Enhancing and Sustaining the CISE REU Site Evaluation Toolkit

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This project provides long-term support for external evaluation activities and services for the Computing and Information Sciences and Engineering (CISE) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) community. This project addresses the ongoing need among principal investigators who are conducting CISE REU Site program evaluation efforts by providing an evaluation toolkit that facilitates evaluation reporting while strengthening research about undergraduate research program outcomes. The primary purpose of the CISE REU Evaluation Toolkit is to provide targeted resources and tools for quality program evaluation that balance the desire for standardized assessment along with the responsibility to account for individual program contexts. This project aims to enhance the evaluation tools and resources and to provide for sustainability and maintenance of the resources. Services associated with the Toolkit are providing a Common Application for site recruiting, coordinating a Shared Applicant Pool for principal investigators to share applicants across sites, delivering an online student survey known as the A la Carte Student Survey,and providing an Alumni Tracker tool to assist sites with tracking their students after their participation in summer research at the site. The project also provides aggregate and site-specific analyses to REU Site principal investigators. The benefits of the Toolkit are in providing cost effective, sustainable evaluation tools, a community forum for program evaluation, and aggregate measurement of key program outcomes indicators. The key contribution of project is in the refinement of understanding evidence-based practices in evaluating undergraduate research programs to help faculty successfully manage these programs. The goals of the project include managing the various components of the Toolkit, providing analyses and summative annual reporting of the Evaluation Toolkit results, and providing timely, site-specific data packages of student results. The strength of this project comes from the strong research community of practice that has been nurtured by this project and the ongoing commitment to support and enhance the resources through this funding. The project contributes to understanding the impact of undergraduate computing research programs for both students and faculty participants. The comprehensive program evaluation will inform collective efforts to recruit and mentor undergraduate students involved in cutting-edge research. The knowledge generated by this study will also provide insights about how faculty engage in REU Sites and the impact on their careers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.