Research Associate MIT: Physics Education Research
Help create a variety of research-based week by week topical quizzes and higher level assessments of reasoning skills, important procedures, higher level thinking, and study habits. These will be Beta-tested in the Relate-MIT-Harvard collaboration on edX.org. In a collaboration with NJCTL.org. These assessments will also be administered online in blended courses – for teachers in both programs, and to students both at MIT and in high schools with a majority of underrepresented minority students. By collecting click-by-click interactions of students we will discover and probe different dimensions of student thinking, using the new assessments, psychometrics, and data mining. We will provide students and teachers formative/summative assessments with resolution down to the sub-topic and learning objective level, as well as evaluations of higher level skills. The major responsibility of the research associate will be to collect and augment assessments and ideas from the research literature, write new questions, and help understand the data. This job will include curating resources, performing experimental/control group experiments to research which instructional resources teach which topics & learning objectives best. Our long term goal is to understand which pedagogies, resources, and learning habits improve student learning of overall expertise. This work will benefit from the RELATE group’s expertise in educational data mining, advanced psychometrics including multi-dimensional item response theory, and experience in designing online experiments. (see http://RELATE.mit.edu)
Requisite Knowledge and Skills:
Knowledge of Physics (esp. mechanics and E&M) and education research literature
Teaching experience in introductory physics
Writing novel and clear questions
Programming ability with Python
Statistics/data analysis skills, R
A Ph.D or Ed.D in physics or science education research, instructional design, or cognitive science etc. is desired, but a physics BS with following teaching experience is OK. Applicant must be comfortable working both alone and with others. All former RELATE alumni have obtained positions in academia or education companies. Inquiries and applications (CV, cover letter, and list of at least three references) should be sent to relateMIT@gmail.com (please include “postdoc application” in subject line). Review of applications will begin immediately; starting date June to late Fall 2018.
MIT is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer. For more information check http://web.mit.edu/physics/
