MESA Online University: A STEM Learning Collaborative
MESA helps disadvantaged students become scientists and engineers. To enable expansion of STEM educational services in a prolonged period of shrinking state financial support, MESA has created an online education portal called California MESA Online University. Intended to enable MESA staff to serve more students with fewer human resources, the portal makes available online what have heretofore been face-to-face services in teacher training, MESA staff training, student development, and parental support. In its field test stage now, the site will also make MESA-developed hands-on science and engineering projects and accompanying curricula widely available to teachers and students. The portal is built on Moodle, a free, widely-used class management tool.
About You
About You
First Name
David
Last Name
Johnson
About Your Organization
Organization Name
Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA)
Organization Website
Organization Phone
510-987-9893
Organization Address
300h Lakeside Drive, 7th Floor. Oakland, CA 94612-350
Organization Country
United States
Country where this project is creating social impact
United States
Is your organization a
Please select
How long has your organization been operating?
More than 5 years
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Innovation
Entry Form title
MESA Online University: A STEM Learning Collaborative
What change do you want to bring to the world?
MESA helps disadvantaged students become scientists and engineers. To enable expansion of STEM educational services in a prolonged period of shrinking state financial support, MESA has created an online education portal called California MESA Online University. Intended to enable MESA staff to serve more students with fewer human resources, the portal makes available online what have heretofore been face-to-face services in teacher training, MESA staff training, student development, and parental support. In its field test stage now, the site will also make MESA-developed hands-on science and engineering projects and accompanying curricula widely available to teachers and students. The portal is built on Moodle, a free, widely-used class management tool.
What are the primary activities of your project?
To excel in science, mathematics, or engineering, a student should work in a supportive social environment, have opportunities to develop personal qualities such as leadership and the ability to work in teams, and should engage regularly in multi-sensory, hands-on, project-based learning. All three programmatic elements must be present to effect great change for disadvantaged students. MESA has offered this mix successfully since 1970. MESA alumni hold positions at all levels of high technology industry, in research laboratories, in government, in universities, and in pre-college classrooms. Through the portal project, MESA seeks to extend the transformational power of this “MESA Model” to more students and to maintain services to students already being served even in the face of funding reductions prompted by the state's budget crisis. MESA serves students from K-16. It effects change by changing teachers' teaching methods, changing student self-concept, motivation, knowledge level, and work habits, and by assisting parents to be effective supporters of their children's learning. The modules being incorporated into the portal make it possible to deliver elements of the MESA Model that have been delivered in a face-to-face manner . The new capability will allow many fewer trainers to teach the MESA Model to teachers and parents. And it will allow many fewer administrators to monitor quality of implementation. The effect of the portal is to enable expansion of MESA services even as funding continues to be reduced. Approximately 200 words left (1600 characters).
What is innovative about your initiative? How is it a new contribution to the field?
80% of new entries to the workforce over the next 40 years will be from educationally disadvantaged groups. The college attendance and college completion rates for members of these groups is less than 30%. MESA addresses the social issue of building a skilled workforce. Two aspects of MESA's approach are different. First, MESA is comprehensive working with students from K-16. Second, MESA's program consciously integrates environmental, personal, and academic development. Other organizations working on the same issue include AVID, Project Lead the Way, Gear Up, PIQE, and Puente. AVID and Project Lead the Way are academic programs aimed at high schoolers. Gear Up is a college preparatory program at the high school level. PIQE is a parental training program aimed at middle school parents. Puente is an academic program serving higher schoolers and community college students. None of these programs has the infrastructure to serve students at all academic levels or to serve a single student across several academic levels. The impact of their intervention must be so effective at the point of intervention that the effect carries through the remainder of a student's education. MESA continues service across academic levels. Each of the other programs emphasizes one aspect of the essential triumvirate of environment, personal, and academic development. MESA's success lies in its continuous intervention across all three domains: not just conducive environment, not just personal growth, not just motivating academics, but all three simultaneously and over time.
What stage is your project in?
Operating for less than a year
Tell us about the community that you engage? eg. economic conditions, political structures, norms and values, demographic trends, history, and experience with engagement efforts.
MESA serves disadvantaged students from grades K-16. A student's disadvantage may have one or more sources: membership in a group that has historically been underserved educationally (e.g., Hispanics, African Americans, Native Americans, girls wishing to become engineers), being from a low-income family, having no prior family member who has attended college, being an English language learner, or attending a chronically under-performing school. Sixty percent of MESA students are Hispanic, 10% African American, 1% Native American, 17% Asian American/Pacific Islander, and 12% non-Hispanic white. In 2010, MESA served over 22,000 students in California and over 50,000 nationwide. It is expected that the proportion of U.S. students with the characteristics of MESA students will continue to grow and that eight in ten of those entering the workforce between now and 2050 will be from groups served by MESA. MESA has served these communities for 41 years. It owes its success to several factors: MESA's ability to adjust its program to be responsive to local conditions, reliance on MESA personnel who are members of the groups they serve, remaining abreast of research and incorporating advances in understanding into the MESA program, gaining the support of parents, and working in many communities for enough decades to have become part of the community. The trust and respect built up from being part of a community greatly facilitates MESA's ability to deliver its program. Finally, MESA's hundreds of thousands of alumni support the program in their communities.Approximately 200 words left (1600 characters).
Share the story of the founder and what inspired the founder to start this project
In the late 1960s, universities started programs to increase the number of minority students admitted. UC Berkeley initiated such a program. Two faculty members, Bill Sommerville and Beth O'Neil, noticed almost none of the new admissions declared majors in the sciences, engineering, or mathematics. They studied why, finding the students lacked the pre-college academic background for such majors. In the same time period, Marcus Foster, the first black superintendent of nearby Oakland Unified School District was assassinated, leading to a memorial service that turned into a riot at Oakland Technical High School. The unrest resulted in the formerly integrated school becoming all African American and losing the support of white community officials. Two teachers at the school, one white, Mary Perry Smith, and one black, Bill Sommerton, sought a way to maintain high student performance. The two Berkeley faculty members offered to partner with the two Oakland Tech teachers to create a research-based intervention program that they hoped would produce graduates with sufficient science and mathematics background to major in a science, mathematics, or engineering at Berkeley. They were very successful, attracting the notice of William Randolph Hearst, Jr., and David Packard who personally underwrote expansion of the program to other California schools. Success continued eventually resulting in the state of California incorporating MESA into the state budget, a boon to further expansion until the state budget crisis.
Social Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
Please describe how your project has been successful and how that success is measured
Successful transition from one level of education to the next has been MESA's most important success measure. Seventy-eight percent of MESA students enroll in college immediately after high school graduation. Delayed enrollment is a risk factor for failure to complete college. This rate is about twice the immediate enrollment rate for the general population of high school graduates. Over the past eleven years, the MESA transfer rate from two-year to four-year colleges in mathematics-based majors has been between 96% and 100% (as it was in 2010). The general community-college to four-year college transfer rate is less than 15%. At the four-year institution level, the graduation rate for MESA students is about 90% versus 60% for the general college population. These production measures will continue to be the significant measures of MESA success. The portal project will require some additional measures to gauge its impact on increasing the number of MESA students and on aiding their success. Number of unique and number of repeat visits to the portal will measure usage. Number of students served per center before the portal versus after will be a measure of the portal's ability to increase participation in MESA. Number of new MESA programs at each educational level will be a measure of portal influence on program growth. Focus groups of users will be employed to determine acceptance of the portal as a tool and to understand how to evolve the portal so it will be most effective. The previously described output measures will remain in place.Approximately 200 words left (1600 characters).
How many people have been impacted by your project?
101-1,000
How many people could be impacted by your project in the next three years?
More than 10,000
How will your project evolve over the next three years?
Initial development and limited testing began at California State University, Fresno three years ago. Over the next year, the portal will be tested at 6 existing MESA centers. The directors of these centers, along with selected MESA Statewide Office staff, will form a steering committee that will aid the developers with further development based on their usage experiences. Minor adjustments will be made throughout the test year and major adjustments will be made at the conclusion of the test year. Portal access will then be extended to all MESA centers, MESA students, and parents in year two. The steering committee will receive user feedback and recommend adjustments to the developers. In year three, the portal will become accessible to educators, students and parents more generally.
Sustainability
What barriers might hinder the success of your project and how do you plan to overcome them?
We will address three challenges: technical expertise, funding, and viable vision. The portal developers are faculty members, MESA directors and computer science students with expertise in website development and educational interventions for disadvantaged students. Lacking is expertise in packaging content usefully and attractively so as to stimulate widespread use. Partners who, in the past, have given financial contributions to MESA including IBM, AT&T, Oracle, Google, Synopsys, and Microsoft are being asked to lend presentation and marketing expertise to the project because each has experience in developing and marketing online educational resources. The greatest need for non-state funding is in the first three years. State officials estimate the budget crisis will go on for three more years. If the estimate is accurate, an attempt will be made to write portal maintenance cost into MESA's state budget in 2015. Continuing development funds are being sought through proposals to federal agencies, through foundation grant requests, and through requests for corporate donations. A general vision of extending MESA's reach in difficult economic times launched the portal. Now a more refined vision is needed that includes a vision for what to include for each service sector the portal will reach, how to continually refine offerings, and how to promote usage within MESA and more generally by teachers everywhere to help improve U.S. science, mathematics, and engineering education. We will depend on area experts and feedback from users to refine the initial vision.Approximately 200 words left (1600 characters)
Tell us about your partnerships
MESA is a partnership. It also partners with other stakeholders, and seeks partners it has not yet secured. MESA consists of centers. Each center has student "clients." MESA Schools Program centers serve pre-college students. MESA Community College Program centers serve community college students. MESA Engineering Program centers serve students at four-year institutions. MESA functions in nine other states besides California. The programs in all the states are partnered in a loose federation called MESA USA whose president is the executive director of California MESA. The federation and the partner centers in California provide the infrastructure for accomplishing widespread use of the portal. MESA's ongoing partners are the pre-college districts and schools, the community colleges, and the universities in which MESA has programs. Most of these partners supply program funds and space. California State University, Fresno where the portal was developed, is a good example of the fruits of the MESA-academic institution partnerships. Finally, we are looking to corporations that have supported MESA financially and who have expertise in developing and marketing web products, particularly educational products, to now partner with MESA on the portal project. MESA is working to form partnerships with Google, Microsoft, IBM, Synopsys, and Oracle in order to gain technical assistance and links to relevant content. The most likely initial partner is Oracle with which MESA is already partnered in promoting use of ThinkQuest, Oracle's online education tool. Approximately 200 words left (1600 characters)
Current annual budget of project, in US dollars
More than $1 million
Explain your selections
The MESA program overall is supported by individuals, foundations, businesses, regional government, national government, and customers. The portal project is supported by regional government, businesses, and customers. Base funding comes from the MESA budget, which, in turn, reaches MESA through an annual allocation from the State of California, the regional government portion of project support. MESA funds were allocated to the MESA center at California State University, Fresno to do the initial work on this project. The MESA director and university computer science students built the pilot system. The MESA program tested it for three years in schools in the Fresno-area school districts it serves. The testing brought the project to its current state of development. Each institution served by MESA uses a portion of its own funds to help underwrite the cost of the program. In the case of Fresno, the university gives office space, equipment, and partially supports the salary of the director of the MESA Engineering Program. This is the portion of support that we describe as support from customers. The third funding source for the project is businesses. Currently, the main support comes from Oracle. MESA is working with Oracle to make greater use of one of Oracle's internet-based learning products called ThinkQuest. It is intended that the work underway using ThinkQuest in schools will be transferred to the portal and made widely available as an essential component of the MESA program.
How do you plan to strengthen your project in the next three years?
The proposed project is being carried out in phases. Phase one was completed with testing in the Fresno area. Phase two extends testing to MESA centers at six locations in the state. About 200 students were affected in phase one. About 2,000 will be affected in phase two. A steering committee comprised of directors at the six test centers and selected Statewide Office staff will monitor user experiences in the second phase. That phase is to last one year. The steering committee will use surveys, face-to-face discussions with users, and focus groups to assess the portal and usage of it. They will then determine changes needed in the system and work with staff at Fresno State University to implement the changes. By year two, the third phase will begin. In this phase, the portal will be opened to all MESA sites. At this point, it will affect about 14,000 pre-college and about 8,000 college students. The steering committee will continue to monitor the portal and its use and will go through the same assessment program as was used in phase two. At the conclusion of the assessment, the system will be adjusted. It will begin phase three during the third year. At this point, the portal will become available to teachers, students, and parents generally. The steering committee will recruit non-MESA teachers, students, and parents at several sites in the state to commit to using the portal and to offer feedback in the course of the third year. At the conclusion of the third year, the system will again be revised in light of what both MESA and non-MESA users tell us.
Partnerships and Accountability
Please tell us more about how your partnership was formed and how it functions. What specific role does each partner play? What unique resources does each partner bring to the initiative?
The genesis of the MESA partnership was recounted earlier. MESA is a partnership among five entities: MESA itself, school districts, community colleges, baccalaureate granting institutions, and a variety of companies and public utilities in California. MESA delivers its program to students through the partner educational institutions. Its MESA Schools Program is delivered in 112 school districts. Its MESA Community College Program is delivered in 33 community colleges, and its MESA Engineering Program is delivered in 21 baccalaureate granting institutions in California. The MESA Statewide Office contributes management and about $5 million annually to the partnership. The educational institutions provide in-kind support including office space, classroom space, hands-on materials, partial pay for staff and administrators, and, on occasion, transportation for student field trips. Companies in California including longtime partners such as AT&T, PG&E, the California Utilities Diversity Council, Oracle, and Chevron contribute to the partnership in three ways. First, they provide monetary support. Second, they provide volunteer time from their employees for MESA events such as the annual Student Leadership Conference and MESA Days. Third, they provide expertise. They serve on MESA’s Board, provide technical assistance on projects such as the portal project, and assist in securing funds from other corporations. In the 2009-2010 academic year, the partnership served a total of 21,207 students—15,259 pre-college, 3,694 community college, and 2,254 university students.
How are you building in accountability for students' successful STEM learning outcomes? Please provide a summary and examples.
Accountability for STEM learning outcomes is established through an annual contract between the MESA Statewide Office and MESA centers. Annually, center directors submit proposals outlining intended activities and anticipated outcomes for the academic year. Level of funding can depend on proposal quality particularly as the state deals with continuing budget deficits. The Statewide Office defines deliverables for centers that include grade point average goals, course completion goals for students, student contact hour expectations, graduation targets, transfer targets for community college centers, college enrollment rates for high school students, completion of courses required for eligibility to apply to California State University or the University of California, and student participation rates in leadership building activities and in annual MESA Days. Annually, each center’s efficacy is measured by comparing goals expressed in the annual proposal to actual outcomes. Annually, center directors participate in three professional development activities sponsored by the Statewide Office. MESA instructors participate in MESA’s Academy for Science and Mathematics Educators (MASME) where they are apprised of the latest methods in hands-on science and mathematics education. A new effort is underway to organize the pre-college, community college, and university programs in distinct economic regions into alliances whose members function in tandem. The aim is to increase the number of students served and the frequency of successful academic and career outcomes for students.
Needs
Investment, Human Resources/Talent.
Please use this space to elaborate on your selection above and/or to add needs that may not be listed.
Investment: To carry the portal project to full fruition, investment beyond that MESA can provide through its general operating fund must be found.
Human Resources/Talent: The portal is an undertaking with substantial technological challenges and significant pedagogical opportunities. To maximize the utility of the portal, we need expertise in effective use of cloud computing and in effective online presentation of learning materials including video recording/streaming.
Collaboration/Networking: MESA has a large repertoire of hands-on STEM learning materials and will make these available through the portal. Others have materials that should be in the hands of teachers, parents, and students, and we invite collaborators to contribute to making the portal a useful tool.
Offers
Human Resources/Talent, Collaboration/Networking, Innovation/Ideas.
Please use this space to elaborate on your selection above and/or to add offers that may not be listed.
Human Resources/Talent: MESA directors and teachers are found throughout California. All of them are dedicated to educating students well in STEM. And they are experienced in hands-on methods of teaching science, mathematics, and engineering. They are ready to help other teachers in the effort to improve teaching and learning.
Collaboration/Networking: MESA directors and teachers regularly work with other organizations and with other instructors and education administrators. They are interested in collaborating and networking to improve STEM teaching as well as to do their work in new ways.
Innovation/Ideas: MESA works to change with the times. It is always seeking to innovate. MESA is ready to share its innovative ideas with others and to receive innovative ideas from others.
 | 42 weeks agoDavid Johnson updated this Competition Entry. |
| 42 weeks agoDavid Johnson submitted this idea. |
