The project is supporting the organization of a series of interactive, web-based faculty development workshops to improve the participants' proposal writing skills for educational development projects that are submitted to the Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) Program and other NSF programs. The workshops, which are based on a successful pilot effort, are being presented by the engineering program directors of the Division of Undergraduate Education using webinar software. The principal investigator is organizing ten interactive-web-based proposal writing workshops with each involving 15-20 institutions and a 150-200 participants. He is scheduling the workshops, inviting all institutions with accredited engineering degree programs to participate, handling all questions and registration details, providing operational guidelines to local facilitators, and collecting and reviewing participant demographics and assessment data collected to improve the workshops. The broader impacts of this project include outreach to a large and diverse set of faculty who may not have access to proposal writing workshops in any other way.
During the 2009-2010 Academic Year, the project presented a series of 10 web-based, interactive workshops to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), principally Engineering, faculty nationally to improve the number and quality of proposals submitted to the Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM (TUES) Program (formerly the Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement- CCLI Program). The workshops were presented by the Engineering Program Directors of the Division of Undergraduate Education, National Science Foundation facilitated by Louisiana State University and its Engineering Communication Studio. Invitations for institutions to participate in the workshop series were emailed to Deans and Associate Deans of Engineering at over 300 institutions nationally. Web pages were developed for workshop facilitators and participants to provide links to relevant documents and presentations. In fall 2009, the five workshops focused on strategies to prepare better quality proposals to the CCLI Program. The workshops were presented in two 75 minute segments with an intermediate 15 minute break. NSF IT staff coordinated the web-based workshops via WebEx Internet conferencing software. Local facilitators at each of the participating institutional sites aided the Engineering Program Directors with moderating the Think-Pair-Share-Report exercises and the Question and Answer opportunities. On-line assessment surveys of the workshop participants and facilitators were conducted subsequent to each of the workshops. It is estimated that as many as 400 faculty members participated in the workshops. Assuming that the survey respondents were representative of the participant pool at large: 1.The audience was diverse in gender (66% male and 31% female) and academic status rank/status (41% assistant professors). 2. In regards to the STEM discipline, the majority of the audience was engineering (67%) compared to the other STEM disciplines (33%) 3. The majority of the participants had the same Race (Not Hispanic or Latino), Ethnicity (White), and Citizenship (US Citizenship) status. 4. 78% of the participants had never previously submitted a CCLI proposal. 5. Roughly 38% of those surveyed have never participated in any type of proposal writing workshop. 28% had attended an NSF/DUE workshop in the past. 6. 56% of the participants were from RU/VH (Research University very high research activity) or RU/H (Research University high research activity) institutions. 7. Approximately 45% of the participants reported their institutions were Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). 8. Greater that 76% of the participants reported no prior submission of a CCLI proposal. 9. Approximately 50% of the participants reported that they had not read the CCLI Program Solicitation prior to participation in the Workshop. In response to survey questions, a significantly large number of the participants either Strongly Agreed (SA) or Mildly Agreed (MA) with the following statements: 1. I now have a better understanding of the most common strengths and weaknesses of CCLI proposals—92% (SA: 67% and MA: 25%)/ 98% 2. The Workshop helped me to understand and use a systematic process for converting an idea into a competitive proposal—84% (SA: 37% and MA: 47%)/ 93% 3. The Workshop helped me better understand the role of reviewers in the review process including the factors they consider and how to anticipate and respond to those factors during the proposal preparation process—89% (SA: 46% and MA: 43%)/ 97% 4. I believe I will be able to write more competitive CCLI proposals in the future—86% (SA: 52% and MA: 34%)/ 93% In spring 2010, five workshops focused on the TUES Program were presented using the same format as the fall 2009 series but hosted by LSU Engineering Communication Studio staff with GoToWebinar Internet conferencing software. Three of the workshop focused on writing a more competitive proposal and two focused on specific elements of a TUES proposal- Project Evaluation and Broader Impacts. Results of the assessment survey for the three proposal writing workshops were similar to those recorded for the fall 2009 series (see results following / above). Relative to the latter two workshops, the participants either Strongly Agreed (SA) or Mildly Agreed (MA) with the following statements: 1 I believe that the Project Evaluation presentation will enable me to collaborate more effectively with evaluation experts in preparing effective project evaluation plans—86% (SA: 61% and MA: 25%) 2 I believe the Broader Impacts presentation will improve my ability to design projects that respond more effectively to NSF’s Broader Impacts criterion—92% (SA: 62% and MA: 31%)
