At ETS, Ball conducted what are today considered classic evaluations of the impact on learning of children's educational television, studying the effects of first, Jim Henson's "Sesame Street" and then "The Electric Company" for Children's Television Workshop. In 1978, he left ETS to assume a professorship at the University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. While at Sydney, from 1979 to 1984, Ball was editor of the American Psychological Association's Journal of Educational Psychology, the preeminent scholarly publication in the field of learning sciences.