Impacts of the Education-Related Network-Based Projects

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Kozma 9552496 The goals of this policy study are to provide the National Science Foundation's Networking Infrastructure for Education program with: (1) a conceptual framework for studying the impacts of NIE investments in network-based projects, (2) policy options for resource allocations, and (3) recommendations for approaches to evaluating the impact of the NIE program and its projects. These options and recommendations will be useful both to NIE and to other agencies funding network-based projects. An analysis of the distribution of the NIE funds across types of programs and in relation to other NII projects can reveal redundancies, gaps, and emerging needs. An assessment of the nature of the NIE portfolio within the larger NII context can illuminate potentially powerful partnerships for leveraging NIE's investments in pursuit of education reform. Evaluation recommendations will help NIE program staff advise proposers on their evaluation plans, assess the quality of proposals, and monitor the execution of projects. Improved plans for formative and summative evaluation of projects will also increase the likelihood of project success and make it more efficient and inexpensive to assess the impact of NIE, when it comes time to evaluate that program. These goals will be accomplished in the following seven steps: (1) SRI staff will meet with the staff of NIE and other related programs to identify policy and evaluation issues and identify a panel of national experts that will work on the project; (2) SRI staff will propose and refine a conceptual framework that describes the ways in which networkbased projects can affect educational reform and provide NIE staff with information on the distribution of their resources across the framework relative to the investments of other federal programs and those of the private sector; (3) SRI staff will formulate different evaluation criteria an methodologies for NIE projects with different goals and activities; (4) on th e basis of these analyses, SRI staff will make preliminary recommendations regarding funding alternatives and evaluation guidelines; (5) these recommendations will be reviewed and modified by a panel of experts in science, education technology, policy, and program evaluation; (6) a national Policy Conference will be convened to review and discuss the recommendations; (7) on the basis of these discussions, SRI staff will write up the final recommendations to NIE staff. ***