Impact/Benefits

CL leaders from each state contributed to a proposal to NSF’s Cyberlearning: Transforming Education program that would support development of a research program. During the summit, it became clear that the programs developed individually were synergistic and would likely provide even more effective learning opportunities for students by incorporating components across projects.

Explanation

A group of EPSCoR collaborators from New Mexico, Nevada, and Idaho joined together in Jemez Springs to discuss cyberlearning activities, programs, and materials that have been developed with support from the NSF EPSCoR Track 2 award. One component of the Western Tri-State Consortium (Track 2) of NV, NM and ID is the utilization of cyberinfrastructure to integrate research with education. Consequently, each of the states has developed cyberlearning (CL) tools related to the theme of water resources and climate change.

In January 2012, 26 participants from all three states convened in New Mexico to explore synergies that exist amongst the projects. During the two-day CL Summit, representatives of each state led demonstrations of the K-12 CL materials/programs that had been developed or expanded with NSF EPSCoR funding, including the McCall Outdoor Science School (MOSS) in Idaho, Growing up Thinking Scientifically (GUTS) in New Mexico, and implementation of Climate Change Cyberlearning Curriculum Development (C4D) in Nevada. In addition to learning about the programs, a goal of the summit was to identify components of the projects that were suitable for scaling up and dissemination to the other states.

Outcome

CL leaders efficiently collaborated on how the various approaches used by each program and their respective strengths could best be integrated and leveraged in STEM education and outreach. The summit also resulted in several cyberlearning sessions that were offered at the 4th Annual Tri-State meeting in Sun Valley, Idaho.