Katerine Bielaczyc

Katerine Bielaczyc, director of Clark’s Hiatt Center for Urban Education, is Senior Researcher on a 1.3M grant from the National Science Foundation’s CyberLearning and Future Learning Technologies awarded to PI Janis Dickinson (Cornell) for a three-year project entitled “DIP: Potential for everyday learning in a virtual community: a design-based investigation.” Bielaczyc will be heading a $71,432 sub-award to Clark University.

With this subcontract, Bielaczyc will collaborate in design research involving Yardmap, a citizen science project created by the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology. The citizen scientists, from across the United States, are studying their own backyards as eco-systems, entering their data into a shared, networked space and learning from each other. The goal is to act local, but have a global effect by making their backyards into a healthy eco-system. The research team will examine how networked engagement increases the citizen-scientists’ cooperation, behavior, and learning, and investigate how participation in the learning community grows over time.

Dr. Bielaczyc’s research involves collaborating with students, teachers, and school communities to investigate new approaches to teaching and learning. Her work focuses on developing both technological and social infrastructures to support participants in working together as a knowledge building community to create knowledge regarding personal, pedagogical and systemic transformation.