COLLEGE PARK, MD (October, 2014) During the previous academic year, Associate Professor Susan De La Paz of the Department of Counseling, Higher Education and Special Education worked with the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access on a research project titled "Piloting Tools to Enable Active and Participatory Learning for Middle School Students." This project is one of eight collaborations to be highlighted at the upcoming UMD-SI Seed Grant Celebration.
Funded by the University of Maryland Smithsonian Institution seed grant program, the project examined how a digital toolset could help students integrate Smithsonian digital resources into their learning experiences. Dr. De La Paz worked with Melissa Wadman of the Smithsonian to enable middle school students at College Park Academy to search for and examine Smithsonian digital resources through guided, informal learning activities in history. These students used Smithsonian resources to produce National History Day projects that were guided by their own interests. Meanwhile, the researchers gathered measures of student interest and learning to inform further refinements of the existing digital toolset.
The project took place with seventh graders from the College Park Academy, who were taught by undergraduate and graduate students who were majoring in history, and culminated with NHD school winners advancing to the PGCPS NHD competition, and one student advancing to the state competition.
The 2014 UMD-SI Seed Grant Celebration will take place on Thursday, October 30, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., in the Third Floor Ellipse at the Physical Sciences Complex on campus. If you wish to attend, please RSVP here.
Dr. Susan De La Paz is an associate professor in the Department of Counseling, Higher Education and Special Education. Her research focuses especially on adolescents with learning disabilities, and she has worked for fifteen years with middle and high school teachers, developing writing and history curriculum interventions for students with diverse academic abilities.
Click here to learn more about the UMD-SI Seed Grant Program.
-end-
For more information on the College of Education, visit: www.education.umd.edu
or contact
Joshua Lavender, Communications Coordinator, at: lavender@umd.edu
