I-Corps for Learning: Fostering Evidence-based Innovation for STEM Education

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Through this project the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) is conducting as series of NSF Innovation Corps for Learning (I-Corps-L) activities to help achieve the goal of educational transformation through propagation and scale-up of educational innovations. ASEE will work in collaboration with an instructional team led by Dr. Karl Smith. The I-Corps for Learning project addresses the problem of developing a well-prepared STEM workforce that is crucial to the Nation's economic health and prosperity. I-Corps for Learning helps accelerate and scale-up in a sustainable manner the novel and effective practices developed by educational innovators. The acceleration process is accomplished through a series of workshops and mentoring of a cohort of a group of teams seeking to achieve wider impact of their advances in educational practice. The approach taken in I-Corps-L is based on the application of insights concerning how product discoveries are brought to market and commercialized in the broader economy. This approach creates an entrepreneurial mindset in to bringing learning innovations into situations where they can maximize benefit to society. An educational innovation in this case applies to developments that address K-12, undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral research, as well as learning in informal science education environments. By propagating effective educational innovations and helping to achieve scale up in a sustainable manner, this project has the potential of helping to achieve the goal of improving STEM education in diverse environments across the nation.The center of the I-Corps for Learning model is the participation of three-person teams. Each team is composed of a principal investigator, an entrepreneurial lead, and a mentor. The principal investigator is an individual who has developed an education innovation through prior support from the National Science Foundation. The entrepreneurial lead serves as team leader in the process of understanding the scale-up process. The mentor draws on an understanding of the nature of successful educational innovations to help guide the team. The I-Corps-L process is based on a series in-person and online interactive workshops. Training begins with an introductory three-day training session. This is followed by five online sessions, and a closing two-day training session. I-Corps-L follows a process of investigation and hypothesis testing to clarify user needs. In addition to logistical and organizational services ASEE is conducting an evaluation to assess individual sessions within the face-to-face meetings, overall elements of the multi-day training workshops, and handling of meeting logistics. This project is designed to fill the gap between educational innovations of proven effectiveness in enhancing student learning and the widespread use of such practices. The development of a systematic hypothesis-driven approach to determining the alignment between the benefits of an educational innovation and the specific needs of potential adopters will help researchers by broaden the impact of innovations in teaching and learning science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).