Tools and Activities

• CMST Institute

  This is an institution designed to support the grant by coordinating meetings, facilitating project activities, and promoting the development of new courses and challenging curricula from grade 7 through the graduate level using the CMST pedagogy.

• CMST Summer Institute

  A month of intensive CMST training designed as part of teachers' professional development. Teachers receive academic credits, a stipend and technology tools which enable them to extend the CMST project activities into their classrooms and school districts.

• Scholarships and opportunities for teachers

• A scholarship opportunity for teachers and teacher candidates to pursue a BS or MS degree in computational science and technology.

• A project-based Challenge program to promote collaborative work among project teachers, their students at grades 7-12, and college faculty mentors.

• A mentoring program to offer professional development to participating teachers through coaches in school districts and the college.

• Pedagogically improved courses at the college and in the school districts (RCSD, BCSD).

• Reciprocal visits by faculty and teachers to classrooms at the college and school districts.

• Visits by students to partnering institutions to attend classes or receive mentoring.

• Interaction between college faculty and school teachers from different districts.

• Dissemination of results and lesson plans to other teachers in the country.

• Promotion and recognition of successful projects, teachers, students and faculty.

• Testing of new uses for instructional technology (hand-held devices and calculators).

• Development of evaluation instruments and surveys (Web-based and paper-based).

• Administering evaluation instruments to measure student learning and teacher quality.

• Gathering of benchmarks on student learning and teacher quality/quantity outcomes.

• Evaluation and analysis of targeted benchmarks by outside consultants.

• Participation in the MSP Learning Network to exchange results and expertise with other grant projects.