Jamie Gillespie

The Friday Institute for Educational Innovation (The FI) at NC State University??????????????????s College of Education proposes to partner with The ASSISTments Foundation (TAF) in the ????????????????Recovering from COVID-Learning-Loss with a Platform to Support Human Tutoring??????????????? proposal to the US Department of Education??????????????????s Education Innovation and Research (EIR) Program - Mid-Phase Grant program. The proposal aims to scale a cost-effective way for schools to provide high dose human tutoring by matching volunteer tutors with students whose teachers are using ASSISTments mathematics instruction in the classroom - The TutorASSIST Program. In the first 2.5 years of the project, The Professional Leading and Learning Collaborative (PLLC) Team at The FI will develop, execute, and refine the TutorASSIST tutor training and credentialing and the scalable TutorASSIST program administration framework, materials, and administrator training for participating schools. Also, in the first 2.5 years of the project The Program Evaluation and Education Research (PEER) Team at The FI will conduct a formative evaluation of the TutorASSIST training and administration work, using a mixed methods approach based on the CIPP Evaluation Model and Chris Dede and Deborah Coburn's scaling educational innovations framework. In the final 2.5 years of the project The PLLC team will execute small revisions and refinements to the program design and will support hand-off of the program execution to TAF; and The PEER Team will hand-off relevant evaluation instruments and materials to the external evaluator for an impact evaluation study and will support publication and dissemination efforts.

The Friday Institute Research and Evaluation Team will provide evaluation services for a proposed project entitled, The Undergraduate Network for Increasing Diversity of Ecologists (UNIDE) project. This research coordination network project aims to build a sustainable and interdisciplinary network of ecologists, educators and social scientists to address the need to address how cultural and social barriers impact human diversity in ecology and environmental disciplines (EE). The research network coordination project seeks to build cultural competence into ecology and environmental biology education.

The Program Evaluation and Education Research (PEER) Group at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation will collaborate with the University of North Carolina (UNC) System and North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities (NCICU) to continue this work by conducting a third assessment and analysis of current digital learning practices within North Carolina Educator EPPs using the streamlined Digital Learning Progress Rubric and the School Technology Needs Assessment (STNA) for EPP faculty. They will also support UNC and NCICU to review and refine four professional development modules that will be submitted in June 2022, create and implement a peer review process to evaluate existing professional development opportunities, provide two half-day trainings for EPP faculty, and develop a plan for dissemination.

The Friday Institute for Educational Innovation (FI) at North Carolina State University (Friday Institute), will collaborate with the University of North Carolina (UNC) System, the North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities (NCICU) and the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) to develop a rubric to be used to review and assess the professional development modules submitted to DPI by the NCICU and UNC Work Groups. In addition, the FI will provide training and support for assessors who will be using the rubric to evaluation the professional development modules.