On 23rd February 2020, Estonian National research awards 2020 were presented in Tallinn at the hall of the Estonian Academy of Sciences.
In the field of social sciences, CEITER team was awarded. The research group is an interdisciplinary team that has been established at Tallinn University (TLU) at the School of Educational Sciences and the School of Digital Technologies. The group has received funding through an EU ERA Chair project CEITER (Cross-Border Educational Innovation thru Technology-Enhanced Research) in 2015 and led by ERA Chair Professor of Learning Analytics and Educational Innovation Tobias Ley. The rest of the team awarded: Katrin Poom-Valickis (Professor of Teacher Education at the School of Educational Sciences), Mart Laanpere (Senior Research Fellow in Educational Technology at the School of Digital Technologies), Terje Väljataga (Senior Research Fellow in New Learning Environments and Technologies at the School of Educational Sciences), Kairit Tammets (Senior Research Fellow in Educational Technology at the School of Digital Technologies), María Jesús Rodríguez-Triana (Senior Research Fellow in Learning Analytics and Educational Data Mining at the School of Digital Technologies, and external researcher from GSIC-EMIC research group), Luis Pablo Prieto Santos (Senior Research Fellow in New Learning Environments and Technologies at the School of Educational Sciences, and external researcher from GSIC-EMIC research group), Paul Seitlinger (Senior Research Fellow at Cognition and Social Interaction in Learning at the School of Educational Sciences).
The main research problem addressed is whether and how the introduction of technologies contribute to innovations in education on all levels in an evidence-based way. There is a current lack of models that sufficiently look at this problem in an integrated way. From an Educational Science point of view, the group researches different types of technology-supported student-centered and collaborative learning scenarios, such as the use of smart phones in science education or the use of interactive digital learning resources in mathematics. Researchers with a background in Computer Science focus on new methods and tools for teachers to collaboratively produce learning designs, collect data from the classroom or on the school level. Researchers from the area of Psychology relate the data that is collected in the learning process to basic psychological functions like working memory or creative cognition.
ERA Chair Prof. Tobias Ley said the whole team is very proud of the reputable award and this is definitely a significant acknowledgement to the work done during past years. “I am especially happy the committee decided to award multidisciplinary team, as interdisciplinary research is not very often acknowledged. This award is an evidence of how research can help guiding the society towards innovation,” says Ley. He pointed out this huge acknowledgement is at the same time also a confirmation of need to continue the work done with teachers, students and schools in developing Estonian education together. Read more in Estonian here and here.
This post was originally published at http://ceiter.tlu.ee/ceiter-team-past-4-years-research-in-educational-innovation-acknowledged-with-estonian-national-research-award-2020/