EAGER: Hindsight 2020: The Impact of Covid 19 on Delivery of Computer Science Teacher Professional Development

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Computer Science has a unique need for teacher professional development (PD) programs, in that many teachers are learning both new content and pedagogy. With the advent of the COVID-19 global pandemic and subsequent US school closures in March of this year, PD providers had to quickly spring into action to create summer PD options that were both professionally rich and safe for participants. Primarily, this has meant a rapid shift from in-person experiences to a range of approaches combining on- and off-line learning environments. In this EAGER led by SageFox Consulting, a lead research partner on several NSF-funded projects, approaches to online PD and its impact on teachers will be documented and disseminated among PD providers. This data will not only inform the content and delivery of PD in the summer of 2021, but will also elucidate methods and mechanisms that may support teachers beyond the pandemic, such as how to reach educators who are the only CS teacher in their school or those who work in remote locations. This EAGER will capture the unique attributes of the summer of 2020 as many computer science (CS) education professional development (PD) programs move to an all online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic and utilize this data to inform future online PD development. The project team, comprised of SageFox Consulting, CSEdResearch, CRESST, and AIR will leverage their collective evaluation expertise to examine the impact of the forced online delivery of teacher PD by providers either experienced with or new to online PD. Specifically, they aim to understand how projects adapt existing curricula for online learning and how they scale online teacher PD and provide resources within a short timeframe, as well as how their reported data on teacher impact compare to previous years. Gathering lessons learned from this rapid delivery and pedagogical change will help to inform future online PD efforts, especially if COVID 19-related closures continue. In addition, this study may uncover unexpected challenges or benefits associated with online PD (e.g., how to build community in an online space versus in person, ability to recruit participants from broader geographic areas). The central research questions for this project are: 1) What curricular and pedagogical changes have been made to summer 2020 CS PD in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and what was the process for making these changes? 2) What does teacher engagement look like in online CS PD and how is it measured? 3) In what ways has the move to online CS PD impacted participants in areas such as self-efficacy and perceived learning? 4 )How can lessons learned from summer 2020 PD inform future PD efforts?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.