News from WCER
WCER Team Wins Award in Global Ed Tech Competition for Student Assessment Tool
June 28, 2022 | By WCER Communications
Project Director Laura Wright and Outreach Specialist Linda Malkin will receive $249,622 for their project, “Actionable Assessment: Scaffolding Students’ Experience with Assessment Results,” a digital reporting tool to make students’ assessment results interpretable and actionable, fostering positive assessment use and learning habits.
Great Lakes Shipwreck Game from UW–Madison Wins Gold in International Competition
June 14, 2022 | By Karen Rivedal, WCER Communications
An educator advisory group of Wisconsin teachers and their students also helped plan and refine the game.
Faculty Receive Fellowships, Awards for Exceptional Research Contributions
May 19, 2022 | By WCER Communications
The awards are possible due to the research efforts of UW–Madison faculty and staff. Technology that arises from these efforts is licensed by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and the income from successful licenses is returned to the OVCRGE, where it is used to fund research activities and awards throughout the four divisions on campus: arts and humanities, physical sciences, social sciences and biological sciences.
New Study Examines Technology-Enhanced Items in English Language Proficiency Assessments
May 13, 2022 | By WIDA Communications
A new WIDA study found the technology-enhanced items (TEIs) were best suited to use on tests for older students on English language proficiency assessments.
WCER Projects Seeking Summer Interns Should Act Fast
April 25, 2022 | By WCER Communications
After a pandemic-related pause last year, WCER will once again host interns this summer from Centro Hispano of Dane County’s Escalera program for Latinx high school students from the Madison Metropolitan School District.
WCER will centrally fund the required fee of $1,516 per intern for up to two interns, potentially making it easier for smaller WCER projects to participate in the program.
Projects interested in helping to host an intern need to signal interest at their earliest convenience by contacting Shahanna McKinney-Baldon of the Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative, which is coordinating the Escalera program within WCER. You can email McKinney-Baldon here.
WCER Shines in School of Education’s Faculty and Staff Distinguished Achievement Awards
April 13, 2022 | By WCER Communications
This year’s awardees include three recipients with ties to WCER: Danielle Maillette, Sadhana Puntambekar and Maria Widmer. Danielle is our Events and Intranet Manager, Maria is instructional designer for Discussion Project Virtual and Sadhana is a reseacher.
WCER’s CIRTL Releases New Casebook Promoting Inclusive Teaching
April 1, 2022 | By WCER Communications
The casebook takes a contemporary look at dilemmas instructors face in today’s classrooms and offers strategies for facilitating difficult conversations around each case.
“Too often our discussions about inclusion and equity take place in the abstract,” CIRTL Director Robert Mathieu says. “These carefully developed cases place each of us in the moment, providing both a mirror unto ourselves and an opportunity to become better teachers for all of our students.”
New Study of COVID-19’s Impact on Dane County 4K Classes Finds ‘Silver Linings’ Amid Pain
March 15, 2022 | By Karen Rivedal, WCER Communications
How to sustain positive outcomes seen during the pandemic—such as increased connection between teachers and parents through new communication technologies and more planning time for teachers—is an important question for districts going forward.
Deputy State Superintendent to Visit for Informal Q&A on DPI’s Current and Future Directions
February 18, 2022 | By WCER Communications
Join John Johnson, Deputy State Superintendent, for a discussion of the current priorities and future directions of Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction. The program will take place from noon-1:30 p.m. CT in Room 159 of the Education Building.
MSAN Institute Issues Call to School of Education Researchers for Equity-Centered Proposals
February 9, 2022 | By WCER Communications
Proposals are due March 1 for 60-minute breakout sessions for the two-day, professional development program focused this year on sharing research-based strategies and promising practices around social-emotional learning and radical self-care, as well as those that increase students’ academic achievement and sense of belonging.
New Immersive Simulator Lets Game Players Reimagine Land Use Based on Real Science
January 13, 2022 | By Karen Rivedal, WCER Communications
UW–Madison researchers teamed with a New England conservation nonprofit to create an online learning game that lets players model how different zoning choices would affect the environment, jobs, housing and other real-world factors for any location in the contiguous United States.The free game, known as iPlan, lets players simulate different land-use scenarios and see the changing effects on their community.
WIDA Using $2.6M Grant to Help Rural Educators Improve Multilingual Literacy Instruction
December 14, 2021 | By WIDA Communications
WIDA, an educational services organization within the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education, has been awarded $2.6 million from the U.S. Department of Education to launch Rural Educators Self-Reflecting and Practicing Equity-Centered Teaching with English Learners (Project RESPECT), a program that will help rural K-8 teachers provide effective and equitable literacy instruction for multilingual learners.
UW–Madison Evaluation Experts Partner with Students, Staff at Capital High
November 23, 2021 | By WCER Communications
A central piece of the partnership this year is WEC helping students learn the skills involved in culturally responsive research and evaluation at Capital High, which is organized around project work and experiential learning. In keeping with that focus, the course syllabus includes a hands-on project in which students will each design, complete and report out on an evaluation study. Enrollees at Capital High, who are generally from low-income backgrounds and the majority of whom are students of color, will do their evaluations in collaboration with scholars, educators and mentors from Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD), the Madison community and UW−Madison.
WCER Director Courtney Bell Appointed to National Committee for Equitable STEM Learning
November 15, 2021 | By WCER Communications
WCER Director Courtney Bell is one of 15 experts selected nationwide to serve on a new, ad-hoc committee created by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) to provide practical, evidence-based guidance to make STEM learning in the PreK–12 system equitable.
Chosen from among more than 350 nominations, committee members are recognized teachers, researchers and scholars in a range of academic disciplines focused on the science of learning, cultural inclusivity and improved teaching of STEM subjects for historically underserved children.
The National Academies’ Committee on Equity in PreK–12 Stem Education will provide “actionable recommendations” for education policy and program stakeholders following a period of rigorous study. Committee members will determine how best to support educational equity in the teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics at all levels through high school.
Annual MSAN Student Conference Draws More and Younger Students After Going Online
October 27, 2021 | By WCER Communications
WCER’s MSAN Consortium of multiracial school districts is moving its annual conference for high school students online this year, just as it did last fall for the first time because of the pandemic. As a result, organizers have been able to expand access to the program that kicks off Wednesday to more students, including younger ones, which has long been a goal, MSAN Executive Director Madeline Hafner says.
“One of our dreams at MSAN has been to replicate what is so amazing about our high school conference for our middle school students, but that’s very hard to do when kids have to travel,” Hafner says, noting districts would have to pay for more chaperones for younger students to alleviate concerns.
“But when we do it virtually, they could all come,” she adds. “One of the gifts of the pandemic was being able to open up the conference virtually to middle schools.”
