Group items tagged

Every project should therefore seek to answer questions about how to better promote learning, how to promote better learning, or how learning happens in technology-rich environments (including exploring relationships between people and technology that result in productive learning and access provided with technology to learning resources, such as data and scientific information). Each project should also focus, concurrently, on innovative technology design, ways of coherently integrating technologies for learning, and/or the integration of such technology into targeted learning environments. Especially sought are projects in which technology allows the tailoring of learning experiences to special needs and interests of groups or individuals, as well as ways in which technology allows expanding education beyond classroom settings

It is expected that all projects will advance understanding about how people learn with technology, how to use technology to help people learn, and/or how to use technology to enhance assessment or education practices

These projects may be of several different types:

Proposals should make clear the roles of all team members (PIs, supporting investigators, advisors, and others), why the proposed team is an appropriate one, and what expertise each team member brings. Teams should include members who have experience with the learners and environments being targeted and who are expert at relevant engagement and learning issues. Proposers should make clear the challenges associated with assessment and evaluation, robustness and broader usability that they anticipate, and the team members that will help with each of these.

Project proposers should also include on their teams people who can help them plan towards fulfilling the transformational potential of their work, including, as appropriate, those who can help them transition their technology to broad use and those from stakeholder groups who will need to be integrated into the project as innovations move towards scalability, broad dissemination, and continuation over time.

Integration and Deployment Projects (INDP Projects)

Since successful collaborative research depends on thoughtful coordination mechanisms, a Collaboration Plan is required for all proposals involving multiple investigators. The length of and level of detail provided in the Collaboration Plan should be commensurate with the complexity of the collaboration.

They may advance understanding of how to productively integrate a variety of established technologies to better promote learning or promote better learning in a target population and environment. They may provide guidelines on extending the usage of some promising technology or technologies over a larger variety of learner populations, advancing understanding of how to better address learning needs of different populations. They may provide guidelines on extending the usage of some promising technology or technologies over a larger variety of learning contexts, advancing understanding of learning processes that underlie disciplinary areas or the constraints and affordances (opportunities offered) of different environments for learning. They may combine advances in two or more of these areas.

It is expected that technologies will be deployed and evaluated in a large variety of learning environments, that by the end of the project, the technology will be ready for technology transfer and commercialization, and that the guidelines proposed will be broadly applicable beyond the particular technology being deployed. By later years of the project, facilitation of technology use should be done by those who would naturally be the facilitators in the chosen learning environment (e.g., teachers, scout leaders, parents, peers). Formative analyses: As for DIP projects, formative analyses should answer questions about usability, learning, effective and sustained use, as well as issues associated with scale-up, sustainability, workforce development, and long-term efficacy (as appropriate).

It will be appropriate for many proposals to include the development of innovative curricula or educational materials in addition to proposing technological innovations.

A successful research project should be potentially transformative; grounded in existing learning and education research; seek to answer questions about learning with technology; measure learning gains, take into account appropriate elements of the learning ecology in designing its innovation, evaluating its innovation, and answering research questions; include team members with all necessary expertise, including expertise for outreach and dissemination; be aware of potential scalability and sustainability issues; and use appropriate methodologies to evaluate innovations and measure learning gains. Our expectation is that many grants made by this program will seed long-term research enterprises. The transformative potential of proposed projects may be many years out, so proposers should make clear what that potential is and the predicted time horizon.

Collaborative Proposals. All collaborative proposals submitted as separate submissions from multiple organizations must be submitted via the NSF FastLane system. Chapter II, Section D.4 of the Grant Proposal Guide provides additional information on collaborative proposals.

Proposal Titles: Proposal titles must begin with an acronym that indicates the categories in which proposals are being submitted, as follows Exploration Projects - EXP Design and Implementation Projects - DIP Integration and Deployment Projects - INDP

The acronym should be followed with a colon then the title of the proposed project. If you submit a proposal as one in a set of collaborative proposals, the title of your proposal should begin with the acronym that indicates the project category, followed by a colon, then "Collaborative Research" followed by a colon, and then the project title. For example, if you are submitting an Exploration Project, the title of each collaborative proposal would be EXP:Collaborative Research: Project Title.   Project Summary:  The Project Summary must include an explicit description of both the Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts of the activities proposed, preferably in separate paragraphs titled "Intellectual Merit" and "Broader Impacts".   

Project Description: Project Descriptions should include the following sections: Vision and Goals. Describe: The theories of learning investigators are drawing from. Learning objectives: what learners are expected to learn and how the proposed innovation or its integration into the learning environment is expected to promote that learning. The population of learners, including any needs, abilities or interests relevant to achieving the learning objectives. How the proposed innovation is matched to the needs, abilities, and interests of targeted learners. Because deep understanding and facile capabilities emerge only over long periods of time, how the proposed innovation or its integration into some learning environment is expected to sustain engagement.

Research Plan and Outcomes. With appropriate references to the literature, describe the research questions to be answered through your research and a comprehensive research plan to answer them. Make clear the learning domain to be explored (e.g., content, subject matter, topics, skills, practices), and make a research-based case for the promise of the particular technological innovation for promoting learning in this domain. Describe the data to be gathered and analytic approaches to be taken to analyze the data.   It is anticipated that technological innovations will be iteratively refined over the course of the project based on analysis of formative data.  Describe the formative evaluation methodology you will use, including means to assess learning and engagement.  Describe the project outcomes you expect to generate, including products. Discuss how you will collect and analyze data to supply evidence of learning outcomes. Innovation Outcomes (For DIP and INDP projects ONLY). Describe how the proposed innovations and ways of integrating them into the learning environment take into account the environmental and human factors important to learner success (e.g., the cognitive, developmental, affective, and social needs of learners, the cultural milieu in which the learning technologies will be used, and the capabilities and expectations of human agents in the environment).  All claims about the appropriateness of the proposed innovation should be supported with evidence from the literature.

A Collaboration Plan is required for all proposals involving multiple investigators. The length of and degree of detail provided in the Collaboration Plan should be commensurate with the complexity of the proposed project.  Collaboration Plans should be included at the end of the Project Description in a section entitled "Collaboration Plan", and up to 3 additional pages are allowed for Collaboration Plans. The Collaboration Plan should describe: the specific roles of the project participants in all organizations involved; information on how the project will be managed across all the investigators, institutions, and/or disciplines; identification of the specific coordination mechanisms that will enable cross-investigator, cross-institution, and/or cross-discipline scientific integration (e.g., yearly workshops, graduate student exchange, project meetings at conferences, use of videoconferencing resources or social media technologies, software repositories, etc.); and specific references to budget line items that support collaboration and coordination mechanisms.

What is the intellectual merit of the proposed activity? How important is the proposed activity to advancing knowledge and understanding within its own field or across different fields? How well qualified is the proposer (individual or team) to conduct the project? (If appropriate, the reviewer will comment on the quality of the prior work.) To what extent does the proposed activity suggest and explore creative, original, or potentially transformative concepts? How well conceived and organized is the proposed activity? Is there sufficient access to resources? What are the broader impacts of the proposed activity? How well does the activity advance discovery and understanding while promoting teaching, training, and learning? How well does the proposed activity broaden the participation of underrepresented groups (e.g., gender, ethnicity, disability, geographic, etc.)? To what extent will it enhance the infrastructure for research and education, such as facilities, instrumentation, networks, and partnerships? Will the results be disseminated broadly to enhance scientific and technological understanding? What may be the benefits of the proposed activity to society?