The National Science Foundation has awarded Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) a grant to pilot a National STEM Faculty Development project. This will be an eighteen-month effort to determine what works in collaborating with formal networks to strengthen expertise within and across networks committed to adapting, implementing, and assessing contemporary research-based approaches to strengthen student learning in STEM fields.
This project is one outcome of the recent strategic planning for PKAL's future that led to a re-articulation of PKAL's vision, goals, strategies and actions for the next decade. This project is part of PKAL's continuing effort to identify, nurture, and support leaders taking responsibility for shaping robust undergraduate STEM learning environments. The kaleidoscopic perspective drives our work: integrating research and education in shaping faculty careers; connecting the evolution and assessment of programs, pedagogies, and spaces to insights on how people learn; and building bridges that cross boundaries of discipline, institutional types, and spheres of responsibility.
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A. What
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The National Science Foundation has awarded Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) a grant of $845,998 to pilot a National STEM Faculty Development project. This will be an eighteen-month effort to determine what works in collaborating with formal networks to strengthen expertise within and across networks committed to adapting, implementing, and assessing contemporary research-based approaches to strengthen student learning in STEM fields.
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B. How
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Project Kaleidoscope Phase VI: Encouraging Collaborations for Developing Undergraduate STEM Faculty is a leveraging project. We will leverage PKAL resources (people, ideas, and funds) with resources from existing and new national and regional networks through a coordinated sequence of activities.
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C. Why
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This project is one outcome of the recent strategic planning for PKAL's future that led to a re-articulation of PKAL's vision, goals, strategies and actions for the next decade. This project is part of PKAL's continuing effort to identify, nurture, and support leaders taking responsibility for shaping robust undergraduate STEM learning environments. The kaleidoscopic perspective drives our work: integrating research and education in shaping faculty careers; connecting the evolution and assessment of programs, pedagogies, and spaces to insights on how people learn; and building bridges that cross boundaries of discipline, institutional types, and spheres of responsibility.
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D. Who
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Working groups and Collaborating Partners were identified in the proposal submitted to NSF; these are the beginning of a larger PKAL network that will take leadership responsibility of various dimensions of this project.
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E. Project Background
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The goal of this pilot is to determine how to expand the awareness and informed use of contemporary pedagogies on campuses by using the resources of a formal network. There is a wide range of pedagogies that have documented success in enhancing student learning in STEM: ensuring both depth of knowledge in the field and increased skill in using tools of scientific engagement. On most campuses and within most networks there are faculty experimenting with and adapting new approaches in the classroom, be it Just-in-Time Teaching, Problem-based Learning, Personal Response Systems, etc., and there has been significant NSF investment in the development of these approaches. But such faculty often work in isolation, without the discussions, the sharing of stories, and/or the opportunity for seeing new approaches in action that reduce the need or impulse to reinvent.
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F. Resources
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