Dr. Baran's research on TPACK generated instruments to measure teachers' knowledge, pedagogical models to implement in teacher education programs, and novel methods to track TPACK within preservice and in-service teacher education contexts. Dr. Baran is the co-author of widely used TPACK survey. She has established several international collaborative projects to examine TPACK within different countries teacher education contexts, including the USA, Turkey, Belgium, Germany, and Canada.

The TEACHEdMobile Project [2012-2017] funded by the European Commission aimed to provide, through research and development, methodological and curricular support to teacher educators so that they have research informed resources and curriculum for the integration of mobile applications into their teacher education programs.

Dr. Baran implemented design thinking modules in the learning technology courses offered to the preservice and in-service teachers at Iowa State University. The modules include a variety of hands-on design thinking exercises including empathy building, ideating, prototyping, and and prototyexemplary scenarios, and methods to develop such skill-set among preservice and in-service teachers. This collaborative effort converges the disciplines of Education, Design, and Enterprenorship. Her research examined the impact of these activities on preservice teachers' development of their understanding of "teachers as designers".

This project was funded by the College of Human Sciences' Innovative Teaching Initiave Grant [2019-2020]

Dr. Baran investigates learning technology solutions to enhance teachers' learning in preservice and in-service teacher education contexts. She implemented Video-enhanced Observation (VEO) to support teachers' peer-observation, feedback, and reflective practices. Her work has been supported by Iowa State University's Miller Faculty Fellowship to develop and implement a novel vide-enhanced mobile observation pedagogy to implement in science teaching methods courses.