SBIR Phase I: Facilitating Early Childhood Teacher and Family Engagement During COVID-19

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛影响是确保全国最年轻的学习者及其家庭得到支持，因为他们的教育经历因与COVID-19大流行相关的家庭学习配置而中断。家长和照顾者对远程学习模式带来的所有变化感到不知所措。这个项目可以减轻他们的负担，使教师能够更密切地与家庭合作，并在远程学习环境中支持他们的孩子。高质量幼儿教育的缺失使最年幼的学生有可能在入学准备方面落后。通过该项目，教师将能够获得关于每个儿童发展的持续信息，并能够在偏远地区提供更好的支持。此外，即使教室关闭，家庭也可以获得高质量、低接触的资源，在家里支持他们的孩子。 拟议的项目正在开发幼儿教师和家庭参与工具，以支持家中幼儿的远程充实。该方法将本组织基于游戏的评估系统与本组织面向儿童的研究性学习游戏相结合，以支持课堂上的教师。该项目将使其评估产品在家庭环境中可用。家长和看护者将能够使用智能手机或平板电脑收集评估数据。将进行研究，以确定在远程环境中收集的评估数据的易用性和准确性。 然后，这些数据将用于为该组织基于研究的游戏提供建议，其中两个游戏将通过这项工作开发，以及家庭和儿童可以一起做的其他教育资源。评估数据通常由教师在课堂上通过基于观察的方法收集;该项目将使家长和照顾者能够通过触摸屏游戏在家中收集与入学准备有关的评估数据。然后，幼儿教师将能够使用来自评估和学习产品的数据来指导他们的远程教学计划。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to ensure that the nation’s youngest learners and their families are supported as their educational experiences are disrupted due to the at-home learning configuration associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents and caregivers are overwhelmed with all of the changes due to remote learning models. This project can ease their burden by enabling teachers to more closely collaborate with families and support their child in a remote learning context. A lapse in high-quality early childhood education puts the youngest learners at risk of falling behind in school readiness. With this project, teachers will have access to ongoing information on each child’s development and be able to provide better support in the remote context. Moreover, families will have access to high-quality, low-touch resources to support their child at home, even if the classrooms are closed. The proposed project is developing an early childhood teacher and family engagement tool to support remote enrichment for young children at home. The approach brings together the organization’s game-based assessment system to support teachers in the classroom with the organization’s research-based learning games for children. This project will make its assessment product accessible within a home context. Parents and caregivers will be able to use their smartphones or tablets to collect assessment data. Research will be conducted to ascertain ease of use and fidelity of assessment data collected in a remote context. This data will then be used to power recommendations on the organization’s research-based games, two of which will be developed through this work, as well as other educational resources that families and children can do together. Assessment data is typically collected by teachers through an observation-based approach in the classroom; this project will enable parents and caregivers to collect assessment data pertaining to school readiness at home through touchscreen games. Early childhood teachers will then be able to use the data from the assessment and learning products to guide their remote instructional plans.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.