| NSF Org: |
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | July 29, 2009 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | June 6, 2012 |
| Award Number: | 0903331 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Connie Della-Piana
cdellapi@nsf.gov (703)292-5309 DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | August 1, 2009 |
| End Date: | July 31, 2015 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $1,200,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $1,200,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2010 = $408,976.00 FY 2011 = $280,752.00 FY 2012 = $239,607.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
333 RAVENSWOOD AVE MENLO PARK CA US 94025-3493 (703)247-8529 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
333 RAVENSWOOD AVE MENLO PARK CA US 94025-3493 |
| Primary Place of Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Advanced Tech Education Prog |
| Primary Program Source: |
04001011DB NSF Education & Human Resource 04001112DB NSF Education & Human Resource 04001213DB NSF Education & Human Resource |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
Community College Partnership Models for Workforce Education Sustainability and Integrated Instruction
SRI International's Center for Technology in Learning, Ames & Associates, and four Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Centers (The National Workforce Center for Emerging Technologies (NWCET) at Bellevue Community College in Washington, the National Center for Manufacturing Education (NCME) at Sinclair Community College in Ohio, the National Center for Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) Center at Springfield Technical Community College in Massachusetts, and the Center for Information Technology Education (CITE) in Nashville, Tennessee) join forces in a four-year research study. The goals of the targeted research study are to (1) describe partnership models to integrate industry goals in the classroom; (2) characterize approaches for guiding and transforming instruction; (3) disseminate useable tools and materials for partnership building and workforce-integrated instruction; and (4) create a framework to inform future research into the mechanism that lead to a learning college culture. Intellectual Merit: The targeted research study takes a multi-method, multi-site approach to examine the effectiveness of industry-community college partnerships and workplace relevance of ATE-sponsored instructional approaches. The results of the research have the potential of producing an analytic framework to guide the design of future studies into the mechanisms that community colleges use to support continuous improvement in curriculum and instruction. Broader Impact: This effort results in the production of usable tools and materials for practitioners to deepen industry-community college partnerships and to integrate industry goals into both technician and transfer-credit classrooms through specific instructional techniques. The addition of case studies provides an in-depth examination of how industry-community college partnerships prioritize the needs of underrepresented groups and address them through classroom instructional practices.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The Community College Partnership’s Instructional Impacts (CCPII) project was a targeted research project that studied community college workforce educational implementation in diverse advanced technology industries and geographic regions. SRI International in partnership with five community colleges and a workforce communications firm, Ames & Associates, led the work. The research laid a foundation for sharing knowledge about the practices that workforce educators use to prepare students for high-demand, high-skill jobs and to develop career pathways that link their coursework to the world of real work.
The objectives of the research were to:
- Describe strategies for improving workforce partnerships between community college technician educators and local employers
- Characterize approaches for demonstrating how well workforce education programs prepare workers with skills that local labor markets demand
- Characterize approaches for designing and delivering workforce instruction in high-demand, high-skill technical fields
- Create an evaluation framework to inform future research into workforce education partnerships and instructional program development
- Disseminate usable tools and materials for partnership building and workforce-relevant instruction.
CCPII resulted in the development of the Workforce Education Implementation Evaluation (WEIE) Framework, a process-oriented evaluation approach that complements the more frequently conducted workforce education evaluation methods that focus on products. The WEIE provides concepts and tools that make it easier to monitor, measure, and adjust the quality of the processes that workforce educators use in their work. By foregrounding process, the WEIE tools can be used by researchers, evaluators, and community college practitioners to refine partnerships with industry and instructional programs, and to deepen the field’s understanding of these processes. Links to a research overview document, research articles, presentations, and downloadable tools are available at the SRI website.
Workforce educators and their employer partners can use the WEIE framework’s concepts and tools for work with:
- Partners
- Planning partnership strategies
- Collaborating with employers around lesson designs
- Managing employer partnerships to weather local economic cycles
- Adding rigor to industry advisory panel meetings
- Students
- Creating career pathways that integrate academic and technical coursework
- Reporting program success in preparing workers who have acquired in-demand skills
- College Administrators and Faculty
- Demonstrating program quality during accreditation reviews
- Determining when to use industry-created vs. instructor-created materials
Because a focus on implementation is relatively rare in the community college workforce education field, the CCPII targeted research project provided a rich opportunity to explore the challenges of such implementation research and evaluation. With the support of its project evaluation partner, SRI International has documented those challenges and solutions. Key insights derived from project work were that community college workforce practitioners welcomed the opportunity to learn more about their practice and valued site visits, which gave them the opportunity to discuss their programs and show how the worked. In addition, they provided clear feedback to researchers about how to streamline research p...
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