No abstract

Although the idea of learning engineering dates back to the 1960s, there has been an explosion of interest in the area in the last decade. This interest has been driven by an expansion in the computational methods available both for scaled data analysis and for much faster experimentation and iteration on student learning experiences. This article describes the findings of a virtual convening brought together to discuss the potential of learning engineering and the key opportunities available for learning engineering over the next decades. We focus the many possibilities into ten key opportunities for the field, which in turn group into three broad areas of opportunity. We discuss the state of the current art in these ten opportunities and key points of leverage. In these cases, a relatively modest shift in the field's priorities and work may have an outsized impact.

The increased reliance on online education and educational technologies more generally has laid bare the need to more deeply consider how researchers, designers, and educators can improve the quality of technology-mediated learning. To address this need, more than two dozen experts from a variety of fields came together to discuss the challenges that educational technology must address in the immediate future. These experts were tasked with identifying barriers to and potential solutions for delivering highquality and equitable online and remote education. This article examines the themes and topics that emerged from these discussions and proposes a Collaborative Framework for Accelerating Online Education. This framework highlights the need for rapid experimentation within larger design cycles as well as the coordination and cooperation of multiple stakeholders across all phases of research and development. The themes, topics, and framework that emerged from this work serve as a call to action for innovative approaches to developing and studying online education.

In this chapter, Carmel Martin and Ulrich Boser, along with their associates Meg Benner and Perpetual Baffour, examine five decades of state fiscal equity litigation and determine what lessons can be used to inform the development and enforcement of a federal right to education. They conclude that the federal government will need to go beyond simply requiring that education be a right. In other words, the federal government also will need to ensure that at-risk students receive additional resources and accountability mechanisms to ensure that the key ingredients to success are available regardless of students’ backgrounds or zip codes. The authors also explain why building political will for change is critical for impactful reform.