely to experience negative outcomes when they experience failure.
The intellectual merit of this project centers on establishing a baseline understanding of how failure in making is triggered and experienced by youth, what role educators play in the process, and what can be done to increase persistence and learning, rather than failure being an end-state. The research team will investigate these issues through the use of qualitative and quantitative research methods. In particular, the team will design and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions on increasing the abilities of youth and educators in noticing and responding to failures and increasing positive (e.g., resilience) outcomes. Research sites are selected because they will allow collection of data on youth from a wide range of backgrounds. The research team will also work to test and revise their hypothesized model of the influence of factors on persistence through failures in making. This project is a part of NSF's Maker Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) portfolio (NSF 15-086), a collaborative investment of Directorates for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR) and Engineering (ENG).
This Research in Service to Practice project, a collaboration of Pepperdine University and the New York Hall of Science, will establish a network of STEM-related Media Making Clubs comprised of after-school students aged 12 - 19 and teachers in the U.S. and in three other countries: Kenya, Namibia and Finland. The media produced by the students may include a range of formats such as videos, short subject films, games, computer programs and specialized applications like interactive books. The content of the media produced by the students will focus on the illustration and teaching of STEM topics, where the shared media is intended to help other students become enthused about and learn the science. This proposal builds on the principal investigator's previous work on localized media clubs by now creating an international network in which after-school students and teachers will collaborate at a distance with other clubs. The central research questions for the project pertain to three themes at the intersection of learning, culture and collaboration: the impact of participatory teaching, virtual networks, and intercultural, global competence. The research will combine qualitative, cross-cultural and big data methods. Critical to the innovation of the project, the research team will also develop a network assessment tool, adapting epistemic network analysis methods to the needs of this initiative. This work is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Eric HamiltonKatherine McMillanPriya Mohabir
The connections between technology applications of all sorts and human users that are ubiquitous in informal learning and assume a great deal about how the technology is used and how learning takes place. Much of the research in this area has been focused on game design and interaction. This project will examine this interaction involving the use of gestures that represent how individuals work with systems and large data sets that represent complex systems like the oceans, to understand how basic elements of a project with a 3-D type of design might enhance the user experience and increase the utility and learning that takes place by understanding the cognitive elements of these game like interactions in specific STEM related settings like museums.
This exploratory pathways project will investigate the use of interactive, gesture-enabled, multi-touch spheres for teaching about ocean systems in science centers and museums. The gesture-enabled aspect of the project will improve on interactive table-top installations which can frustrate users who use unexpected gestures and receive no response leading to brief interaction and abandonment without significant interaction or learning. The project will investigate ways in which unsupported gestures would still produce a system response which would encourage the user to remain at the installation and continue to investigate. The effect of multiple gestures will be supported by using natural mappings between gestures and interactions with the on-sphere data.
The project investigates theories of embodied cognition that support the notion that by engaging with global-scale datasets on a spherical display more effectively models the earth in a non-distorted manner and therefore will be more natural and allow users to develop a more accurate conceptual model of how data relates to itself and the globe. In this way, the project shares some aspects of understanding about learning through game play. The sphere will not be a fully developed game but will share characteristics of game play.
This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
As part of an overall strategy to enhance learning within maker contexts in formal and informal environments, the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) and Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) programs partnered to support innovative models for making in a variety of settings through the Enabling the Future of Making to Catalyze New Approaches in STEM Learning and Innovation Dear Colleague Letter. This Early Concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) will test an innovative approach to bringing making from primarily informal out-of-school contexts into formal science classrooms. While the literature base to support the positive outcomes and impacts of design-based making in informal settings at the K-12 level is emerging, to date, minimal studies have investigated the impacts of making design principles within formal contexts. If successful, this project would not only add to this gap in the literature base but would also present a novel model for bridging the successful engineering design practices of making and tinkering primarily found in informal science education into formal science education classrooms. The model would also demonstrate an innovative, highly interactive way to engage high school students and their teachers in engineering based design principles with immediate real-world applications, as the scientific instruments developed in this project could be integrated directly into science classrooms at relatively minimal costs.
Through a multi-phased design and implementation model, high school students and their teachers will engage deeply in making design principles through the design and development of their own scientific instruments using Arduino-compatible hardware and software. The first phase of the project will reflect a more traditional making experience with up to twenty high school students and their teachers participating in an after-school design making club, in this case, focused on the development and testing of scientific instrument prototypes. During the second phase of the project, the first effort to transpose the after school making experience to a more formalized experience will be tested with up to eight students selected to participate in two week summer research internships focused on scientific instrument design and development through making at Northwestern University. A two-day summer teacher workshop will also be held for high school teachers participating in the subsequent pilot study. The collective insights gleaned from the after school program, student internships, and teacher workshop will culminate to inform the full implementation of the formal classroom pilot study. The third and final phase will coalesce months of iterative, formative research, design and development, resulting in a comprehensive pilot investigation in up to seven high school physics classrooms.
Using a multi-phased, mixed methods exploratory design-based research approach, this 18-month EAGER will explore several salient research questions: (a) How and to what extent does the design & making of scientific instrumentation serve as useful tasks for learning important science and engineering knowledge, practices, and epistemologies? (b) How engaging is this making activity to learners of diverse abilities and prior interests? What can be generalized to other types of making activities? (c) How accessible is the Arduino hardware and coding environment to learners? What combination of hardware and software materials and tools best support accessibility and learning in this type of digital making activity? and (d) What types of scaffolding (for students and teachers) are required to support the effective use of maker materials and activities in a classroom setting? Structured interviews, artifacts, video recordings from visor cameras, student design logs, logfiles, and ethnographic field notes will be employed to garner data and address the research questions. Given the early stage of the proposed research, the dissemination of the findings will be limited to a few select journals, teacher forums and workshops, and professional conferences.
This EAGER is well-poised to directly impact up to 125 high school physics students (average= 25 students/class), approximately 7 high school physics teachers, 6-8 high school summer interns, nearly 20 high school students participating in the after-school design making club, and indirectly many more. The results of this EAGER could provide the basis and evidence needed to support a more robust, expanded future investigation to further substantiate the findings and build the case for similar efforts to bring making into formal science education contexts.
This project takes an ethnographic and design-based approach to understanding how and what people learn from participation in makerspaces and explores the features of those environments that can be leveraged to better promote learning. Makerspaces are physical locations where people (often families) get together to make things. Some participants learn substantial amounts of STEM content and practices as they design, build, and iteratively refine working devices. Others, however, simply take a trial and error approach. Research explores the affordances are of these spaces for promoting learning and how to integrate technology into these spaces so that they are transformed from being makerspaces where learning happens, but inconsistently, into environments where learning is a consistent outcome of participation. One aim is to learn how to effectively design such spaces so that participants are encouraged and helped to become intentional, reflective makers rather than simply tinkerers. Research will also advance what is known about effective studio teaching and learning and advance understanding of how to support youth to help them become competent, creative, and reflective producers with technology(s). The project builds on the Studio Thinking Framework and what is known about development of meta-representational competence. The foundations of these frameworks are in Lave and Wengers communities of practice and Rogoff's, Stevens et al.'s, and Jenkins et al.'s further work on participatory cultures for social networks that revolve around production. A sociocultural approach is taken that seeks to understand the relationships between space, participants, and technologies as participants set and work toward achieving goals. Engaging more of our young population in scientific and technological thinking and learning and broadening participation in the STEM workplace are national imperatives. One way to address these imperatives is to engage the passions of young people, helping them recognize the roles STEM content and practices play in achieving their own personal goals. Maker spaces are neighborhood spaces that are arising in many urban areas that allow and promote tinkering, designing, and construction using real materials, sometimes quite sophisticated ones. Participating in designing and successfully building working devices in such spaces can promote STEM learning, confidence and competence in one's ability to solve problems, and positive attitudes towards engineering, science, and math (among other things). The goal in this project is to learn how to design these spaces and integrate learning technologies so that learning happens more consistently (along with tinkering and making) and especially so that they are accessible and inviting to those who might not normally participate in these spaces. The work of this project is happening in an urban setting and with at-risk children, and a special effort is being made to accommodate making and learning with peers. As with Computer Clubhouses, maker spaces hold potential for their participants to identify what is interesting to them at the same time their participation gives them the opportunity to express themselves, learn STEM content, and put it to use.
The Cyberlearning Resource Center (CRC) has responsibility for promoting integrative collaboration among cyberlearning grantees (across NSF programs); synthesis and national dissemination of cyberlearning findings, technologies, models, materials, and best practices; creating a national presence for Cyberlearning; helping the disparate Cyberlearning research and development communities coordinate efforts to build capacity; and providing infrastructure (technological and social) for supporting these efforts. Monitored through the Cyberlearning: Transforming Education program, the CRC serves as a resource for all NSF grantees and programs with cyberlearning components, helping to promote synergy and integrate projects across NSF's cyberlearning investments. Among society's central challenges are amplifying, expanding, and transforming opportunities people have for learning and more effectively drawing in, motivating, and engaging young learners. Engaging actively as a citizen and productively in the workforce requires understanding a broad variety of concepts and possessing the ability to collaborate, learn, solve problems, and make decisions. Whether learning is facilitated in school or out of school, and whether learners are youngsters or adults, to develop such knowledge and capabilities, learners must be motivated to learn, actively engage over the long term in learning activities, and put forth sustained cognitive and social effort. Consistent with NSF's mission and strategic plan, a variety of programs at NSF invest in research aimed towards achieving these goals. In support of this important thematic thrust, the Cyberlearning Resource Center works with researchers and NSF program officers to identify and disseminate findings from across programs and projects; develop ways to broker productive partnerships and collaborations; convene meetings for purposes of envisioning the future, integrating findings, and building capacity,; and monitor the cyberlearning portfolio and its influences and impacts.