Project Lead The Way - Innovation Portal Catalyzes Student Innovators and Transforms the Education Enterprise
In today’s high-tech world, creativity and knowledge of the design process can combine to allow innovation to come from anywhere or anyone. Through the development of an Innovation Portal (IP) PLTW has created a transformative contribution to the education enterprise. The IP is a hub for thousands of pre-college and undergraduate students to house design-based project portfolios and share their original ideas with a world-wide network of students, universities, businesses, and venture capitalists. The portfolios can be graded for college credit, college admissions, and scholarships. PLTW’s rigorous curricular programs, which emphasize problem-based learning and critical thinking, have dramatically changed the role formal education is playing in developing and promoting young innovators.
About You
About You
First Name
Debbie
Last Name
Hughes
About Your Organization
Organization Name
Project Lead The Way
Organization Website
Organization Phone
877-335-7589
Organization Address
21 Corporate Drive, Suite 105, Clifton Park, NY 12065
Organization Country
United States, NY
Country where this project is creating social impact
United States
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
How long has your organization been operating?
More than 5 years
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Innovation
Entry Form title
Project Lead The Way - Innovation Portal Catalyzes Student Innovators and Transforms the Education Enterprise
What change do you want to bring to the world?
In today’s high-tech world, creativity and knowledge of the design process can combine to allow innovation to come from anywhere or anyone. Through the development of an Innovation Portal (IP) PLTW has created a transformative contribution to the education enterprise. The IP is a hub for thousands of pre-college and undergraduate students to house design-based project portfolios and share their original ideas with a world-wide network of students, universities, businesses, and venture capitalists. The portfolios can be graded for college credit, college admissions, and scholarships. PLTW’s rigorous curricular programs, which emphasize problem-based learning and critical thinking, have dramatically changed the role formal education is playing in developing and promoting young innovators.
What are the primary activities of your project?
Thousands of high school and post-secondary students complete original engineering and scientific design work each year. Opportunities to seek recognition for their work beyond the classroom have historically been few and varied; the IP dramatically changes this landscape and opens new opportunities for young innovators and entrepreneurs.
PLTW made the investment in the Internet-based IP as a contribution to the broader community to showcase the power of student innovation to be used by all students producing original design work. For PLTW, the IP aligns with two key components; (1) PLTW’s two capstone classes, Engineering Design and Development (EDD) and Biomedical Innovation (BI) and (2) the Engineering Design Process Portfolio Scoring Rubric (EDPPSR), the development of which was led by the University of Maryland with numerous partners – the EDPPSR team. The PLTW courses ensure that thousands of students across the nation are provided a formal curriculum to learn about innovation and the application of the design process, including the product development lifecycle, intellectual property laws, venture capital incubators, and the entrepreneurial community. Students can showcase their work by uploading a project portfolio on the IP with the option of allowing a community of entrepreneurs and educators to review, rate, and provide feedback to improve it. The standardized EDPPSR is now in the process of ongoing validation and reliability testing utilizing portfolios submitted through the IP, and modeled, in part, after the AP® Studio Art - the College Board process for scoring studio art portfolios. This project is truly unique and provides a contribution to the education community that has the momentum to radically shift the entire innovation pipeline.
What is innovative about your initiative? How is it a new contribution to the field?
The IP represents a unique contribution to the STEM field. The innovation is not the IP in isolation, but the interconnectivity of the three elements: PLTW’s curriculum, the IP, built as a contribution to the broader community, and the EDPPSR team collaboration, led by the University of Maryland College Park. Together students are taught to become innovators, utilize a high-profile tool that showcases their work, and a scoring mechanism that embeds nationally recognized quality controls.
The design process is entrenched in innovation. It is an essential “big idea” that is taught and practiced in: classrooms, informal activities and competition, university courses, and industry, to create the functional products we see, use, and experience in our everyday lives. The ability to capture, evaluate, disseminate, and recognize all students’ innovations, from any arena, in a centralized location has never been done. Colleges and universities will be able to use the IP for college admittance, scholarships, and credit opportunities. Instead of basing a student’s acceptance only on test scores and transcripts, post-secondary institutions as well as future employers will have a direct window into the student’s work. Further, currently there is no global process in place that can offer support and feedback to the STEM education community around the design process.
The closest comparison to the IP that currently exists is the AP® Studio Art Portfolio submission and scoring process. The College Board has committed to review and comment on the EDPPSR effort to develop the rubric.
What stage is your project in?
Operating for 1‐5 years
Tell us about the community that you engage? eg. economic conditions, political structures, norms and values, demographic trends, history, and experience with engagement efforts.
The PLTW programs and teacher training process were designed to work for schools in every community. Whether it is an urban location or a rural area, the PLTW network works to resolve issues and remove barriers to enable schools to implement a PLTW program. Over 4000 schools in all 50 states and the District of Columbia are currently implementing at least one PLTW program. Within schools, the curriculum is gender neutral and designed to engage any student interested in hands-on, project-based learning.
The PLTW network includes state departments of education and workforce development, Affiliate Universities, local businesses and industry. By working directly with state and local entities along with the local school administration, PLTW seeks solutions to barriers that impede successful implementation. The PLTW network supports teachers and students involved with PLTW programs.
Each school that implements a PLTW program is expected to form a School Partnership Team consisting of community members and businesses who advise teachers and administrators, serve as mentors to the students, and act as judges or audiences for student projects and presentations. These community members may also arrange field trips or other enrichment activities for students.
This project builds upon the strength of PLTW’s network. The IP represents a broader community of informal programs such as FIRST Robotics, SEAPERCH®, and other programs that also foster innovation, as well as colleges and universities, and businesses and industries who are interested in connecting with student innovators. University of Maryland has taken the lead, but has included agencies and organizations such as the Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, College Board and faculty from two and four-year institutions in the creation and evaluation of EDPPSR.
Share the story of the founder and what inspired the founder to start this project
The groundwork for IP began with the efforts of Mark Schroll and Karen Wilken of the Kern Family Foundation to explore ways to promote, support, and organize the original technical design work being done in thousands of high schools around the country. Numerous interviews with K-12 and post-secondary faculty and administrators in the field indicated two missing interdependent primary components: 1) a process for students and teachers to build, store and connect their portfolio work directly to a wide audience 2) a nationally recognized and accepted portfolio rubric based on the design process. With this information Wilken contacted Dr. Leigh Abts at the University of Maryland who had been researching the potential of instituting standardized engineering portfolios to connect K-12 and post-secondary engineering education efforts. With input and initial financial support from the Kern Family Foundation, Dr. Abts brought together a team of field and assessment experts who have worked since March of 2010 to build and validate the EDPPSR. Schroll accepted a position with the PLTW organization to develop and implement the online repository hub that is tied directly to the work of the University of Maryland Group and will meet the objectives of offering all K-16 students a secure online environment where they can build, collaborate and directly connect their work to a wide variety of resources and opportunities.
Social Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
Please describe how your project has been successful and how that success is measured
The IP is being field tested with 150 students from eight states, and PLTW teachers attending Core Training this summer are testing the system. The IP will be available to selected schools this fall (2011). One measure of its success will be the number of portfolios submitted through the system. Given that 760 teachers are currently trained in EDD and 200 more were trained this summer, several hundred schools across the country could have students input their portfolios next year. Moving beyond the size of the IP, another measure of success will be the continuous feedback loop to students and teachers through the online community viewing and commenting on the portfolios. The IP system will track the volume of comments and ratings; that volume will be another measure of the system’s success. As a measure of student success, the portfolios will be scored using the EDPPSR rubric and the types of college incentives they receive, e.g. college credit, financial aid, scholarships, or preferred admission.
Thus far, the main success of the rubric has been a progression of research studies under IRB approved protocols, since 2005. As cited in a recent ASEE paper, University of Maryland College Park has held over 12 focus groups consisting of experts on assessment and representatives from high schools, colleges, universities, competitions, and educational associations, and conducted numerous expert interviews to validate and determine the reliability of the EDPPSR. The EDPPSR is in field trials and has been recommended for an award by the NSF PRIME program to fund a national study of its work. College Board has agreed to review the EDPPSR project. The intent is to study the potential for using the rubric to award Advanced Placement® credit in engineering design.
How many people have been impacted by your project?
1,001- 10,000
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?
Because there is no universal repository or rubric for design-based portfolios, the use of the IP and the EDPPSR may increase dramatically. The EDPPSR is expected to be research-validated, opening the opportunity for undergraduate students and organizers of competitions, including FIRST Robotics and SEAPERCH, to benefit from using the IP and EDPPSR. The College Board is evaluating the EDPPSR and the IP to determine their potential use for AP credit in engineering design. Because the EDPPSR represents the design process, which is not unique to engineering, it and the IP could provide opportunities across STEM fields for student innovators. In addition, the data that will come from both the IP and the EDPPSR will assist student outcomes and provide direct feedback to students and teachers.
Sustainability
What barriers might hinder the success of your project and how do you plan to overcome them?
The IP has to be intuitive, secure, user-friendly, and capable of organizing and tracking thousands of portfolios. In the development stage of the IP, PLTW is soliciting feedback from hundreds of students and teachers during the pilot phase of the project. Lack of quality feedback will hinder the project as it moves into future stages. Currently, PLTW is receiving relevant feedback daily from the pilot users. This needs to continue for PLTW to move the project out of beta testing.
The IP is open to all students regardless of whether they are taking PLTW courses. For the project to be a success, this needs to be communicated effectively to the broader STEM education field. With more students involved, the evaluation rubric is strengthened and organizations will view the IP has an ideal tool for such opportunities as scholarships and competitions. If the pool of student work is limited, the IP will be less desirable to partners. The IP is being developed with openness as a top priority and the project’s partners are ensuring this message is distributed to STEM educators across the country.
Tell us about your partnerships
The lead partner in the IP project is the University of Maryland (UMD), which is developing the evaluation rubric. PLTW partnered with Dr. Leigh Abts and his team of collaborators to develop this rubric and turn it into an assessment tool.
While PLTW is developing the vehicle to deliver this rubric through the IP, the EDPPSR team continues to develop a potentially national-accepted evaluation tool. The EDPPSR team is refining the rubric for public use and creating a tool for design education and assessment. The EDPPSR effort is an ongoing effort that began in 2005 with its initial research, focus groups with educators and STEM professionals that resulted in a report to the College Board and National Science Foundation.
In phase two, the EDPPSR collaborators will continue to work with teachers and university faculty to develop, review, critique and revise a draft of the rubric. In phase three, currently ongoing, the EDPPSR team is developing a strategy to validate and determine the reliability of the rubric.
The EDPPSR team has been recommended for a National Science Foundation grant to test the efficacy of rubric’s scoring system that could be applied to differentiate levels of performance of design-based projects. This team is seeking to determine the reliability and validity of the rubric across student work produced in diverse contexts and under different conditions.
Current annual budget of project, in US dollars
$100,000‐250,000
Explain your selections
The IP is fully supported and funded by PLTW. As stated, the IP will incorporate an evaluation rubric designed by the EDPPSR team led by Dr. Leigh Abts. Funding for the research and development of the rubric has been supported, in part, by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Kern Family Foundation.
PLTW has strong partnerships with a number of industry leaders and philanthropic organizations that believe in our mission and recognize the critical importance of engaging students in STEM through original design work and problem solving. Through their support, PLTW is able to connect these students with organizations that provide additional opportunities such as internships and competitions that further develop their STEM skills and help place them on a pathway to postsecondary studies and careers in STEM fields.
How do you plan to strengthen your project in the next three years?
When the IP is fully operational, PLTW estimates that nearly 1,000 teachers trained in Engineering Design and Development and Biomedical Innovations, the capstone courses for PLTW’s engineering and biomedical sciences programs respectively, will utilize the tool to evaluate and score student work. These capstone courses will also be structured to support the rubric. This means that thousands of high school seniors will be submitting portfolios through the IP, which creates a substantial audience for organizations that wish to connect their opportunities to the IP and helps to strengthen the rubric.
Over the next three years, University of Maryland and its partners will continue their study of the rubric. Postsecondary institutions such as Vanderbilt University, the US Naval Academy, the University of Virginia and Tennessee Tech have committed to utilize the IP and rubric with their students and K-12 outreach programs. For example, as recommended by NSF and if funded by NSF, about 30 high schools offer an engineering design course through Tennessee Tech, and all of the students in this course are expected to submit their work through the IP.
As the IP develops over the next three years, organizations that need to connect students to recognition programs will begin utilizing the tool. CareerMe.org, for example, may use the IP to match students with mentors and to fill internships provided through the organization. Competitions offered through SkillsUSA and the Technology Student Association (TSA) may also be available to students who submit their work through the IP.
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?
PLTW laid the groundwork for the IP as a tool to organize student design work and to link these students to opportunities such as scholarships, internships and competitions.
It was clear from the beginning that the project could only be successful if it was connected to a nationally-recognized and accepted portfolio rubric that was based on the design process. PLTW then partnered with Dr. Leigh Abts at University of Maryland who had been researching the potential of standardized engineering portfolios to connect K-12 and postsecondary education efforts.
PLTW’s main roles in the project are the functional development of the IP and data collection. Information is then provided to the EDPPSR team for further refinement of the rubric.
As the leading STEM education curriculum provider in the U.S., PLTW has a large pool of students that can submit their design portfolios through the IP. The capstone courses for both PLTW’s engineering and biomedical sciences programs will be aligned with the evaluation rubric and utilize the IP to submit class projects.
The EDPPSR team’s primary responsibility is the development of an evaluation rubric that is a nationally-recognized structure for evaluating and comparing portfolios.
When appointing Dr. Abts, University of Maryland recognized that Dr. Abts would bring its STEM-related initiatives to national attention and provide a STEM perspective to K-12 education. Dr. Abts’ unique and distinguished background in innovation, engineering and education make him an ideal leader in a project that aims to revolutionize the way student design work is evaluated and connected to the outside world.
How are you building in accountability for students' successful STEM learning outcomes? Please provide a summary and examples.
The structure of the IP’s evaluation rubric is the accountability for students’ successful STEM learning outcomes. The rubric is similar to an Advanced Placement (AP) exam with a 1-5 scoring scale, which will make it effective for AP or International Baccalaureate (IB) to utilize the tool.
Also through the IP, PLTW will be able to track how well students perform in competitions and scholarships and other opportunities offered through the platform. PLTW will receive this feedback and share it with the stakeholder community in an effort to inject successes and lessons learned back into the national conversation on STEM education.
Needs
Investment, Marketing/Media, Pro-bono help (legal, financial, etc.), Mentorship.
Please use this space to elaborate on your selection above and/or to add needs that may not be listed.
Investment - Financial investment in the IP and/or the evaluation rubric would help bring the platform online in the desired time frame.
M/M - The IP is a platform for all students engaged in STEM education. Getting the word out to the right audiences and creating an ongoing pipeline for reporting use of the IP and student successes as the project evolves will be essential.
Collaboration - Organizations that provide opportunities for students to showcase their design work are welcomed on the IP to offer these connections.
Pro Bono Help - Legal, financial and other business assistance for student innovations that have the potential to be taken to market would be beneficial.
Mentorships - Mentorships from STEM professionals provide students with real-world learning opportunities.
Offers
Research/Information, Collaboration/Networking, Innovation/Ideas.
Please use this space to elaborate on your selection above and/or to add offers that may not be listed.
R/I-The IP project is a resource for other initiatives. Organizations that seek a large number of students engaged in STEM education will find them at the IP. In the future, PLTW and its partners will share its data collection with other research organizations. Also, PLTW will provide results from the IP that can further research into STEM education and fuel conversations on the topic.
C/N-The IP will serve as a platform for collaboration and broad networking opportunities amongst students and multiple organizations.
I/I-By its very nature, the IP is about sharing innovation and ideas. Any student can create an account, upload their original design and share his/her portfolio with the world. Likewise, organizations that seek students to fill opportunities, will find them on the IP.
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| 42 weeks agoDebbie Hughes updated this Competition Entry. |
| 42 weeks agoDebbie Hughes updated this Competition Entry. |
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| 43 weeks agoDebbie Hughes submitted this idea. |
