Shantanu Tilak

Shantanu Tilak
Chesapeake Bay Academy · Center for Educational Research and Technological Innovation

Doctor of Philosophy

About

91
Publications
57,076
Reads
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475
Citations
Introduction
At present, I am working to create safe online environments for kids with learning differences to participate in remote learning. This work, with a team of teachers, researchers, and administrators, at Chesapeake Bay Academy, now located on Virginia Wesleyan University's campus has culminated in the CadetNet program. CadetNet is a 6th-8th grade portable VR assisted core curriculum using constructivist principles in tandem with reading/ writing intervention & biofeedback mindfulness training.
Additional affiliations
June 2023 - present
Virginia Wesleyan College
Position
  • Adjunct Faculty
Description
  • Teaching PSY101 and 102 classes in a project-based format. Classes involve live-chat discussions about a weekly prompt, lectures, Ai-mediated storyboarding, paper writing, a class publication and group presentation.
August 2018 - May 2023
The Ohio State University
Position
  • PhD Student
May 2016 - July 2016
Conde Nast India
Position
  • Intern
Description
  • Worked to design ad campaigns both visually and in practice.
Education
August 2020 - April 2023
The Ohio State University
Field of study
  • Educational Psychology
August 2018 - April 2020
The Ohio State University
Field of study
  • Educational Psychology
August 2013 - April 2017
Flame University
Field of study
  • Cultural Studies, Psychology

Publications

Publications (91)
Article
Full-text available
This mixed methods study investigates whether technology mediated collaborative practices during a professional development (PD) session led to growth in the collective efficacy of 21 special education teachers at an independent 1-12 school in Southeastern Virginia. This school specializes in individualized instruction for students with learning di...
Article
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This mixed methods case study employed Vygotsky’s theory to show how peer and teacher contingent support created individualized zones of proximal development for three students with learning differences in a high school makerspace class at a special education institution. Our results expand extant literature by highlighting the intra- and interpsyc...
Article
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This participatory study recounts conversational practices occurring between three teachers, a head of school, and a researcher during a month-long curriculum design workshop mediated by the MagicSchool AI technology to create social studies, language arts, science, and mathematics lessons for a virtual special education program. A social paradigm...
Article
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This participatory study, conducted in an introductory psychology class recounts self-reflections of 22 undergraduate students and their instructor engaging in an GenAI-mediated storyboard generation process. It relies on Gordon Pask’s conversation theory, structuring out the nature of interactions between students, instructor, and GenAI, and then...
Chapter
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Studies suggest college students/adult learners interacting with current search tools like Google display tendency to power-browse and adhere to page-ranking order in choosing sources to supplement writing. Such limitations may limit critical reflectivity. We present a tool, ThoughtShuffler which allows users to malleably alter neighborhoods of key...
Conference Paper
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This presentation showcases Gordon Pask's cybernetic approaches, namely conversation theory and interaction of actors theory, and provides four examples of how they may be utilized to design technologies, and educational scenarios. A brief history of first and second-order cybernetics is shared, followed by a simple elaboration of the nomenclature...
Conference Paper
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This presentation describes how principles of Vygotskyís cultural-historical psychology powered an online, virtual reality assisted science curriculum for middle-school students with learning differences. Traditional didactic instruction and virtual reality activities providing students with avenues to internalize knowledge, create artifacts resona...
Conference Paper
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This poster, which comprises theoretical and empirical elements outlines Gordon Pask’s conversation theory and interaction of actors theory, that provide domain general frameworks to expose the mechanisms of both machine dependent and independent collective action. We first outline the historical foundations behind the development of Pask's two app...
Conference Paper
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In this presentation, we review current literature and highlight the efficacy of serious games in spurring positive socio-cognitive outcomes and deeper classroom engagement for middle school science students with ADHD through our own case designs of five students. We interpret trend analysis graphs and open-ended qualitative responses for five midd...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
We share a professional development (PD) approach applied at a special education school that employed data-based decision making to enable teachers to more deeply understand how to better meet the needs of their students. Our approach was co-designed through engaging with our practitioners using design surveys and summer focus groups, informing tec...
Conference Paper
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Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces (ALEKS) is a machine learning technology created by McGraw Hill. It contains concepts specific to science and mathematics that students can be exposed to base on their current skill level. Using ALEKS’ data, teachers can understand what topics students master, and those they struggle with in real-time, as...
Conference Paper
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This design workshop will use practical and conceptual avenues to equip designers with the mindset and methodology to craft engaging educational and service experiences using spatial computing tools. It will span 2 hours, and involve slide-based content, a practical spatial prototyping jam, a salon-style share-out presentation by the audience, a qu...
Article
Peer beliefs and attitudes play a prominent role in adolescent behaviors. Various curricula have been developed to teach students about sexual health from a skills-based perspective with successful, lasting effects. This study examined how adolescents’ expectancies for success in and values held for a sexual health curriculum are related to their a...
Article
Full-text available
Sexual health education in the United States is seeing increased attention and is often viewed as a controversial topic. To better understand young adolescents’ experiences within an LGBTQ+ inclusive sexual health education program (Get Real), we utilized Situated Expectancy-Value Theory to investigate 53 responses from 30 students about what they...
Conference Paper
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In this presentation, geared towards special educators, we showcase how learning technologies can be effectively used to provide instruction to students with attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We first showcase how hypertext, gamified instruction and extended reality tap into five learning strategies that can help students with ADHD o...
Conference Paper
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This paper investigates whether 4th and 5th grade students studying about local and systemic issues (in the U.S. and globally), respectively, in social studies classrooms through four units of technology-enriched instruction differed in their use of affect, logic, and morality related words in discussion posts. Our moderation analysis revealed whil...
Conference Paper
Our paper uses Structural Equation Modeling to help understand how intentionally designed learning/work environments can foster development of collective efficacy (CE) between users rather than adhering to fixed tool constraints, and may enable social connection and exploration on media platforms. Our model, derived from responses of undergraduate...
Article
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This three-part paper presents Gordon Pask’s conversation theory (CT) and interaction of actors theory (IA) and outlines ways to apply these cybernetic approaches to designing technologies and scenarios for both formal and informal learning. The first part explains the concepts central to CT and IA, explaining the relationship between conceptual an...
Conference Paper
This concurrent session provides a guide to incorporating socioemotional learning (SEL) into instruction for neurodiverse students, that was implemented at a neurodiverse independent school. The curriculum covers pivotal standards for SEL, like self-management/awareness, advocacy, social awareness, responsible decision-making, and relationship buil...
Conference Paper
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In this concurrent session, presenters will suggest ways to support teacher resilience, nimbleness with educational technology, and collaborative, interdisciplinary thinking through professional development. Based on our learnings from survey data gathered during COVID-19, which suggested that deeper investigation of teacher collaboration and its r...
Conference Paper
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This concurrent session showcases a STEAM Makerspace curriculum, integrating innovative technologies with entrepreneurship, implemented at a K12 independent school for students with learning differences. The class, which consists of weekly challenges, project-based learning and fabrication practices culminates in a Maker Faire, featuring student pr...
Book
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This book was co-authored by undergraduate students and their instructor part of an introductory psychology class at a small liberal arts university. Students wrote scholarly papers and illustrated storyboards about varied fields of psychology twice over the semester, and these assignments were collated and edited by the instructor into five book c...
Chapter
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In this four part paper co-authored by undergraduate students and the instructor in an introductory psychology class at a small liberal arts university, we provide visual and written psychoeducational content about the symptoms and implications of a selection of disorders listed in the DSM-V. We first outline the characteristics of abnormality and...
Chapter
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In this introductory chapter, I describe the cybernetic conversation theory framework that guided the curriculum design process for an introductory undergraduate psychology class at a small liberal arts university. I first describe how the idea of organizational closure and informational openness guided the use of cloud-based technology, social med...
Chapter
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In this conceptual paper co-authored by undergraduate students in an introductory psychology class at a small liberal arts university and their instructor, we use concepts of industrial/organizational psychology and design to understand how activity within workspaces emerges as a result of material and social practices. In the first part of the pap...
Chapter
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In this three part paper, co-authored by undergraduate students and the instructor of an introductory psychology class at a small liberal arts university, we discuss issues of gender identity and sexuality using Judith Butler’s framework of emergence. Butler’s ideas adhere to a constructivist philosophy about the constant resemiotization of individ...
Article
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The Soviet psychologist L.S. Vygotsky was immersed in theater and the arts through much of his life, collaborating with scholars of the psychology of acting, including Konstantin Stanislavski’s close confidant and long-time editor Liubov Gurevich on terms and theories expressed in his historically defining text, An Actor’s Work. This paper connects...
Conference Paper
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This concurrent session showcases a STEAM Makerspace curriculum cumulative to an upper school level, integrating innovative technologies with entrepreneurship, implemented at an independent neurodiverse independent school. The class culminated in a Maker Faire, featuring student products, given patronage by parents and the school community, helping...
Chapter
Full-text available
In this book chapter, co-authored by the instructor and undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory course in psychology at a small liberal arts university, we explore the emergence of eating disorders through the lens of the Yerkes-Dodson Law, which states that moderate arousal levels are associated with productive goal-oriented behavior. W...
Article
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College graduates, especially teachers, often feel alienated when starting their careers as they may lack robust support systems to help them address daily difficulties. Researchers study online learning communities as a model to address this missing support system; however, very little research exists on the benefits of embedding these learning co...
Presentation
This transgenerational conversation covered the role of the Internet as a bastion in fighting the tides of misinformation in a highly digitized age, where individuals and groups are oft offered the looming choice of facing the fallouts of dominant institutional narratives, or being quashed/marginalized for opposing perspectives. Rather than treatin...
Chapter
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This three part paper explores how the approaches of cybernetics (a field investigating how complex systems- brains, individuals, societies and machines navigate their realities) have influenced education and psychology over time. The first part recounts the establishment of first-order cybernetics, and the emergence of an observer driven approach...
Chapter
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This two-part in-person workshop at Carnegie Mellon University unearths potentials in applying principles of cybernetics to curriculum and educational technology design. Cybernetics is a transdiscipline enabling connections across ideas in fields such as biology, the social sciences, and computer science to understand how complex systems evolve in...
Chapter
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In an era marked by rapid information flows, search engine use often precedes online exploration. Search engines like Google function through reliance on over 200 signals that fine tune consumer behavior and provide ordered results. This process “adds a little something extra” to the idea of re- sults ordered by pure conceptual relationships betwee...
Article
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Immersive storytelling (IST) is usually conceptualized within the framework of technologically immersive tools such as virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. While these tools offer some unique features (such as visual fidelity, interactivity, and embodied, first-person perspective), their level of technological immersion (based on the system’s obj...
Article
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Introduction: The reference standard for diagnosis of obstructive airways disease is spirometry, which is patient-effort and technician-skill dependent. Forced Oscillation Technique (FOT) uses tidal breathing, and might be more sensitive at detecting small airways disease and early disease. However, normative values have been defined for specific p...
Article
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This paper discusses the operationalization of open educational practices (OEP) using innovative, Internet-influenced pedagogies to expose dangers of post-truth narratives. We first review interpretations of OEP (associated with open-access & tools, collaboration, and problem-centered/democratic pedagogy), and explore possibilities for creating edu...
Article
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Effective sexual health education provides individuals medically accurate knowledge and promotes the skills necessary for positive behaviors related to sexual health. This qualitative study employs focus groups to examine learning experiences of nine participating adolescents from a comprehensive youth empowerment and sexual health virtual summer p...
Conference Paper
In this study, we used a computerized text analysis tool to understand the use of logic-oriented language, emotion-oriented language, and sociomoral language derived from 662 Flipgrid videos produced by 120 fourth and fifth graders in social studies classrooms. Flipgrid is an online video-based discussion platform providing an educational version o...
Book
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In this participatory design portfolio, I describe the theoretical framework, and provide a practical guide for a cybernetic curricular design approach applied to an educational psychology college class for preservice teachers. The first part describes how the two iterations of the curriculum were designed in a manner following Gordon Pask’s approa...
Book
Full-text available
This extended paper, co-authored by undergraduate students and their instructor part of an educational psychology seminar, describes a participatory curriculum design approach for preservice teacher education that focuses on the use of the principles of second-order cybernetics to teach about teaching and learning. Using elements of an Open Source...
Thesis
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This multi-component study assesses perceived mechanisms through which undergraduate and graduate college students use social media and learning management systems (LMS) through path modelling. The literature review outlines current work related to investigating the mechanisms of learning through LMS and social media, and proposes a new cybernetic...
Conference Paper
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The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand how the use of Reddit could support school leaders in cultivating a professional learning network among their peers. An online community consisting of individuals with similar experiences has the potential to support a leader’s call to make timely and important decisions. Data was derived from...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
We use Structural Equation Modeling to understand whether online agency students show in Internet ecologies contributes to development of collective efficacy, or perceived tendency to individually contribute to groups and work with the collective cohesively, in technology-assisted classrooms. We derive data from responses of 673 undergraduate stude...
Conference Paper
Teachers and students construct dialogic spaces that mediate classroom learning. Dialogic space involves multiple voices constructed between individuals, within individuals, or from texts/media (Wegerif, 2007). Supported by technological tools, classroom dialogic spaces can expand from traditional face-to-face or person-text interactions to online...
Conference Paper
The present study examines how 4th and 5th grade students choose between using either asynchronous text-based or video-based discussion tools when they express their opinions about controversial social issues. We particularly focus on how their choices are related to their socioeconomic status and online digital citizenship. We analyzed the modalit...
Conference Paper
Sexual health education within the U.S. is a controversial topic. To better understand middle schoolers’ experiences within an LGBTQ+ inclusive sexual health education program (Get Real; Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts), we utilized Situated Expectancy-Value Theory to investigate 53 responses from 30 students about what they deemed most...
Book
Full-text available
This set of children's stories about food security were used as part of a federally funded project supported by the Institute of Education Sciences focused on using immersive learning approaches for social studies elementary instruction in economics. They cover struggles experienced in food deserts during the COVID-19 pandemic, and grassroots level...
Article
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The disruption of in-person delivery of a sexual health education curriculum to students in 19 urban middle schools in the Midwestern United States was one of many complications in education due the COVID-19 pandemic. Given time constraints and need for program delivery, community partners collaborated to convert the curriculum for virtual delivery...
Article
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This qualitative study presents 27 students’ insights about four teachers’ implementation of an immersive Native American history curricular unit designed to equip students with digital skills to critically navigate complex, polarizing social issues. The Digital Civic Learning (DCL) curriculum used Google Suite and Google Classroom or Schoology to...
Article
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Purpose School leaders work in a fast-paced job that requires critical decision-making, often without the luxury of time. Additionally, problems may be new and leave school leaders feeling isolated and ill-equipped to adequately address situations. To that end, this study introduced the use of Reddit, a social media platform, to connect school lead...
Article
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The current study examined the development of early adolescents’ social perspective taking (SPT) through collaborative small-group discussions. A total of 250 fifth-graders were assigned to three conditions, Collaborative Social Reasoning (CSR) discussions, Read-Aloud (RA) and Regular Instruction (RI). SPT was assessed before and after the interven...
Article
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Despite iterative learning design being increasingly implemented, such approaches are often delineated by well-defined periods of design/implementation. However, second-order cybernetics, which suggests a participatory approach to learning design, involves responsively adapting learning environments to meet students’ needs, treating them as agentic...
Chapter
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In the conclusion to this book, we describe the process towards shared understandings of educational theory and practice that was engaged in this class, using the cybernetic framework of Gordon Pask. We show how using collaborative technologies and project-based approaches directed towards co-authoring a multimodal text, teaching back theoretical c...
Chapter
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This paper, co-authored by undergraduate students and their instructor part of a seminar in educational psychology, lies at the crossroads of motivation theory and bioecological approaches to psychology, and investigates the role of and incorporation of identity and social factors in learning and development through scholarly perspectives and visua...
Chapter
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In this cross-disciplinary three-part paper, we describe special education policy, and outline practices employing assistive technologies and partnerships between medical professionals, educators and caregivers that may be employed to encourage inclusion of students on the autism spectrum, and those identified with attention deficit hyperactivity d...
Conference Paper
BACKGROUND: Effective sexual health education equips individuals with knowledge and skills based in medically accurate information. This qualitative study examined Ohio adolescents’ thoughts and experiences about an innovative, comprehensive youth empowerment and sexual health virtual summer program (The YES! Program). METHOD: Nine students (of 5...
Chapter
Full-text available
In this multimodal conceptual paper employing theoretical conjecture and visual storyboarding, co-written and co-illustrated by undergraduate students and the instructor participating in a seminar in Educational Psychology, we understand the varied threads of the interpretation of Lev Vygotsky's theory as subsets of a distributed approach to learni...
Chapter
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In this three-part paper co-authored by undergraduate students and their instructor participating in an Educational Psychology seminar, we outline Piaget's theory of child development and its applications to teaching and learning using scholarly perspectives and illustrated storyboards that express the nature of our mental representations of Piaget...
Chapter
Full-text available
In this three-part research-oriented introduction to this book, I lay out how Gordon Pask’s conversation theory was used by undergraduate students and their instructor participating in an Educational Psychology (ESEPSY2309) seminar to iteratively amplify collaboration and confidence in the mechanisms of teaching and learning. This reflexive process...
Chapter
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In this two-part paper, co-authored by undergraduate students and their instructor in n Educational Psychology seminar, we discuss the frameworks and processes that guide personality development in complex social environments, and showcase practices that rooted in improving students’ sense of self and peer relationships to help incorporate differen...
Article
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Visuospatial (VS) skills, or one’s ability to mentally manipulate spatial information about objects, are critical to STEM enrollment, retention, and achievement. Low level of VS skills may deter some people from joining the STEM workforce or complicate their learning experience. While there is plenty of evidence suggesting that VS skills can be imp...
Conference Paper
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In our mixed methods study, we understand how social media sites (e.g. Reddit) can create learning networks for school leaders and their staff. We suggest such networks may guide leadership decisions when sensitive issues arise that may require help-seeking from others with similar experiences. Our data is from our study in educational administrati...
Chapter
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In the Information Age, social media tools produce cybernetic feedback loops that respond to human agency on-the-fly, making it important to equip individuals with skills to navigate these feedback loops and traverse through a society where polarized online debates about controversial issues like climate change and vaccines are common. Educational...
Book
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This first edition of an anthology of student papers, and visual storyboards outlines theories of situated cognition (Piaget, Vygotsky, Bronfenbrenner), personality psychology, individual and group differences, and the strategies teachers may use to apply evidence based research findings to the classroom. The course design approach used by the inst...
Article
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This paper investigates how psychological needs spurring self-determined motivation relate to collective efficacy for flourishing in online learning communities. Self-determination theory posits individuals experience intrinsic motivation to flourish at educational tasks because of targeted satisfaction of the three psychological needs: autonomy, r...
Article
Full-text available
This three-part paper reinforces crosscurrents between cybernetician Gordon Pask’s work towards creating responsive machines applied to theater and education, and Vygotsky’s theory, to advance sociohistorical approaches into the Internet age. We first outline Pask’s discovery of possibilities of a neoclassical cybernetic framework for human-human,...
Chapter
Full-text available
We live in a deeply polarized time with conflicting information and even more conflicting perspectives on how to address issues, both real and manufactured. Schools, as microcosms of society, feel this pressure as much, or possibly even more than other institutions charged with maintaining social balance. The most obvious case in point is the COVID...
Chapter
In this chapter, we reflect on 30 years of research on the relationships between academic motivation and academic integrity. We review studies framed within five prominent theoretical perspectivestheories (attribution theory, goal orientation theory, social-cognitive theory, expectancy-value theory, and self-determination theory). We then suggest t...
Conference Paper
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The present study examines the effectiveness of a three-unit digital social studies curriculum in cultivating elementary students’ civic reasoning and decision making during the pandemic year. Eighty-seven students participated in dialogue-rich activities to collectively resolve critical civic issues. Pre-post changes in civic reasoning and decisio...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In studying students' sexual health outcomes, it is important to consider the influences of their peers. This study presents findings of multiple models examining if peer attitudes about waiting to have sex and use condoms moderate the relationship between students' expectancies for success and value of a sexual health curriculum and their self-eff...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper investigates whether immersive technology-assisted curricula improve teacher perceptions of elementary students’ moral engagement with social issues, and capacity for collaborative dialogue and activism to understand causes of inequality. Our study is derived from a technology-assisted intervention encouraging civic reasoning about socia...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The present study examines how 4th and 5th grade students’ collective efficacy (N=87) changed across a three-unit digital civic learning social studies curriculum and how students’ engagement related to their collective efficacy. Students participated in small-group discourse and worked with group members to solve civic-related dilemmas. Results fr...
Conference Paper
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We studied the feasibility of an innovative blended learning curriculum for early adolescents intended to foster citizenship skills through collaborative dialogue. Our curriculum was implemented during the 2020-2021 academic year, which afforded an opportunity to study feasibility under constrained classroom contexts. We conducted qualitative analy...
Article
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This paper outlines links between cybernetics and psychology through the black box metaphor using a tripartite narrative. The first part explores first-order cybernetic approaches to opening the black box. These developments run parallel to the decline of radical behaviorism, and advancements in information processing theory and neuropsychology. We...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Columbus City School district transitioned to virtual learning in Spring-2020 and has not resumed in-person learning. Through community partnerships, an evidence-based sexual health curriculum, Get Real, was completed in 5 middle schools pre-pandemic. However, Get Real, along with most sexual health education progr...
Poster
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In this conference presentation, we understand elementary school students' experiences using distributed technologies in social studies classroom. Our study was conducted with 87 students (58% 4th grade; 48% girls; 59% White, 22% Black, 14% Asian, 5% Multiracial) from five classes across two Midwestern public elementary schools (the sample from one...