Time: 3:35 PM – 4:20 PM
Presenters:
Dawn McDaniel, Ph.D. & Abby Bergman, PEAR (Partnerships in Education and Resilience) James Humphries, Chicago STEM Pathways Cooperative
Irene Porro, Ph.D., MetroWest STEM Education Network
Session Description:
Understanding STEM program quality and youth outcomes is essential to the continuous quality improvement process and building an evidence based to support the efforts of STEM Learning Ecosystems (Allen et al., 2019). PEAR (Partnerships in Education and Resilience) has partnered with TIES to support STEM Learning Ecosystems in building their capacity to collect data. PEAR has an approach to data collection that uses a common framework, language, and tools, that was developed and validated in informal learning settings to measure indicators relevant to program quality (i.e., Dimensions of Success observational tool (Shah et al., 2018) and Common Instrument Suite – Educator Survey) and youth outcomes (i.e., Common Instrument Suite – Student Survey (Little et al., 2020) in STEM programs. In addition to these tools, TIES promotes use of a tool called Caliper, which is an ecosystem assessment (Morrison & Fisher, 2021). Together, these tools are used to produce a report called the Data Narrative for Action (DNA) report. Two STEM Learning Ecosystems, MetroWest STEM Education Network and Chicago STEM Pathways Cooperative, participated in the first cohort of sites collecting data and learning best practices of program evaluation. For this interactive workshop, PEAR will introduce the DNA cohort model, including the reviewing the value of program evaluation and best practices in sharing program impact across various audiences. Then, MetroWest STEM Education Network and Chicago STEM Pathways Cooperative will present their elements of their data narratives. Finally, PEAR will discuss its preparation for the next cohort of STEM Learning Ecosystems.