January 31, 2025
Cornell University
The National Tutoring Observatory (NTO) is developing an open research infrastructure to advance the science of teaching and enhance the quality of AI in education (https://nationaltutoringobservatory.org/). A core output of the NTO is the first large open dataset on teacher moves, which we call the Million Tutoring Moves (MTM) data. Cutting-edge research is an integral part of the NTO’s mission. The NTO is hiring an Assistant Research Professor to serve as the NTO’s Research Director, working closely with Cornell faculty members and the project’s co-principal investigators (from multiple organizations) to oversee a cross-organizational research team consisting of a group of postdoctoral associates, PhD students, and several master’s or undergraduate students.
The Research Director will be tasked with leading a team to generate scientific research that probes and enhances the quality of the MTM data and components of the underlying data pipeline, publishes these insights and applications using the MTM data, and administers a mini-grants program to engage a wider community of researchers and EdTech developers. The Research Director will also lead the communication with the NTO’s Scientific Advisory Board who will guide the research direction of the project.
The work includes, but is not limited to: (1) working with the NTO’s engineering team to investigate the validity of components of the data processing workflow (focus in Phase 1 of the project) and effective tutoring moves using the MTM data (focus in Phase 2); (2) sharing innovations and best practices for investigating tutoring data and effective tutoring moves through published academic papers and conference presentations (focus in Phase 3); and (3) overseeing the development and execution of the mini-grants program to encourage early adoption and innovation.
Key responsibilities:
- Establish a “research road map” for the research team based on the NTO’s initial project plans, outlining key milestones and deliverables by project phase
- Leverage extant literature scans to build a theory of action about the research most needed to improve teacher practice and student learning; revise the theory of action with input from key partners like tutoring providers
- Engage with tutoring providers through a set of regular meetings to identify a set of common research questions raised by developers and practitioners
- Engage a Scientific Advisory Board to support the direction and progress of the research team
- Leverage the research team to engage in requirements gathering to ensure that the annotation models implemented match user needs and expectations
- Translate findings into requirements for the engineering team to inform the algorithms, models, annotations, and ultimately the data is made available for researchers, developers, and solution providers to use
- Design and lead validation studies to test AI-powered annotations against human labels generated by undergraduate students
- Design and lead quasi-experimental studies to identify causal evidence of effective tutoring moves in the MTM dataset (which is large but mostly observational) through connecting tutor process data with student outcome data
- Design and lead studies that demonstrate applications of the MTM data such as offline experiments that compare baseline tutoring models (GPT-4, Claude, etc.) with models that are fine-tuned with the MTM data
- Design and execute a mini-grants program to award about five small grants to education and EdTech researchers to use the MTM data
- Lead the publication of academic papers in top venues in learning sciences, education technology, information science, or education research
- Share research findings in conference venues and represent the NTO at key research conferences in education technology, AI in education, tutoring, and math education
- Stay abreast of current projects in the funder portfolio and broader research community whose focus is synergistic to the goals of the NTO; leverage insights and tools into NTO research plans as appropriate
- Support the NTO leadership team in staffing the research team for “to be hired” positions, as needed
Some travel may be required for this position.
Candidates must hold a Ph.D. or equivalent degree by August 2025. Candidates should submit a 1-page cover letter, a curriculum vitae (CV), a research statement, and the names and email addresses for three references who will submit letters on the candidate’s behalf. The cover letter and research statement should highlight the candidate’s most significant work related to the mission of the National Tutoring Observatory (NTO), https://nationaltutoringobservatory.org/. We also ask applicants to share their experiences and/or approaches (past, current, or future) to fostering learning, research, service, and/or outreach in a diverse community. Applicants may choose to submit a stand-alone statement or embed the information in other parts of their application materials.
The above application materials should be submitted online at https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/29664. We will be reviewing applications (including reference letters) on a rolling basis, and applications will be accepted until the search has concluded. Inquiries about your application may be directed to Rene Kizilcec, Principal Investigator of the NTO and Associate Professor of Information Science, at kizilcec@cornell.edu
To apply for this job please visit academicjobsonline.org.