I3-2010

From TeacherWiki

(Redirected from I3)
Jump to: navigation, search

May 19, 2010

Welcome,

This page was to explain to districts what I am planning for a series of grants.

The first grant is now written and can be downloaded from here. Take a look. Its very impressive to see all the districts and supporters we managed to get as listed in the Appendix.


I am planning to send a similar grant to the US Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences June 20th 2010, and then the same idea to the National Science Foundation's Math and Science Partnership grant program.


If you were not one of the districts that already gave us a letter of support, I will try to include you on the next grant that goes in. Contact me at NTH@WPI.edu and send in a letter of support.

If you would like to see ASSISTments in Action go to these two links to learn more:


Sincerely,

Neil Heffernan


If you are from a school system in Maine (Maine has a laptop program where each student gets to take a laptop home) there is a separate grant I am doing for Maine. Please visit the following page.

Contents

Information on the Investing In Innovations Grant Proposal (i3) by WPI

Professor Neil Heffernan is leading a group of school districts on an Investing in Innovation (i3) grant. If you want your district to get funding under this grant read more. You might have heard about this due to a Webinar Professor Heffernan gave for the North Carolina Department of Instruction.

Professor Heffernan also recently conducted a webinar at WPI with about 40 district heads as well as several more through a Wimba classroom. If you missed the talk but would like to find out more about the I3 grant and the ASSISTment program, you can click here to stream the event, or here to download the entire lecture.

Several questions repeatedly came up from the chat interface, so here are answers to the most frequently asked questions:

  • Q: Does it cost anything to use ASSISTments?
    • A: Nope, nothing! Not only is it free to use for anyone, but Professor Heffernan is hoping to give money to your district to help train teachers and Math Coaches.
  • Q: What are the next steps for districts?
    • A: A letter of support would be very much appreciated. We have a form letter that you can use to show your interest. The letter is by no means a statement of commitment, just a way to show that you like the idea and would be interested to hear if we succeed with this grant.
  • Q: Does ASSISTments actually improve standardized test scores?
    • A: We certainly hope so. Various teachers who have adopted the system into their curriculum have told stories about how their student's scores improved from previous years. We still have not run a complete randomized study confirming these anecdotal results, but that is a topic that is currently being researched. You can read more about this work at the bottom of this page.

What is an Investing in Innovation (i3) grant?

The i3 grant program is described here [1]

Who is eligible for to join this grant

If you are from a school system in Maine (Maine has a laptop program where each student gets to take a laptop home.) There there is a separate grant I am doing for Maine. Please visit the following page.

Superintendents of distrcts are able to join this program.

Events: How to learn more

April 7 MA District Meeting Past but can been see online

April 16 Maine District Meeting Learn how to maximize your 1-1 Laptop program.

April 30 Second Maine District Meeting Learn how to maximize your 1-1 Laptop program.

April 19 Teacher Online Training Learn how to get started with ASSISTments in your classroom.

April 21 Principal and Administrator Training online Learn how to implement ASSISTments into your school improvement plans.


What is ASSISTments and why is WPI leading this proposal?

ASSISTments is an online system developed to support schools practicing the formative assessment cycle. It is a blend of assessment and assistance. The system tutors students while assessing their understanding of grade-specific knowledge components. Teachers can get real-time reports on student performance. ASSISTments has modules for Mastery Learning (where ASSISTments provides the tedious bookkeeping functions), nightly homework (ASSISTments checks for accuracy and reports correct and incorrect feedback to teachers and students), parental notification of student performance, and more. The system collects and documents evidence of student learning, provides students with descriptive feedback to help them close gaps in understanding, and provides parents with specific information about what students know and understand.


Professor Heffernan developed ASSISTments at WPI with the help of a strong team of colleagues and graduate students. WPI is a leader in computer science providing a top notch education to a wide array of students including a large population of female students.


ASSISTments is funded by the US Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research. Learn more about ASSISTments and the work done by Neil and colleagues from this web-i-nar http://www.serve.org/Assessment-webinar.aspx


What is the purpose of the WPI proposal lead by Heffernan?

The purpose of this grant proposal it to help schools and districts learn to do formative assessment supported by ASSISTments. Teachers and school leaders will receive funding to support professional development, coaching, and technical support.


What will this grant offer districts?

Each district will get support in doing formative assessment with ASSISTments. They will get funding for time for teachers to attend summer workshops and week end workshops learning how to do ASSISTments. The training will cover training on the basics on using ASSISTments and delve into how to use the data provided to make teaching more efficient and more effective.

Teachers will know, quickly and easily which students know what, who has completed their homework (including checks for accuracy and reports correct and incorrect feedback to teachers and students), and what are common wrong answers. This will aid teachers planning their lessons to target the exact misconceptions students have.


How much money are we talking about for a district?

We don't know yet but here is an estimate. A school that has 16 middle school math teachers can might stand to get as much as $300,000 in support spread out over 3 years. About half of that support will be in the form of a math coach. The other half will be to fund each teacher at $35 an hour for 120 hours a year. That 120 hours will be spread out between summer workshops, weekly meeting in professional learning communities, and a few weekend workshops. Schools will be asked to submit a budget year to WPI on how they want to spend their funds and to schedule their hours.

What does your district needs to do to participate?

To participate, Professor Heffernan needs a letter of support from your district.

You may download a draft letter here this draft letter of commitment and fill it in with information from your district. Please put it on your district letterhead.

Some essentials that must be included in the letter:

  • Your district commits doing this
  • Your district commits adhering to the requirements of the grant about participating in evaluation. The US Dept of Education requires a serious evaluation of this grant and will have an outside evaluator who will conduct a study to see if student learning happens. This will likely involve a randomized controlled trial where half the schools will not get the intervention until Year 2, although all school will eventually get the intervention.
  • Your district commits to sustaining this effort after the grant is over. The rules of getting a grant are such that they want to make sure the district has a plan to sustain this grant so it does not die after the 5 years are up. How will your district sustain it? During the course of the grant, you will have a lead teacher in each school who will get extra training in being a math coach and knows how to use ASSISTments very well. After the grant is over that person will then help train new folks in your district.

Your letter needs to fit on one page with type font no smaller than 10 point.

Letters that don't included all the elements in the draft letter will be dropped before we submit the proposal. To be clear, it is key to include language that your school knows that the US Department of Education demands a serious evaluation. We are not sure how many districts we will accept and will let you know by May 10, 2010, if you district made the final cut.


When will you know if you will get funding?

The grants will be reviewed this summer and the US Department of Education says they hope to make awards by September. We don't know how long after that it will take for funds to start flowing to districts.


Who is Professor Neil Heffernan?

Neil is a professor at WPI in the Computer Science Department. He graduated Amherst College in Massachusetts and became a math teacher through Teach For America. After realizing just what a challenging job this was, he wanted to do something easier and got a PhD in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania. Since coming to Worcester, Massachusetts, Neil has been developing ASSISTments and working with local school districts.


Here is a short bio [2]. Neil Heffernan is the most successful grant writer at WPI having received $9 million in the last 7 years.


Who else is involved with this grant?

Ken Koedinger at Carnegie Mellon University will be a lead cognitive scientist on this grant. Koedigner is the current co-director of a $25 million NSF grant called "Pittsburgh Science of Learning."

Neil Heffernan
Cristina Heffernan
Matthew Militello
Ken Koedinger ASSISTments Co-Founder

What is the research behind ASSISTments? Does ASSISTments really improve student test scores?

We have some promising results that ASSISTments is effective but have not yet been funded to do a large scale experiment to see if schools that are giving ASSISTments have high gains in test scores. This grant will allow us to do that.

John Pane at RAND will be the outside evaluator that will conduct the study to see if students test scores go up. RAND is the nation’s foremost name in trusted evaluation. Dr. John Pane has already run several multiple million-dollar evaluations of educational technology products. He is unbiased; one of his multi-million dollar studies showed that the education technology product actually reduced test scores. When this grant is over, we will know if ASSISTments can increase student test scores.

  • We showed the same effect in classrooms. Most math classes have teachers presenting a lesson and then there is a time for practice independently with a teacher circulating to help kids before they have to go home and do it alone. Student learned more if they got immediate feedback from the computer, compared to a control condition representing what normally happens.

How is ASSISTments used by teachers in real classrooms?

  • Here is a book chapter prepared by Neil Heffernan for a book Chris Dede at Harvard is editing. It is expected to be published in the fall of 2010 by Havard or Columbia's Teacher Press. Book Chapter
  • Here is an article on our vision how ASSISTments could be used to kick start a Professional Learning Community. Article.
  • Here is an article written for principals and superintendents. Article
  • If you are looking for documentation on how to use ASSISTments you can read this user manual. User manual and Information for getting started.

Click Here for a power-point poster of how ASSISTments is use for formative Assessment.

Retrieved from "http://beta.assistment.org/wiki/I3-2010"
Personal tools
login or sign up