Digital Promise last year launched an interactive research map to inform education leaders, policymakers, Ed Tech companies, teachers, students and others on the latest research in any given subject, in an effort to make teaching and learning research more accessible. Now, the nonprofit organization has updated the website with new ways for individuals to interact with the research.

First, the data visualization pulls from a database of 100,000-plus peer-reviewed articles from 184 journals published over the last decade. Digital Promise conducted an analysis of the articles and determined more than 120 topics — categorized into the following 11 broad topics:

  •  Student motivation;
  • Instruction and teacher learning;
  • Cognition and memory;
  • STEM learning practices;
  • Autism;
  •  Literacy;
  • Special education practices;
  • Online learning;
  • Identity, behavior and relationships;
  • Language learning; and
  • Learning math.

Furthermore, users told Digital Promise they wanted to apply the research to solve specific challenges at their schools and in their classrooms. As the result, the map now includes the “ask a researcher” feature, which allows them to ask experts at the Usable Knowledge project from the Harvard Graduate School of Education more specific questions.