reDesignED, a nonpartisan research, design, and service agency, conducts and communicates independent education design research (EDR) to address entrenched and emerging educational challenges. Under the umbrella of improvement science, EDR brings together researchers, learning scientists, instructional designers, and educators to collaboratively design solutions that promote excellence, achieve equity, and prepare learners for all that the future has to offer.
These are high goals and require a rethinking of existing practices and delivery models.
The gap
In an era with unprecedented access to information and rapidly evolving social, mobile, and creative technologies, we have the possibility to personalize learning to the needs and talents of individual students. We also have the possibility to teach more authentically and more meaningfully than ever before. The potential of each learner, however, has yet to be reached because there remain significant gaps between what we know about personalized learning and what we practice in the classroom, especially when learning is mediated by technology.
The challenge
Why loose sleep over that? Well, because education in the most literal sense is about our human potential. It matters because unless we reDesign our educational practices, all the information in the world and all the creative technologies will not make us smarter.
The opportunity
reDesignED addresses long-standing and new educational challenges by
- approaching teaching and learning as a design science. This emphasizes creativity and the development of new approaches to entrenched problems.
- engaging in the systematic design, development, and implementation of solutions using education design research (EDR).
- collaborating with education communities on EDR projects to integrate academic scholarship with the tacit knowledge of practitioners.
- learning from EDR implementations about what works for whom in what contexts.
- providing professional learning opportunities designed in collaboration with scholars as a way to bridge research and practice.
- providing design-based services grounded in evidence-based principles and practices.
- sharing design knowledge, practices, and tools with the education community to address local needs and goals.
- supporting teachers is becoming the designers of local solutions
Together we can reDesign education!
For education researchers and practitioners alike, these are exciting goals!