We are committed to engaging in research and outreach that will make a significant and lasting difference at the student, classroom, school, district, state and national levels.
Integrating Student Voice into Assessment Item Design
The purpose of the Measuring Early Mathematical Reasoning Skills (MMaRS) project is to provide teachers in Grades K-2 with technically rigorous classroom assessment resources from which they can gather data about students’ development of understanding in Numerical Relational Reasoning and Spatial Reasoning.
In this video we showcase how we elicited student feedback during the development of formative assessments that measure numerical relational reasoning and spatial reasoning with the purpose of guiding teachers’ instructional decisions. We conducted think aloud interviews with students in Kindergarten to Grade 2 to examine the functioning of various item features. We analyzed the results to determine whether students understood the assessment prompts, the items adequately elicited the intended content and reasoning strategies, and the task (e.g., materials, manipulatives and/or instructions) was free from bias or construct irrelevant variance. In this video, we describe more detail the process for conducting and analyzing think aloud interviews for the tests of Spatial Reasoning, and explain how we used this information to finalize the items prior to pilot testing.
Computational Thinking, Game Design, and Educational Assessment
In this video, we feature the early work of our NSF funded project, STEM+C, lead by Corey Clark, Ph.D., Leanne Ketterlin Geller, Ph.D. and Eric Larson, Ph.D. This research project focuses on creating a more stable, ethical, and inclusive data science workforce by broadening the interest in data science to a more diverse population of students. This research spans the fields of game design, human computer interaction, machine learning, curriculum design and educational assessment by integrating essential computer science standards directly into Minecraft.
Developing STEM Access in Students K-2 through MMaRS
In this video, we feature the early work of our NSF funded Measuring Early Mathematical Reasoning Skills (MMaRS) Project. We describe the importance of these early mathematics constructs, illustrate the iterative nature of our research to articulate and empirically validate learning progressions, and share prototypical classroom assessment tasks designed to elicit student thinking and reasoning in the constructs.
RME News
Conference Presentations
Learn more about RME projects disseminated at recent educational research conferences around the country and world.
Measuring Early Mathematical Reasoning Skills
This fall, the MMaRS team conducted cognitive interviews centered on Spatial Reasoning to help provide evidence for the MMaRS Spatial Reasoning Learning Progressions. These data will help us investigate the ordering, conceptualization, and interconnectedness of the MMaRS Spatial Reasoning Learning Progressions. Check out our blog for resources for parents and teachers.
Integrating Human Computer Interaction, Machine Learning, Game Design, and Educational Assessment in a STEM+C Curriculum
National Science Foundation has awarded a collaborative group of SMU researchers from Education and Engineering a $1.5 million four year grant to research teaching computer science and computational thinking via Minecraft. PI Corey Clark, Ph.D. and Co-PIs Eric Larson,, Ph.D.
Project STAIR
Supporting Teaching of Algebra: Individual Readiness uses data-based individualization (DBI) to partner with middle-school teachers to improve math outcomes for students with learning difficulties.
RME Researchers Recent Article Published in Applied Measurement in Education
Latest article from the RME team proposes the Assessment Triangle for operationalizing and instantiating validation.
Research-to-Practice Conference
RME's annual conference synthesizes the latest education policy, and presents practical solutions for K-12 mathematics educators.
Response to Intervention Resources
RME's work with TEA includes the state's guidance project delivered via a mobile app and website and has since expanded to include five webinars by leading experts in RTI.