Preparing for SUNY Buffalo Interview

FACULTY Dr. Samuel Abramovich (Search Chair) My research interests include finding and understanding the learning opportunities presented by the intersection of the Learning Sciences and Emerging Technology, especially Assessment For Learning. This includes research on digital badges, online rating systems, Makerspaces, and Open Education Resources - all to help guide education improvement and reform. - co-published with Marcelo! - Likely interested in: - DBR, Instrumentation - Talk about the purposes of technology, - assessment aligned with those purposes. - Book with Paulo.

Dr. X. Christine Wang Reading and (Re)writing the World: Exploring Critical Pedagogy of Place in Early Science and Literacy Learning. Exploring Critical Pedagogy of Place and Multimodal Digital Technology. We have pretty similar interests - Likely interested in - conceptual framework: Vygotskian perspective, mediation. - transliteracies perspective on unfold studio - student journalism, mobile media -

Dr. Ji-Won Son Gender, Culture, and Equity; Design Experiments; Learning design - Maybe interested in teacher preparation work, Hong Kong teaching

Dr. Yunjeong Chang My research focuses on engaging cognitively and culturally diverse students in the student-centered online, hybrid, and face-to-face learning environments in multi-disciplinary contexts. My research areas have evolved while conducting mixed method research with scholars in computer science, science, engineering, and medical fields. Currently, I am leading two NSF grants and four ongoing research projects across four areas: Engaging learners in student-centered learning environments, Enhancing STEM diversity, Creating effective online professional development environments, and Serving underserved population.

Questions to expect and be ready to answer

Tell us about you/your work/your current research trajectory.
- Be ready to give a ~4-minute summary of the dissertation, accessible.
Where is this taking you? What are your next steps?
Tell us about your commitment to diversity and equity.
Talk to us about how you view teaching and mentorship.
- Possibly, they could ask a question about specific teaching contexts they have in mind. For example: “We have an introduction to the learning sciences course. How might you teach that?”
Is there a course you’re particularly interested
Do you have any questions?
- Need to have two good questions that will make me look good and won’t make them look bad. For example, asking about:
- Advising relationships
- Partnerships with schools/community
- Interdisciplinary work….

Questions they actually asked:

How do you define the learning sciences and how does your work fit into it?
How do you imagine teaching computer science?
Give us an example of actions you have taken to support diversity.
This is an R1 university. What are your plans for establishing a productive research agenda and bringing in grant funding?
Tell us about you/your work/your current research trajectory. My research is in the context of computer science education, but theoretically puts the learning sciences in dialogue with literacies, asking us to focus on developing student competency, sociocultural forms of learning through participation, and critical stances on the practice of computer science. I have found literacy to be a framework good for this. My dissertation is the result of three years of design-based research developing a web app for reading and writing interactive stories which combine writing with programming. The design-based research process is the basis of my article in ILS; the dissertation explores the results of a ten-week study in 5 6th grade CS classrooms. I use Holland and colleagues’ figured worlds framework to talk about identity authorship and voice–the way your individual learning shapes and is shaped by the community. I have four major research questions. Two are design questions and two are theoretical questions.

How did they use the medium?
How did they connect literacies?
Did they learn any CS?
And what pedagogical strategies were effective for transliteracies teaching? A few key results:
Some design insights around computational infrastructure.
At a personal level and a group level, I found a strong association between writing–and sharing–stories, as well as reading others’ stories and the summative technical portfolio assessment.
I also showed that there were important forms of marginalization that came along with transliteracies. This matters because we need theory dialogue, but we also need to know how to do it.

Where is this taking you? What are your next steps?

Unfold Studio. So little of academic research actually reaches practice.
Student activism within technosocial worlds of school. For example, student journalism.
Longitudinal research on CS, innovative methods.

Tell us about your commitment to diversity and equity.
Talk to us about how you view teaching and mentorship. Community building. Mentorship. scaffolding.
- Possibly, they could ask a question about specific teaching contexts they have in mind. For example: “We have an introduction to the learning sciences course. How might you teach that?”
Is there a course you’re particularly interested in teaching? How would you teach the intro learning sciences course? I’ve had a chance to see how this works at three different universities, and I’m most guided by Roy Pea’s advice (He’s started enough of them…) that “learning science is what learning scientists do.” Building the professional community of practice, and helping students enter into it, would be my top priorities. I would see this course as doing some of the following: – Learning about the core research trajectories in the field. Reading seminal papers. Doing lit reviews around topics of our interest. – Learning about where the conversations happen. Tracking the conferences and journals.
Do you have any questions?

I really liked that this position was (1) in learning sciences, (2) focused on CS education, and (3) oriented toward practical problems. Can you tell me about partnerships you have with community and schools?
I noticed that there’s a note on the website saying the PhD program is being redesigned. Can you tell me some more about how I would fit into this, and what advising relationships tend to be like, especially online?