Tamara Tate, PhD
Tamara Tate is a Project Scientist at the University of California, Irvine, and Assistant Director of the Digital Learning Lab.

​She leads the Lab's work on digital and online tools to support teaching and learning including generative AI, partnering with school districts, universities, nonprofit organizations, media and tech developers, and others in iterative development and evaluation. She studies secondary student writing as a member of the IES-funded national WRITE Center and is part of the Elementary Computing for All team.

She received her B.A. in English and her Ph.D. in Education at U.C. Irvine and her J.D. at U.C. Berkeley. 

Dr. Tate can be reached at tatet@uci.edu
Generative AI 
The recent release and rapid diffusion of ChatGPT has thrust into the world’s attention the role and impact of AI-generated writing in education. With more than two decades studying the impact of digital technology on literacy and learning, the Digital Learning Lab is well-situated to research and advise on the use of generative AI in literacy.  Our work situates the latest generation of AI within the historical relationship between technology and literacy in social and educational contexts, and argues for an AI-literacy approach to the use of ChatGPT and related tools. Our various projects are discussed on the Digital Learning Lab website ; our instructional framework and selected resources  on the use of generative AI for literacy follow.

Educational Research and AI- Generated Writing: 
Confronting the Coming Tsunami,
Tate, Doroudi, Ritchie, Xu, & Warschauer
WRITE Center

Interested in writing in history classes?  Visit the IES-funded WRITE Center website for great resources on writing, history, and our work on a new intervention. The WRITE (Writing Research to Improve Teaching and Evaluation) Center for Secondary Students researches academic writing, placing special emphasis on source-based argument writing in history, and provides national leadership and outreach activities to support improvement of secondary writing research and practice related to academic writing across the curriculum. The Digital Learning Lab is supporting the WRITE Center through analysis of writing corpora and development of digital tools to support the teaching and learning of source-based argument writing in history. 

Elementary Computing For All

A collaboration between with university researchers and K-12 practitioners to promote computational thinking for multilingual students in elementary schools.  Visit the website for more information and resources including curriculum for teachers. 

​Online Learning Research Center

Created in spring 2020 to communicate research-based information about online learning to those forced online due to emergency distance learning, the OLRC’s website provides access to 5 years’ NSF-funded research about online learning conducted by the Digital Learning Lab. Whether a first-time online instructor looking to get started, a veteran seeking to improve online teaching, a student seeking ways to improve online study skills, or a scholar or educational leader seeking the latest research on online learning, the OLRC.US site was designed to provide evidence-based resources to improve achievement and equity in online learning.