Cost-effective and user-friendly, mobile phone-assisted methods have remained underutilized in qualitative social science research. The scarce methodological guidance, together with recruitment and ethical challenges, has arguably stifled advancements in this area. COVID-19 exposed the need to better equip researchers with the expertise and tools…

The underrepresentation and underperformance of low-income, first-generation, gender minoritized, Black, Latine, and Indigenous students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) occurs for a variety of reasons, including, that students in these groups experience opportunity gaps in STEM classes. A critical approach to disrupting…

This article presents a novel digital method of capturing finger-based gestures on touchscreen devices for the purpose of exploring tracing gestures in educational research. Given that tracing has been found to support cognition, learning, and problem solving in educational settings, data related to the performance of these gestures are…

Digital technologies play an important role in our daily lives. Smartphones and tablet computers are very common worldwide and are available for everybody from a very early age. This trend offers the opportunity to track digital usage data for psychological and educational research purposes. The current paper introduces two research projects, the…

Making evidence-based decisions in schools seems like an impossible task when hundreds of activities are available, the evidence base fails to address most of them, and budget deadlines are immovable. In addition, different stakeholders hold different views on what it means for a program, strategy, or intervention to "work." Fiona…

The mobile food record™ (mFR™) is a novel app that allows for the tracking of individual food waste and addresses the limitations of current methods to accurately quantify food waste. Extension educators may use data from the mFR™ to create educational initiatives for food waste prevention and education that may be implemented in settings such as…

A new app, freely available for Windows computers, has been developed to simulate tuning of an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer, on the basis of optimization data collected using a sector-field instrument. The app allows students to adjust parameters, including the torch position, gas flows, radio-frequency power, and guard-electrode…

A crucial site of bias in classrooms is class discussions. A new free web-based tool developed by university researchers can help teachers actively monitor how their biases are affecting students in real-time.

Data collection is a fundamental skill in science education, one that students generally practice in a controlled setting using equipment only available in the classroom laboratory. However, using smartphones with their built-in sensors and often free apps, many fundamental experiments can be performed outside the laboratory. Taking advantage of…

Dartmouth and MIT have developed educational behavior apps and wearable devices that collect contiguous streams of data from student users. Given the consent of the user, the app collects information about a student's physical activity, sleep patterns, and location to form conjectures about social and academic behavior. These apps have the…

This article addresses the question of what app or website is appropriate for teachers to use for classroom instruction. While most school districts have safety policies related to the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) implemented by means of software and district firewalls, this…

In this short Opinion piece, I outline how iPad apps can facilitate theory development, data collection, data representation and dissemination of postgraduate psychology research. I reflect on how apps supported my own postgraduate research practice and how one particular app--Our Story--enriched the individual stages of my research enquiry. I…

The traditional Run the Football Field physics activity--in which students are timed as they move at different speeds on a football field to investigate displacement and velocity--has been updated for the 21st century. Nowadays, GPS-enabled tablets and smartphones replace the stopwatches and yard markers of the past, allowing students to collect…

Fieldwork is an essential component in Geography education. Learning through research in Geography involves generating substantial data and data manipulation. In order to make geographical inquiry a worthwhile learning experience, researchers require a seamless system that allows data collection and analysis without being distracted by the…

Today, many school districts are turning to business intelligence tools to retrieve, organize, and share knowledge for faster analysis and more effective, guided decision making. Business intelligence (BI) tools are the technologies and applications that gather and report information to help an organization's leaders make better decisions. BI…