Bryan G. Cook,
William J. Therrien, Vivian C. Wong, Christina Taylor
We are pleased to welcome you to the Special Education
Research Accelerator (SERA). SERA is a platform for crowdsourcing data
collection in special education research across multiple research teams. When
we read about the Psychological Research
Accelerator, which crowdsources data collection for massive studies in the
field of psychology conducted throughout the world, we began to think about the
potential benefits of crowdsourcing in special education research. In essence,
instead of a single research team conducting a study, crowdsourcing of data
collection involves a network of research teams collecting data. Crowdsourcing
allows researchers to flip “research planning from ‘what is the best we can do
with the resources we have to investigate our question,’ to ‘what is the best
way to investigate our question, so that we can decide what resources to
recruit’” (Uhlmann et al.,
2019, p. 713).
Given that there are relatively few students with
disabilities, especially low-incidence disabilities, in schools, it is often
difficult for special education researchers to obtain large, representative
samples for their studies. Moreover, given limited grant funding, relatively
few researchers in the field have the resources to conduct studies with large,
representative samples on their own. Crowdsourcing data collection across many
research teams seemed to us to be well-suited to address these and other
challenges faced in special education research.
However, implementing crowdsourcing in special education
research presents many challenges. Can interventions be conducted with fidelity
across many different research teams? How will data be managed? How will
implementation fidelity be measured? How will IRB issues be handled across
multiple institutions? Fortunately, the National Center for Special Education
Research (NCSER) funded an unsolicited grant
for us to develop and pilot a platform for crowdsourcing research in special
education research (i.e., SERA) to examine these and other issues. By involving
many different research teams in data collection of studies, SERA can generate
large and representative study sample, involve diverse sets of researchers, and
examine whether and how study findings vary across researchers and researcher
sites, in ways that studies conducted by a single research team could not.
This website has two primary functions: (a) a public-facing
site to provide information and resources related to SERA and crowdsourcing
research in special education, and (b) a hub for research partners to access
resources and interact with SERA staff related to ongoing SERA projects. We hope
all of you explore the website to learn more about SERA, the team behind SERA,
and our SERA research partners. Please check back periodically as we provide
updates. For our research partners, please be on the lookout for an email over
the next few weeks which will contain your login credentials, as well as
provide additional information on navigating pilot study resources and
materials.
Currently, we are in the process of preparing to conduct a
crowdsourced randomized control trial that conceptually replicates Scruggs
et al.’s (1994) study of acquisition of science facts. We will be examining
the effect of instructor-provided elaborations and student-generated
elaborations on science-fact acquisition for elementary students with
high-functioning autism across more than 20 research partners and sites
throughout the US.
We couldn’t be more excited about SERA, this website, and our upcoming pilot study. We plan on developing and refining SERA for future use in many different crowdsourced studies in special education. If you’re interested in potentially being involved in future studies, please send us a message using the contact form here. We hope that you’ll find the site interesting and helpful, and that (if you’re a special education researchers) you’ll consider being involved in a crowdsourced SERA study.
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