A. Joseph Tamer
EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
As Deputy Director, I led ETXâs effort to replace the Smart Sparrow adaptive learning platform, beginning with a landscape analysis and cultivating a co-development partnership with Carnegie Mellonâs OLI. I guided ETXâs migration to the open-source Torus platform while our team helped develop its advanced authoring capabilities and integrations for interactive simulations and immersive environments, creating infrastructure for sophisticated âlearn by doingâ courseware at scale.
Co-Development of the Torus Platform
Evidence-based Courseware
I began designing Inspark lessons on Smart Sparrow, then applied those principles to NASA Infiniscope and NSF virtual field trips. When the Gates Foundation launched its Courseware Innovation Challenge, ETX partnered with CMUâs OLI to create REAL CHEM around Relevant, Engaging, Active Learning. Our newest courses now run on the research-grade Torus platform, allowing us to measure student learning, evaluate effectiveness, test improvements, and use student data to continually refine the learning experience.
Integration of Artificial Intelligence
Working with OLI learning scientists, our ETX team has treated AI as something to study and improve, not simply adopt. In REAL CHEM, we iteratively refined DOTâs prompts and activation points to encourage sensemaking rather than answer-seeking. Analysis of 14,000+ students shows more productive interactions and improving feedback accuracy, while reinforcing an important lesson: AI is most valuable when it supports student thinking rather than replacing it.
Innovations in Immersive Learning
ETX helped pioneer the evolution of virtual field trips from DVD-based media to interactive web experiences, then integrated them into adaptive learning platforms where we could evaluate student learning. Over time, our team incorporated game-design principles to deepen exploration and partnered with NASA scientists to give students opportunities to investigate cutting-edge research at field sites that would otherwise be inaccessible to them.
Empowering Educators with Authoring Tools
As Deputy PI of NASA Infiniscope, I helped lead the development of tools that put sophisticated learning design within reach of Kâ12 educators. Torus Simple Author enables teachers to create adaptive lessons with personalized feedback, while Tour It makes immersive virtual-tour creation accessible without specialized technical skills. I also helped scale these freely available tools through professional development workshops reaching hundreds of educators across the country.
Platform and Content Migration
ETX began as a public-private partnership between ASU and Smart Sparrow. After Pearson acquired the Smart Sparrow technology, we had 18 months to migrate 10,000+ pages of sophisticated interactive content while Torus was still being built. I led the project management effort, coordinating platform development and content migration in parallel while establishing rigorous quality-assurance processes to identify and resolve errors before the new system reached students.
