Blog

Applications of artificial intelligence in middle school education (AAIMSE)

Albert D. Ritzhaupt

Yesterday, we finished a two-day professional development program for middle school teachers in Florida with a focus on the applications of artifical intelligence to both thier professional practice as educators and their students learning and development. I was very excited to engage with such dedicted educators as we tried to unpack how to appropriately integrate this emerging technology into our educational enterprises. I am also thankful for our awesome graduate students and educators who made this event a success. While we did not have conclusive guidance on the many good questions posed to us, we were able to start the conversation in the northeast Florida region and share experiences from the talented educators at PK Younge Developmental Lab School here at the Univiersity of Florida. The only thing I think we were all able to conclude is that AI like its predecessors (e.g., calculators, the Internet) is here to stay so we need to find appropriate ways to model and use the technology. The AAIMSE project focused on creating a PLC centered on applications of AI to middle schools and the dissemination of what we learned as a PD to surrounding schools. The AAIMSE project has two additional objectives to achieve in year two of the project: 1) design, development, and generation of preliminary validity and reliability evidence of an AI literacy measure targeting middle school students, and 2) the creation of guidelines and possibly standards for the appropriate uses of ARead More…

Five doctoral graduates in 2022

Albert D. Ritzhaupt

I have managed to pass a new threshold this academic year. For the first time in my career, I mentored five doctoral students to completion in 2022 that successfully defended their dissertations and graduated. Historically, the most number of doctoral students I mentored in a single year was four. I am so proud of my new doctoral graduates, and I am proud of myself for surviving this past Spring and Summer since I was essentially reading dissertations every weekend. If you are interested, here is a list of my amazing 2022 graduates and their dissertation titles: Max Sommer: A metacognitive approach to foster the development of credibility assessment skills in undergraduate learnersRobert A. Fulgenzi: An exploration of organizational culture in the remote work environment: A Delphi studyJohn Hampton: Experiences of video game play and Subreddit communities on self-reported well-being and resilience during COVID-19: A phenomenological study of Animal Crossing: New HorizonsRui “Tammy” Huang (Co-Mentored with Dr. Matthew Schmidt): Designing a digital game to foster international English language learners’ language-related episodes: A design-based research approachZalmond C. B. Abbondanza: A design and development case study of an online corequisite module for a college Algebra course The only negative to this accomplishment is that I am now down to five students in the DETAIL Lab, which is my official research group at UF. Since we hired so many faculty at UF in the past fRead More…

Improving Meta-Analysis in Educational Research

Albert D. Ritzhaupt

With the publication of our research article in Educational Research Review titled “Examining research on the impact of distance and online learning: A second-order meta-analysis study,” I have now officially published eight different meta-analyses in educational technology or computer science education on topics related to my research interests with several more on the way. About seven years ago, I attended Dr. Borenstein’s workshop on meta-analysis and took off running ever since. I strongly encourage you to attend his workshop and read his book if you are interested in this research method. He is a gifted teacher and author, and still answers my email questions to this day. However, now that I might label myself as more experienced in this research methodology, I have learned there are several limitations to the approach that are driven by two factors: 1) the quality of the research methods employed in the primary studies, and 2) the depth of reporting about salient features within a primary research study. Quality of Research Methods Employed I cannot remember where I read this or heard this, but one of the primary criticisms of the meta-analysis approach is that we are “comparing apples and oranges.” This speaks to the differences in the interventions, measures, implementations, and other facets of the research studies that might qualify in a given meta-analysis. However, if the research methods are implemented with quality with concerns to various validRead More…

Class project for creating OER book chapters

Albert D. Ritzhaupt

Like many professors, I often try to create classroom activities that are more authentic learning experiences and will artifacts that last beyond a traditional semester. I have long been inspired by the notion of Open Educational Resources (OERs) and the different forms of pedagogy that surround these initiatives. In light of this, I created a classroom project that I piloted on two occasions for students to collaboratively write an OER textbook on topics of relevance to the students and the broader educational technology community. Using principles from instructional design, I created a five-step process visualized in Figure 1 below for students to collaboratively author chapters for an OER book on a WordPress platform to provide different pedagogical and technological affordances, such as interactive quizzes, embedded assessments, learning outcomes, chapter reviews, and more. Figure 1. A five-step process for creating an OER book as a classroom project. I pilot tested this project on two occasions in my face-to-face EME 6606: Advanced Instructional Design course. Both of the OER textbooks are available on my website and have actually been adopted in different courses as supplementary resources in higher education programs in the field of educational technology. Here is an example of one of these resources created by my talented students: ADDIE Explained I apologize in advance that I have not refreshed these materials in quite some time. However, the artifact iRead More…

Committing to Writing

Albert D. Ritzhaupt

I have not used the blog feature of WordPress in about five years. And even before then, I did not use the blogging feature as intended. After re-designing my website several years ago, I decided to disable the blogging feature as my contributions to the blogroll were not consistent, lacked purpose, and rarely used the advanced features for blogging such as tagging or categorizing. However, I have recently decided that I am going to commit to more informal writing again. Now that I am a full professor, I am not at a stage in my career where I have more control over the nature of what I write, how frequently, and where I write. I feel as though now is the time to refresh my blogging efforts and offer the world – in addition to my published research – some ideas and reflections beyond those locked behind peer-reviewed journal paywalls. In making this decision to start blogging again, I needed to think about what type of content I would choose to post on my website, how to organize this information, and parameters on how frequently I would force myself to write new posts for my website. In terms of the nature of the content for my blog, I have come to the following types of posts that I will make: Reflections on my Research: I am going to try to provide reflections on my newly published research articles by provinding an easily accessible digest of what the research means to educational practice and any additional thoughts that emerged as a consequence of the research, sRead More…