I-Corps: Training and Evaluation

这个项目来自国家大学发明家和创新者联盟公司(VentureWell)，协调、召集和评估国家创新网络及其创新团队(i-Corps)计划。通过这个项目，VentureWell将国家计划联系起来，形成“国家创新网络”(NIN)。这一新兴的创新者社区代表了NSF i-Corps计划的关键组成部分。有了NIN，NSF加快了国家创新生态系统的发展，该生态系统深入和广泛地覆盖全国，在创业过程中参与最具创造性和最重要的研究发现和人才。NIN由支持i-Corps节点的大学集群组成，i-Corps节点是i-Corps国家课程团队的主要培训小组；i-Corps站点--包括致力于激励非常早期的团队的个别机构；团队--专注于技术创新的市场验证；以及组织利益相关者，如支持团队的导师，以及风险发展合作伙伴，如天使投资者、风险投资家和其他类型的投资者。VentureWell在NIN的推进中的作用涉及七项主要活动：1.委托教学团队进行11次NSF I-Corps国家队培训2.实施I-Corps教师培训3.召开I-Corps教师峰会4.设计和实施教学助理培训5.组织和实施年度国家创新网络会议，将所有节点和站点聚集在一起6.准备，7.进行持续的课程评估本项目的一个特别重点是VentureWell对I-Corps团队在队列和相关传播活动中的经验进行形成性和终结性评估的研究和评估。形成性评估旨在了解参与者对队列和课程的满意度以及对课程环境的看法，了解教学质量，并评估知识收获。评估涉及四项调查的管理、答复率监测、数据收集和清理：(I)课程前，(Ii)开课后，(Iii)每周网络研讨会后，以及(Iv)课程后。终结性评估旨在跟踪NSF感兴趣的个人和团队成果，并在正式参与计划结束后大约一年和3.5年评估课程的影响。最后，传播活动旨在确保与适当的受众共享关键的节目信息。此外，VentureWell正在创建公共使用的数据集。这些数据集包含来自课程前、课程后和纵向结果调查的未识别的数据，以便向I-Corps研究社区传播有关该计划的信息，并允许其他人在他们的研究中使用这些数据。

This project, from The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, Inc. (VentureWell), coordinates, convenes, and evaluates the National Innovation Network and its Innovation Corps (I-Corps) programs.Through this project, VentureWell connects national programs to form the "National Innovation Network" (NIN). This emerging community of innovators represents a key component of NSF's I-Corps programs. With the NIN, NSF accelerates the development of a national innovation ecosystem that reaches deeply and broadly across the country to engage the most creative and consequential research discoveries and talents in the process of entrepreneurship. The NIN is composed of clusters of universities that support the I-Corps Nodes -- the primary training group for the I-Corps national course teams; the I-Corps Sites -- that include the individual institutions dedicated to spurring on very early stage teams; the Teams -- that focus on market validation of technology innovations; and organizational stakeholders such as mentors who support the teams, and venture development partners such as angel investors, venture capitalists and other types of investors.The role of VentureWell in the advancing of the NIN involves seven primary activities: 1. Commission teaching teams for eleven NSF I-Corps National Team Trainings 2. Implement I-Corps Faculty Training 3. Convene an I-Corps Faculty Summit 4. Design and implement Teaching Assistant Training 5. Organize and implement the annual National Innovation Network conference that brings together all of the Nodes and Sites 6. Prepare, disseminate and archive the curriculum and curate best practices for pedagogical improvements 7. Conduct Ongoing Course EvaluationA particular focus of this project is VentureWell's research and assessment of formative and summative evaluation of I-Corps Team experiences in cohorts as well as related dissemination activity. The formative evaluation is designed to understand participants' satisfaction with the cohort and course and perspective on the course environment, to understand the quality of instruction, and to assess knowledge gains. The evaluation involves the administration, response rate monitoring, data collection, and cleaning of four surveys: (i) pre-course, (ii) after kickoff, (iii) after week-3 of course weekly webinars, and (iv) post-course. The summative evaluation is designed to track individual and team outcomes of interest to NSF and assess the impact of the course at approximately one year and 3.5 years after formal participation in the program ends. Finally, dissemination activities are designed to ensure that key program information is shared with appropriate audiences. In addition, VentureWell is creating public-use datasets. These datasets contain de-identified data from the pre-course, post-course and longitudinal outcomes surveys in order to disseminate information about the program to the I-Corps research community and allow others to use these data in their research.