Education and learning are embodied experiences that unfold in time.
We aim to understand how identities, aspirations and learning opportunities coevolve to shape lives and life chances.
We use many data sources, methods and frameworks to understand how people navigate learning.
online learning
What works, what doesn't, and what the future of online learning might be.
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Learn more about this projectsequences and forecasts
Using computational, qualitative and archival techniques to understand how learning paths unfold.
Projects
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Learn more about this projectplatforms and toolkits
Powerful, user-friendly tools to aid in course search and path discovery.
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Learn more about this projectstudent narratives
Utilizing a cache of hundreds of thousands of essays submitted with applications to a large public university system, the student narratives team is exploring how young people make sense of their life experiences and represent their accomplishments to others.
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Learn more about this projectpaths to work
The relationship between schools and workplaces is complex and changing rapidly. Our work informs public discourse on how best to scaffold education and learning opportunities over the entire life course.
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Learn more about this projectresponsible use
The ubiquity, detail and fidelity of data describing learning interactions brings extraordinary opportunity to improve education -- but also obliges educators to share and deploy data responsibly. Pathways Lab takes these responsibilities seriously and continuously.
Project
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Learn more about this projectWe share our work.
Teaching Online in 2020: Experiments, Empathy, Discovery
The authors attended discussions and interviewed instructors in Stanford’s Computer Science Department to identify successful approaches and problem areas in the rapid transition to online learning.
Building Tomorrow’s Workforce Today: Twin Proposals for the Future of Learning, Opportunity and Work
The US federal government has serially called upon colleges and universities to assist the nation in moments of national crisis. This brief outlines an ambitious plan to enlist the postsecondary sector in helping millions of Americans get back to work in the wake of the pandemic and equip them for ongoing prosperity in a highly dynamic economy.
Hamilton Project / Brookings, 2020
Read this paperThe confidence gap predicts the gender pay gap among STEM graduates
Is there a gender pay gap among graduates in some science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields? Women and men have near-identical human capital at college exit, but cultural beliefs about men as more fit for STEM professions than women may lead to self-beliefs that affect pay. We hypothesized that women and men would be paid differently upon college exit,…
PNAS, 2020
Read this paperAmbiguous Credentials: How Learners Use and Make Sense of Massively Open Online Courses
As low-status academic offerings purveyed by high-status institutions, massively open online courses (MOOCs) are ambiguous credentials. In interviews with 60 people who devoted substantial time to at least one MOOC between 2014-2017, we find that people use MOOCs to build skills for application at work and home, build relationships, navigate life transitions, and enhance formal presentations of self.
Journal of Higher Education, 2021
Read this paperStudying Undergraduate Course Consideration at Scale
Using digital trace data to observe this process at scale at a private research university, together with qualitative student interviews, we provide a novel empirical study of course consideration as part of the course selection process.
AERA Open, 2021
Read this paperEssay Content is Strongly Related to Household Income and SAT Scores: Evidence from 60,000 Undergraduate Applications
We utilize a corpus of 240,000 admissions essays submitted by 60,000 applicants to the University of California in November 2016 to measure the relationship between the content of application essays, reported household income, and standardized test scores (SAT) at scale. We find that essays have a stronger correlation to reported household income than SAT scores.
CEPA Working Papers
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