Technology Innovation in Educational Research and Design

TIER-ED Community Meetings in Pandemic

The pandemic required us to make changes to our community meeting format but we continued to hold them through 2020-21. We had speakers form across campus share their work and our TIER-ED Graduate Fellows shared their research progress. TIER-ED awarded pilot projects shared updates on the changes in their plans and hurdles in their project that occurred due to the pandemic. Some of our lightning talks were from Dr. Madhu Viswanathan (Business), Dr. Nathan Castillo (Education), and Dr. Nigel Bosch (ISchool). Emilie Butt from CU Community FabLab informed us how it has evolved and adapted to the online context in COVID times. Dr. Chad Lane and Dr. Jennifer Cromley, shared their experience of modifying research and they were joined by Christopher Davies, Human Subjects Research Specialist at the Office of the Protection of Research Subjects. He shared insights into the adaptations at their office to accommodate the changing IRB needs due to COVID-19. We also had Dr. Meg Bates, Director at Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative (IWERC). She talked about the works of IWERC and possible collaborations with TIER-ED affiliates. Dr. Marcia Pool and Dr. Rex Gaskins from Cancer Center at Illinois also presented at one our meetings and wanted to identify synergies and possible collaborative research activities with TIER-ED affiliates.