Steps toward a Technology Studies in Education Portal

TSE Portal: a web-enabled database

example: trouble shooting portal http://lrsdb2.ed.uiuc.edu:591/trouble/

Possible components of the TSE Portal:

• Proposal how-tos
  (examples: http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/j-levin/top-10-funding.html
  http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/k12/ARRTI/Grant-Writing-Outline.html )

• Human Subjects how-to: CoE web pages

• Methodology database
• Methodology how-tos

• Analysis database
• Analysis how-tos

• Conference database, including conference dates and proposal submission dates
• Conference presentation how-tos
• job-talk how-tos

• Journal how-tos
• Journal database
  (starting place: Dan Kauwell's list of ed tech journals at http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/courses/EdPsy490i/sp01/journals.html )

We could develop a "smart conference posting" mechanism, in which "Does Anyone Know" (DAK) questions are automatically compared to a "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ) database, with the asker presented with matches. In many cases, hopefully, the match will answer the question automatically. If none of the matches are useful, the asker indicates that and the question is posted for human review. Question-response pairs will be automatically analyzed, with repeated similar pairs identified as candidates for new FAQ entries. By "filtering" DAK questions through this "smart FAQ filter", we can improve the process of assisting novices and moving them toward expertise while lowering the burden on the experts.