Staff
Jason Ravitz, PhD
Director of Research
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His current focus is sharing results of BIE's national survey of PBL in high schools. He was instrumental in setting up a federally-funded study of BIE’s problem based economics curriculum (currently being completed at WestEd) and works closelywith BIE staff to improve BIE programs. Jason is also a contributing author to the acclaimed second edition of the BIE Project Based Learning Handbook.
Jason’s expertise includes research design and evaluation, surveys and large scale studies of teaching beliefs and practices, and designs of online assessments for learning. Jason has taught or lectured on these topics at Syracuse University, Stanford University, University of California Irvine, University of California, Berkeley, and at several smaller colleges and universities. In his 15 years in educational research and technology Jason has presented widely to researchers and practitioners and is author of several reports on teaching practices in the U.S. He has served as expert panelist, reviewer, consultant and evaluator for leading academic journals, the U.S. Department of Education and its Regional Labs, the National Science Foundation, numerous private foundations and organizations.
Jason grew up and went to high school in inner-city Detroit, MI. He received honors in sociology and psychology at Harvard College and earned his teaching credentials at its Graduate School of Education. He taught high school and elementary school computers and worked as a management consultant before finding his calling in educational technology. He earned his Ph.D. from Syracuse University in Instructional Design, Development and Evaluation in 1999 while working for BBN Educational Technologies in Cambridge, MA. As part of the National School Network Testbed II he created the Site Feedback Form for Educators and served as evaluator for the Online Internet Institute for teachers. After BBN was acquired by GTE Internetworking, Jason served as lead instructional designer for a military logistics software project (TC-AIMS II).
Before joining BIE, Jason completed two postdoctoral positions – first at UC, Irvine, where he became known for work on national surveys of teacher technology use and teaching practices. Subsequently, he joined the Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT) at UC, Berkeley and SRI International where he researched handheld assessments of student collaboration and taught a course on technology supported assessments as part of the a PT3 grant with the University of Virginia and the Concord Consortium. Jason strives to conduct research that is informed by and supportive of innovative teacher professional development.
