DBER+ Commons

The Discipline-Based Education Research plus (DBER+) Commons - A FAIR/CARE/OS Research Coordination Network

Principal Investigators: Kathleen Fitzpatrick (PI); Shiv Karunakaran (Co-PI); Marcos Caballero (Co-PI); Tammy Long (Co-PI); Julie Libarkin (Co-PI)

Graduate Students: Jihye Hwang (Spring 2023)

Post-Docs: NA

Funding: $1,249,282

Dates: January 1, 2023 – December 31, 2025

Website: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2226271&HistoricalAwards=false

Abstract:  The Discipline-Based Education Research plus (DBER+) Commons project will extend the popular Humanities Commons (HCommons) system to build consensus around and capacity for open science, the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics) practices, principles, and guidelines for use in undergraduate, postbaccalaureate, graduate, and postdoctoral science education research activities. This research coordination network (RCN) will work to advance several areas of science education research outputs including quality control of metadata for research products, stewardship practices, interoperability, reproducibility, sustainability, equity, and democratization of access to research data. The project will engage the broader science education research community in activities to develop shared norms, expectations, and potential. STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education research takes place in a variety of extended areas such as DBER, SOTL (scholarship of teaching and learning), educational psychology, learning science, and cognitive science. This project adopts the nomenclature DBER+ to refer to STEM education research in all of these settings and at a variety of tertiary (undergraduate, postbac, graduate, postdoc) educational levels. This research coordination network will foster cross, inter, and transdisciplinary innovation by engaging perspectives from many DBER+ perspectives and sharing those perspectives out to the extended community. A collaboration board will engage participants in the DBER+ Commons to increase the impact of DBER+ research in university classrooms.

Here are a couple of articles that have been done on the particular grant and on the larger call from NSF: https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2022/humanities-commons-network-to-expand-to-new-stem-focused-commons & https://www.arl.org/news/arl-applauds-nsf-open-science-investment/