This award supports a conference that will inform the design of "backbone" organizations for the NSF INCLUDES (Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science) program. NORC at the University of Chicago (an independent research institution that delivers reliable data and rigorous analyses to guide programmatic and policy decisions) and TERC (a nonprofit education research and development organization based in Cambridge, MA, dedicated to improving STEM learning for all) collaborate on Envisioning Impact, a two-part in-person and virtual event that will inform the design of INCLUDES Alliance and National Network backbone organizations.
The objectives of the conference are to: (1) facilitate a shared vision of impact for INCLUDES broadening participation projects and program; (2) stimulate discourse on key elements of a shared measurement system for continuous improvement and outcome assessment; and (3) inform decisions on the infrastructure and priority services INCLUDES backbone organizations will provide to assist grantees (and others) in assessing progress towards collective impact. The conference will bring members of three communities together: PIs and evaluators of INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilots; investigators and evaluators of other NSF-supported broadening participation alliances, extension projects, and other collective efforts to support inclusion and diversity in STEM; and members of prior and extant NSF-supported knowledge-networking, collaboratory, and resource network initiatives. Members of these communities will collaborate in two separate events: an in-person, 1.5 day conference, and a follow-on virtual Video Hall that will allow a larger number of participants to engage, over a one week period, in facilitated community discourse around short video narratives produced by each project.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kevin BrownSarah-Kathryn McDonaldJoni Falk
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES) intiative supports models, networks, partnerships and research to ensure the broadening participation in STEM of women, members of racial and ethnic groups that have been historically underrepresented, persons of low socio-economic status, and people with disabilities.
The University of Cincinnati, lead for a tri-state (OH, KY, IN) project, will convene a three-day conference to convene national and local experts to explore the best practices that support the development of a backbone organization in the context of using a social innovation model for broadening participation in STEM. The intent is to strengthen the network among participants and leverage learning from the Cincinnati Strive experience with collective impact across the Midwest and beyond.
Results from the NextLivesHere: Social Change Innovation Summit, will be disseminated in the tri-state region through the Greater Cincinnati STEM Collaborative (GCSC and the Ohio STEM Learning Network (OSLN). National dissemination will occur through informal and formal STEM professional organizations and publications as well as through participation in the NSF-developed national backbone organization.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kathie MaynardRoss MeyerShiloh TurnerGeoffrey ZimmermanGisela Escoe
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The NSF INCLUDES program supports models, networks, partnerships and research to ensure the broadening participation in STEM of women, members of racial and ethnic groups that have been historically underrepresented, persons of low socio-economic status, and people with disabilities.
The University of California-Irvine (UCI), in partnership with the University of California-San Diego and the University of California-Davis will convene a state-wide conference on inclusion in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) higher education. The California STEM INCLUDES Conference and Network will share best practices for promoting STEM inclusion and provide an infrastructure to further these practices and track the outcomes. The purpose of the conference is to form a backbone for a large regional network in support of the National Science Foundation's Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES) initiative.
The five goals of the conference are to:
--increase California educator awareness of demographic gaps in STEM participation and the research on factors influencing such participation gaps;
--engage participants in discussion of promising practices for increasing STEM inclusion
--broaden the impact of existing successful programs for STEM inclusion, through program modification and replication, scale-up, and increased collaboration;
--create a mechanism for sustained discussion, sharing and collaboration around STEM inclusion across California institutions;
--create central repository and common standards for reporting on STEM inclusion and implementation program impact for the state.
Approximately 340 individuals serving a broad cross-section of California's K-12, higher education, public, private and non-profit constituencies will participate in 2 ½ days of intense dialogue on topics such as data and research, successful implementations and sustainable networks for collaboration and sharing. The conference will be held in Spring 2017.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michael DenninSarah Eichhorn
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This award supports the collaborative efforts of the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity Education Foundation, FSG, the Aspen Institute, the Collective Impact Forum, 100Kin10, National Girls Collaborative Project, Women in Engineering Pro-Active Network, MentorNet, Science Museum of Minnesota, Changing Communities, National GEM Consortium, American Society for Engineering Education and the Education Development Center to implement a project to inform the design of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Inclusion across the National of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science(INCLUDES)Initiative. The NSF INCLUDES program supports models, networks, partnerships and research to ensure the broadening participation in STEM of women, members of racial and ethnic groups that have been historically underrepresented, persons of low socio-economic status, and people with disabilities. The purpose of this conference is to inform the most critical design features of the structures and supports needed so that the NSF INCLUDES Alliance mini-backbones and the National backbone can work effectively and build the capacity to transform the STEM ecosystem.
This conference will bring together the most qualified current experts in inter-organizational collaboration, intersectionality and broadening participation in STEM to apply their collective wisdom to the design of the support structures of the NSF INCLUDES Alliances and National Network. Applying the understanding of complexity theory, adaptive leadership, intersectionality and collaboration models to the field of broadening participation in STEM has the potential to disrupt the current system enough to build capacity to create impactful Alliances. The outcomes of this convening have the potential to advance knowledge for all organizations working to broaden impact in STEM as well as those applying inter-organizational collaboration to the field of social innovation. Using intersectionality as a lens in developing more effective collaborative efforts that are responsive to the organizational partners and the context of the communities they serve can add a critical element to this field. The diverse members of the organizing committee can disseminate the results of this work to multiple networks where the results can impact the practice of inter-organizational collaboration and broadening participation in STEM.
SRI International and the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching will jointly lead a workshop with the dual goals of supporting INCLUDES (Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners that have been Underrepresented for Diversity in Engineering and Science) Launch Pilots during their first year and contributing to plans for a National Backbone. The workshop will strengthen and deepen the potential for rapid, continuous improvement cycles within and across INCLUDES networks. To do so, they will combine the expertise of SRI and Carnegie in improvement science, rapid analytics, and fostering networks of researchers and practitioners to engage participants in conducting a complete improvement cycle within and across INCLUDES Launch Pilots.
The workshop will have three phases. A first phase, conducted online, will share expertise related to each of the four parts of a complete improvement cycle: (1) problem definition, (2) data collection, (3) formative evaluation, and (4) effective communication. This first phase will combine an initial presentation with facilitated, online opportunities to interactively engage in the topics. A second phase, conducted face-to-face, will work intensively with teams from INCLUDES networks to improve their operational and long-term plans. The third phase will reflect and report on the workshop and contribute plans to build capacities for the National Backbone organization. Through the combination of these three phases, they will support the first-year work of INCLUDES teams and also refine understanding of how a national network could combine online and face-to-face elements to advance INCLUDES efforts. The workshop team will create and disseminate resources that are immediately useful to INCLUDES and related projects, and the workshop will openly coordinate with other workshops to achieve synergies. The online offerings will be open, broadly advertised, and permanently available. The lessons learned regarding plans for a national backbone will be disseminated broadly. In addition to participants from INCLUDES networks, additional stakeholders will be invited to both phases so as to shape the future plans to achieve broader impacts aligned with overall INCLUDES goals.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Timothy Podkul
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Jobs are growing most rapidly in areas that require STEM knowledge, causing business leaders to seek skilled American workers now and in the near future. Increase in the number of students pursuing engineering degrees is taking place but the percentages of underrepresented students in the engineering pipeline remains low. To address the challenge of increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in engineering, the National Society of Black Engineers, the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, and the Society of Women Engineers have formed the 50K Coalition, a collaborative of over 40 organizations committed to increasing the number of bachelors degrees awarded to women and minorities from 30,000 annually to 50,000 by 2025, a 66% increase. The 50K Coalition is using the Collective Impact framework to develop an evidence-based approach that drives management decision-making, improvements, sharing of information, and collective action to achieve success. The first convening of the 50K Coalition in April, 2016, brought together 83 leaders of the engineering community representing 13 professional societies with over 700,000 members, deans of engineering, minority engineering and women in engineering administrators from 11 leading colleges of engineering, and corporate partners representing six global industries. Consensus was reached on the following Common Agenda items: 1.) Undergraduate support and retention; 2.) Public awareness and marketing; 3.) K-12 support; 4.) Community College linkages; 5.) Culture and climate. The Coalition will encourage member organizations to develop new programs and scale existing programs to reach the goal.
The Coalition will use shared metrics to track progress: AP® Calculus completion and high school graduation rates; undergraduate freshmen retention rates; community college transfer rates and number of engineering degrees awarded. The 50K Coalition will develop the other elements of the Collective Impact framework: Infrastructure and effective decision-making processes that will become the backbone organization with a focus on data management, communications and dissemination; a system of continuous communication including Basecamp, website, the annual Engineering Scorecard, WebEx hosted meetings and convenings; and mutually reinforcing activities such as programs, courses, seminars, webinars, workshops, promotional campaigns, policy initiatives, and institutional capacity building efforts. The National Academy of Sciences study, Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America's Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads recommended that professional associations make recruitment and retention of underrepresented groups an organizational goal and implement programs designed to reach that goal by working with their membership, academic institutions and funding agencies on new initiatives. While these types of organizations work together now in a variety of ways, the relationships are one-on-one. The 50K Coalition brings together, for the first time professional societies, engineering schools, and industry to consider what mutually reinforcing activities can most effectively encourage students from underrepresented groups to complete calculus and graduate from 4-year engineering programs.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karl ReidBarry CorderoSarah EcohawkKaren Horting
Libraries across the country have been reimagining their community role and leveraging their resources and public trust to strengthen community-based learning and foster critical thinking, problem solving, and engagement in STEM. What started some years ago as independent experiments has become a national movement. The Space Science Institute's National Center for Interactive Learning (NCIL), in partnership with the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), received funding from the National Science Foundation for the first-ever Public Libraries & STEM conference, at the Sheraton Denver Downtown
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Keelin MacCarthy
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. This conference proposal represents the first phase of a larger three-phase participatory research project that will use communities of interest as a vehicle for solving problems of common concern about designing youth-based STEM programs. It will set the stage for research over the next 10-25 years about the long-term impact of a variety of youth programs on STEM learning and career aspirations. Through a virtual format, the Association of Science-Technology Centers will bring together two representatives from ten long-standing youth programs, experts in the field of out-of-school time youth programming, and researchers to collaboratively develop a program profile template for measuring the impact of youth programming. The program profile template will help identify specific characteristics that will capture the influence of youth programs on their participation in out-of-school STEM activities.
The program profile template will be the main outcome from the conference. It will serve as the foundation for designing long-term impact studies that support the needs of program staff interested in improving youth programming in informal environments. It will also allow program staff and researchers to document and share intellectual capital, compare goals and features across programs, and support network efforts among informal agencies worldwide. The program profile template will be shared online through informalscience.org, the Association of Science-Technology Centers' communities of practice networks, and through other out-of-school-time national organizations.
This project will convene a workshop focused on digital micro-credentials, also known as digital badges, and the role they might play in the high-stakes process of college admission. Digital micro-credentials represent one potential mechanism for broadening access for underrepresented groups to higher education. Digital micro-credentials enable students to present a broader view of themselves as learners that connects different domains of their lives: academic, social, and personal interest-driven. As such, digital micro-credentials enable students to represent expertise and potential in ways that go beyond traditional high school grade point averages and standardized test scores. The workshop addresses questions such as: Can micro-credentials serve as valid and reliable measures of learning? What "gap" in current assessment practices can be filled by micro-credentials? What is required for micro-credentials to be useful as evidence of preparation for future learning in the college admission process?
The project's principal investigators will employ case studies, drawn from the Chicago City of Learning network (chicagocityoflearning.org) and Mouse (mouse.org) in New York City, to better understand the use of micro-credentials for learning in STEM-focused extracurricular activities. During the workshop, participants with expertise in student learning from a range of perspectives will design representations of the knowledge or skills demonstrated by students. Participating admissions officers and STEM faculty will critique the designs with respect to how well the designs demonstrate evidence of preparation for future learning by students. The workshop outcomes will include sample designs of micro-credentials that show promise to both promote learning and support college admissions. The workshop will also result in a white paper discussing the potential of micro-credentials for college admission in STEM fields by youth from underrepresented groups.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Barry FishmanStephanie Teasley
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The purpose of this proposal is to convene scholars at a two-day conference to closely examine validity-related measurement issues, create a guidelines for the field of mathematics education research that addresses key ideas (e.g., validity, validity arguments, evidence for validity and measurement at-scale), and set a clear pathway for scholars to discuss quantitative measurement within mathematics education. Invitees will include a mix of young, older and diverse scholars in mathematics education research. Products include refereed journal articles along with a website.
The workshop will engage the Mathematics Education, Policy, Statistical, Psychometrics and other education research communities in examining and critiquing measurement validity evidence of mathematics education research with the long-term goal of increasing the quality of quantitative inference in mathematics education research (to include improvements in the training of doctoral students).
This is the fifth volume of the annual proceedings for the Games+Learning+Society (GLS). The GLS conference is a premier event for those from both academia and industry interested in videogames and learning. The GLS conference is one of the few destinations where the people who create high-quality digital learning media can gather for a serious think about what is happening in the field and how the field can serve the public interest. The conference offers an opportunity for in-depth conversation and social networking across diverse disciplines including game studies, education research
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kyrie CaldwellSean SeylerAmanda OchsnerConstance Steinkuehler
This is the fourth volume of the annual proceedings for the Games+Learning+Society (GLS). The GLS conference is a premier event for those from both academia and industry interested in videogames and learning. The GLS conference is one of the few destinations where the people who create high-quality digital learning media can gather for a serious think about what is happening in the field and how the field can serve the public interest. The conference offers an opportunity for in-depth conversation and social networking across diverse disciplines including game studies, education research
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Amanda OchsnerJeremy DietmeierCaroline WilliamsConstance Steinkuehler