Amanda Siebert-Evenstone

BIOGRAPHY

Amanda Siebert-Evenstone is currently a PhD student and Lecturer in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin focusing on Learning Sciences. Amanda’s graduate adviser is Professor David Williamson Shaffer whose Epistemic Games Group develops virtual internships, assessment tools, and other innovative learning technologies. Amanda has worked on projects investigating the role of group work in computer-supported learning environments, modeling and scripting for group discussions, and temporal segmentation methods in discourse analysis. Her dissertation research will investigate the role of context in online educational experiences, particularly the relationship between the location of play and game context.

Siebert-Evenstone has taught environmental studies, facilitated biology boot camps, and mentored a peer facilitation internship. As the lead instructor of the interactive large lecture course, “How People Learn,” she has worked to build a teaching team where all instructors can share resources, best practices, and common frustrations.

Before starting her PhD in Educational Psychology, Amanda received a BS in Biology, Psychology, and Women’s Studies with a certificate in Leadership from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Following her undergraduate studies, Amanda was an advocate for gender and women’s issues, organizer of a statewide vote campaign, mentor for student leaders, the commissioner of an LGBTQ nonprofit, and trainer on issues of power and privilege. Amanda’s passion for making a difference led her back to school to receive a Master’s in Environment and Resources at the University of Wisconsin – Madison studying habit change and the role of identity in environmentally responsible behaviors. In past positions, Amanda has taught interactive classes on environmental science, introductory biology, gender normativity, non-profit leadership development, shared governance, grassroots organizing, prejudice and discrimination, and grant writing.

EDUCATION

BS: Biology, Psychology, and Women’s Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 2007

MS: Environment and Resources, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 2012

MS: Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 2015

PUBLICATIONS

Siebert-Evenstone, A.L., Arastoopour, G., Collier, W., Swiecki, Z, Ruis, A.R., & Shaffer, D.W. (in press). In search of conversational grain size: Modeling semantic structure using moving stanza windows. Journal of Learning Analytics.

Fougt, S.S., Siebert-Evenstone, A.L., Eagan, B., Tabatabai, S., & Misfeldt, M. (2017). Epistemic Network Analysis of students’ longer written assignments as formative/summative evaluation. Paper accepted to Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference, Sydney, Australia.

Eagan, B., Siebert-Evenstone, A., & Shaffer, D.W. (2017). Identifying recent temporal context in discourse data. Paper accepted to the Learning Sciences Graduate Student Conference, Bloomington, IN.

Eagan, B., Swiecki, Z., Siebert-Evenstone, A., Herder, T., & Shaffer, D.W. (2017). Quantitative Ethnography in R: An introduction to rhoR and R-ENA. Workshop presented at the Learning Sciences Graduate Student Conference, Bloomington, IN.

Barany, A., Shah, M., Cellitti, J., Duka, M., Swiecki, Z., Evenstone, A., Kinley, H., Quigley, P., Shaffer, D. W., & Foster, A. (2017). Designing Philadelphia Land Science as a tool for identity exploration. Paper accepted to the 11th European Conference on Game-Based Learning, Graz, Austria, October 5-6, 2017.

Barany, A., Shah, M., Cellitti, J., Duka, M., Swiecki, Z., Evenstone, A., Kinley, H., Quigley, P., Shaffer, D. W., & Foster, A. (2017). Designing Philadelphia Land Science as a game to promote identity exploration. Paper accepted to the 14th international conference on the Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age, Vilamoura, Argave, Portugal, October 18-20, 2017.

Szczythko, R., Kuras, E., Frank, D.A., Siebert-Evenstone, A.L., & Hauk, M. (2017). It takes a Village: Writing groups for students & early-career researchers. Paper accepted to the North American Association of Environmental Education Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Siebert-Evenstone, A.L., & Shaffer, D.W. (2017). The role of context in virtual environments: Investigating student reasoning with online places. Paper accepted to the Doctoral Consortium at the Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Conference, Philadelphia, PA.

Siebert-Evenstone, A.L., Arastoopour, G., & Shaffer, D.W. (2017). The effects of local versus non-local place-based learning in virtual environmental education. Poster presented at the WCER UW-Madison Education Research Poster Fair, Madison, WI.

Siebert-Evenstone, A., Scopinich, K., & Klein, J. (2016). How should place inform the design of online environmental education? Poster presented at the North American Association of Environmental Education conference, Madison, WI.

Siebert-Evenstone, A.L., Arastoopour, G., & Shaffer, D.W. (2016). The effects of local versus non-local place-based learning in virtual environmental education. Poster presented at for the Learning Sciences Graduate Student Conference, Chicago, IL.

Siebert-Evenstone, A.L., Arastoopour, G., Collier, W., Swiecki, Z, Ruis, A.R., & Shaffer, D.W. (2016). In search of conversational grain size: Modeling semantic structure using moving stanza windows. In C.K. Looi, J.L. Polman, U. Cress, & P. Reimann (Eds.) Transforming Learning, Empowering Learners: The International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2016, (Volume 1, pp. 631-638), Singapore: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
*Nominated for Best Student Paper

Quardokus Fisher, K. Hirshfield, L., Siebert-Evenstone, A., Arastoopour, G., & Koretsky, M. (2016). Network analysis of interactions between students and an instructor during design meetings. Paper presented at the American Society for Engineering Education, New Orleans, LA.

Evenstone, A.L., & Puntambekar, S. (2015). Internalization of physics concepts and relationships based on teacher modeling of collaborative prompts. In O. Lindwall, P. Häkkinen, T. Koschman, P. Tchounikine, & S Ludvigsen (Eds.), Exploring the Material Conditions of Learning: The Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) Conference 2015 (Volume 2, pp. 562-565). Gothenburg, Sweden: The International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Rau, M.A., & Evenstone, A.L. (2014). Multi-Methods Approach for Domain-Specific Grounding: An ITS for Connection Making in Chemistry. In S. Trausan-Matu et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, (pp. 426-435). Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.

Gnesdilow, D., Evenstone, A., Rutledge, J., Sullivan, S.A., & Puntambekar, S. (2013, June). Group work in the science classroom: How gender composition may affect individual performance. In N. Rummel, M. Kapur, N. Nathan, & S. Puntambekar (Eds.), To See the World and a Grain of Sand: Learning across Levels of Space, Time, and Scale: CSCL 2013 Conference Proceedings (Volume 2, pp. 34-37). Madison, WI: International Society of the Learning Sciences.