The California Arts Project's Arts Education Assessment Tool, TCAP-AEAT, is an assessment process focused on supporting schools in developing exemplary standards-based arts education programs for all students. TCAP-AEAT focuses on the critical areas of Curriculum, Instruction, and Professional Development. The assessment process is embedded in a professional development experience that fosters in the participants the understanding of the key characteristics of a standards-based arts education program while supporting the school or district in developing their action plan. TCAP-AEAT utilizes technology in capturing school data, assessment results, and provides a database depository of school assessment and action plans. Schools and districts engaging in TCAP-AEAT processes will have an on-going record of their progress towards a fully implemented arts education program.

Galas worked to develop the Arts Education Assessment Tool with TCAP, and conducted the initial pilot study statewide in 2006-07. Work continues on refining the tool. The online reporting system was completed in late 2007, and in 2007-08, a larger sample group across the state was studied. The 2007-08 study was presented at AERA in April 2008 in New York City.

Report on the 2006-07 Pilot Study

Report on the 2007-2008 California statewide Study

Whyville.net provides free online access to over 2 million registered users ages 8-18. Research investigations focused on understanding student engagement within Whyville, the outbreak of a virtual epidemic called Whypox, children’s understandings of biological and computer viruses, and the economics of whypox vaccine sales and trades in the online community.

Cathleen Galas was the educator-researcher responsible for designing the various classroom curricular interventions, groupings, integrating the virtual epidemic into classroom study of epidemiology, teaching the science classrooms, and coordinating research team data collection workin the classroom. Galas worked closely with research teams headed by principal investigator Yasmin Kafai, UCLA, through the pilot and two iterations of the study (2002-2005).

More on Whyville

Research on Whyville and River City 03-04

River City

River City is multi-user virtual world in a late 19th century American city. Students travel back in time to a city that has a river running through town, a variety of terrain influencing water runoff, insect propagation, houses, industries, and a hospital and a university. River City is a self-contained MUVE, so that only students and teachers are part of the community. The research team headed by Chris Dede at Harvard University created the virtual world and curriculum. The goal of River City is to create an engaging learning community in which students learn science concepts and conduct scientific inquiry. (The River City Project)

Galas worked with the Harvard research team on a distance study of the MUVE. As educator-researcher, Galas and Diane Kettlehut, project director, communicated daily regarding student progress, comments, and curriculum ideas. Galas taught the classroom interventions and documented student daily progress, questions, and contributed suggestions to improve the virtual world and science curriculum.

Squeak E-Toys

Squeak E-Toys is an educational media-authoring tool built from the programming language Squeak, a Smalltalk language implementation. It is an open-source, object oriented program available for free on the web at www.squeakland.org.

Galas met Alan Kay and the Squeak group at ACM II in 2000, and began piloting E-Toys at the UCLA Lab School.  She worked with Dr. Kay and the Squeakland group at Disney Imagineering and then at Viewpoints Research developing and piloting math and science curriculum for E-Toys, and user-testing beta software versions.  She hosted NHK,  Japanese public television, in their filming of a Superteachers documentary program on Alan Kay at the UCLA Lab School.  She helped plan curriculum for the Emmy winning “Squeakers” DVD, and was available for limited filming.

Learning by Design LOGO

In a five-year study, upper elementary students worked in teams designing and implementing software to teach younger students about science. Teams were composed of students experienced in the project task and those new to the activity. In addition, many students had participated in these projects as third graders, the intended audience for the software, before moving in the software design activity the following year. Research focused on students’ participation in science conversations, the role of prior experience in collaboration, differences in learning relating to the team composition, evaluation of the long-term impact of learning through design and how students who participated in this project for four years came to understand their own learning experience and performance, as well as gender differences and gender-related choices in design. Team composition structures changed in order to evaluate gender influences and old-timer and apprentice models.

Galas worked on the research team headed by principal investigator, Yasmin Kafai, UCLA. As educator-researcher, she developed life, earth, and space science curricula for the projects, integrated the science into the design model, as well as organizing teams, developing strategies for the apprenticeship model, designing timelines and planning strategies, and teaching the design interventions over the course of the pilot and five-year study.