Our Goals

SEERNet is creating the infrastructure to push research innovations forward in the United States. As network lead, Digital Promise facilitates collaborations between DLPs, researchers, and education stakeholders. Since October 2021, we’ve engaged with developers, including working with the DLPs to discuss what each contributes, and how, as a network, they can strengthen each other. The five DLPs selected by IES to launch SEERNet have the power of scale: MATHia/UpGrade, ASSISTments ETRIALS, Canvas + Terracotta, ASU Online, and Kinetic by OpenStax each have at least 100,000 users. In the future, additional platforms might be added.

The SEERNet initiative is based on the SEER principles released by the Institute of Education Sciences that encourages rigorous education research that is transparent, actionable, and focused on consequential outcomes.

The SEERNet initiative will:

1. Extend the capacity of multiple digital learning platforms to enable rigorous education research. Each platform team will revise a widely used digital learning platform to create features, portals, dashboards, data-sharing tools, and other system components needed to conduct research within the platform. The teams will also develop the infrastructure necessary to facilitate collaboration across researchers and education stakeholders.
   
2. National leadership and outreach. Leadership activities will include convenings of platform developers, researchers, and education stakeholders to discuss challenges such as data privacy, collaboration tools, and the types of meaningful outcomes that can be collected by platforms that would be useful for practitioners. 
   
3. Establish collaborations between platform developers, researchers, and education stakeholders. SEERNet will bring together leading education technology developers, researchers, and education personnel to identify ways to answer research questions that address the needs of education stakeholders. These collaborations will serve as a model for the field.
   
4. Demonstrate the promise of conducting high-quality, quick-turnaround research studies using digital platforms. Research teams will conduct studies using the revised platforms that will serve as examples for the field as well as provide opportunities to improve the platforms. Join our interest list to find out when additional funding is available.