Rural Maine Afterschool PD Program Gets $2 million NSF Grant for Online Video Coaching

• By Sri Ravipati
• 07/11/17

A professional development (PD) program run by the Maine Mathematics & Science Alliance (MMSA) operating in rural Maine was recently awarded a $1.85 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue coaching educators and librarians on how to bring out-of-school STEM learning opportunities into their communities.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also called “The Nation’s Report Card,” Maine students on average have scored above average in science and mathematics since the state started participating in NAEP testing in 1990. However, these scores tend to waver in rural areas that lack adequate training resources.

“Equity is such an issue for us in rural settings where there are so few professional development opportunities,” said Sue Allen, Ph.D and project principal investigator of MMSA’s Afterschool Coaching for Rural Educators in STEM (ACRES) program, in a video overview of the program. “We’re really trying to make the system work entirely online and well as hybrid models.”

ACRES is designed to support PD opportunities for out-of-school providers in rural settings mainly through the use of video, as the program site explains. It was piloted for two years and will soon be made available in an entirely online format with the NSF grant, according to a news release.

For ACRES, five to 10 teachers convene online with a live coach and discuss skills as they learn them. For example, coaches will emphasize the use of purposeful questions that aim to stretch students’ thinking skills, as opposed to using “yes or no” questions. Participants start out by watching and analyzing videos of other trainees and then move on to videos of themselves in the classroom working with students — which, Allen commented in the video, “is where the real learning comes. They come together in these groups, and share their videos, and look at them together, and start to see their skills develop and those of others.”

Individuals are asked to videotape their own work with youth and small-group sessions with peers using Zoom, a cloud-based video conferencing and web conferencing service. Zoom offers high-quality wireless screen sharing; HD video and audio; native integration (no additional hardware required); and other features that work for ACRES.

A few of the afterschool programs that ACRES works with are:

• The University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension 4-H program;
• The United State Department of Education’s 21st Century Community Learning Center (21CCLC) formula grant programs; and
• The Maine Afterschool Network, a collaboration of individual and organization partners across the state that supports afterschool programming “that meets the physical, social-emotional and educational needs of the school-aged population,” its site stated.

“The focus is on coaching,” explained Sue Allen, Ph.D and ACRES project principal investigator, in the video. “Rather than a lot of professional development opportunities that are workshops in a particular content area, we’ve taken on trying to help afterschool providers learn important skills that would work in any program or STEM activity.”

The $1.85 million grant is part of NSF’s Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which:

• Seeks to apply evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments;
• Provide additional pathways to expand access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences;
• Further cutting-edge research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and
• Foster deeper learning experiences.

An MMSA news release stated that about 14,000 students and 500 program providers will be impacted by the ACRES project.