Developing, managing, evaluating and disseminating NSF educational projects is sometimes difficult. Challenges include developing faculty communities, using more robust evaluation methods, and encouraging broader adoption. This project supports a series of half-day interactive web-based seminars directed to engineering and computer science faculty members to help them better understand how to address these issues in grant proposals by demonstrating project design, management, evaluation and dissemination. Participants learn about NSF programs, discuss educational theory and perform mock reviews. The developed materials are being archived and made available to the education community.
During the 2011-2012 Academic Year, the project presented a series of 17 web-based, interactive workshops to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), principally Engineering and Computer Science, 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). With noted exceptions, the workshops were presented by the Engineering and Computer Science 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 and Computer Science departmental chairs at over 300 institutions nationally. A website (www.nsflsu.com) was developed for workshop facilitators and participants to provide links to relevant documents and presentations. The website provided a means for institutional participants to register for any and all workshops. In fall 2011, a total of 8 workshops, two in each topic area, focused on strategies to prepare better quality proposals to the TUES Program; DUE funding decision processes;improvement of the project evaluation component of proposals; and making an impact: building transportable projects. In spring 2012, a total of 8 NSF-led workshop sessions were presented, two each in the same topics listed above for fall 2011.The workshops were presented in two 60 minute segments with an intermediate 15 minute break. An extended Q&A opportunity was provided at the conclusion of the formal workshop session. The principal investigator coordinated the web-based workshops via GoToWebinar Internet conferencing software. Local facilitators at each of the participating institutional sites aided the Engineering/Computer Science 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 2000 faculty members participated in the workshops.
