These grants offer the opportunity to conduct research with teacher and student datasets from digital learning platforms Math Nation and Math Matrix Micro-Credential at the UF Lastinger Center. Ranging from $10,000 to $50,000, these awards support research projects investigating ways to improve students’ math achievement and better understand how digital learning platforms can foster student motivation, engagement, and persistence in learning math.
“Through these awards, we are engaging talented researchers to connect meaningful learning sciences concepts to real world teaching and learning data,” said Jeremy Roschelle, executive director of the Center for Learning Sciences Research at Digital Promise. “We’re powering research that can make a difference in real educational settings.”
The five grantees were selected from a pool of 20 applicants and include graduate students, research fellows, and early career professionals from Florida, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
Across all five awards, researchers will use the funds to study how digital learning data can reveal the connections between student motivation, mathematics resources, and math learning. In one project, researchers are asking questions that examine teacher engagement, misconceptions and mastery, and potential changes in learning within the Math Matrix Micro-Credential, a competency-based digital professional learning platform for mathematics educators.
“At the UF Lastinger Center, rigorous research drives our commitment to improving math learning,” said Zandra de Araujo, director of mathematics. “Through the AIMS EduData initiative and the Lastinger Data Lagoon, we invite scholars to analyze Math Nation and Math Matrix datasets, supporting early-career researchers while generating evidence-based insights that help us refine programming for educators and students. This cohort’s projects, from teacher engagement in Math Matrix to video learning patterns in Math Nation, will help us better understand what actually moves the needle for students learning math.”
Another set of researchers will analyze video engagement. One project will examine how variations in video engagement, including timing, duration, sequencing, tutor selection, and content choices, are associated with mathematics learning. Another project will use event-level video log data from approximately 140,000 middle school students to investigate how students engage with instructional videos over time and how these engagement patterns relate to their adaptive engagement and mathematics performance.
Research funded by the AIMS EduData research grants include the following projects:
Digital Promise anticipates announcing grant competitions in fall 2026 and again in early 2027, offering opportunities for more researchers to work with these and other digital learning tools. Visit the AIMS EduData website and subscribe for updates to learn more.
Researchers interested in collaborating with digital learning platforms can find additional opportunities through related efforts—such as SEERNet and SafeInsights—where Digital Promise plays a key role.
