Update on the NCSSM Strategic Plan Objectives, October 2015 The NCSSM Strategic Plan has four main objectives that are intended to be accomplished over the Strategic Plan’s fiveyear timeframe. The four objectives are ● Have each residential student develop and be engaged in a realworld learning experience. ● Annually increase the percentage of graduates who are actively engaged in STEMrelated fields. ● Have a collaborative partnership with a majority of school districts in each congressional district in North Carolina to provide highquality educational content and services to teachers and students. ● Engage 1,000,000 students and 100,000 teachers through NCSSM products or services over the next 5 years. Based on the discussions at the NCSSM Strategic Plan First Periodic Update meeting in October 2013, we have been refining our definitions and data collection strategies for measuring NCSSM’s progress on meeting the Strategic Plan objectives. Following is an update on NCSSM’s progress in meeting these objectives over the past three years. RealWorld Learning Experiences Over the past two years, we have asked faculty to report on the various realworld experiences they have provided to students either in their classes, during MiniTerm, or through extracurricular activities. Unfortunately, collecting this data has been difficult and has led to an incomplete look at the realworld opportunities available to our students. Since the main emphasis of this strategy during the first three years of the Strategic Plan has been on increasing research opportunities for students, we are tracking the number of students who participate in a research opportunity as one way to measure the number of students engaged in a realworld learning experience. As we continue to implement the strategy focused on realworld learning experiences, we will expand the types of experiences we are tracking. Since the start of the Strategic Plan in 201213, NCSSM has been working to offer more research opportunities for students during their two years at NCSSM. In tracking students participating in research for this analysis, we only included courses or programs in which students are specifically conducting research. Those courses and programs include ● ● ● ●
Research in Science courses (Biology, Chemistry, Computational Science, and Physics) Research in Engineering courses Mentorship Research in Mathematics courses (Research in Mathematics, Mathematical Modeling, and Advanced Mathematical Topics) 1
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Research in Humanities course Research Experience courses (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, and Humanities) Summer Research Program Special Study Options and Miniterm research courses
For this analysis, we did not include courses which focus on a curricular topic (like Ecology) and also include an experimental research lab or research project. The number of research opportunities offered (i.e. a duplicated count of students who participated) has grown from 324 in 201112 to 442 in 201415. The number of students participating in at least one opportunity (i.e an unduplicated count of students participating) has grown from 252 in 201112 to 345 to 201415. Number of Research Opportunities Offered and Number of Students Participating in at Least One Research Opportunity, 201112 to 201415
The number of NCSSM graduates who participated in at least one research opportunity over their two years at NCSSM has also increased from 182 for the Class of 2013 (52.6% of the graduating class) to 210 for the Class of 2015 (61.8% of the graduating class). 2
Number of NCSSM Graduates Who Participated in at Least One Research Opportunity During Their Two Years at NCSSM
Graduates in STEMRelated Fields Increasing the number of graduates in a STEMrelated field is a longterm objective; we will not see an impact of the implementation of the Strategic Plan on this area for four to six years. However, we have been working on identifying a baseline for the number of our graduates that pursue STEMrelated postsecondary degrees and are refining how we define a STEMrelated field. As we shared at the meeting in October 2013, we have started tracking the postsecondary outcomes of NCSSM’s graduates through the National Student Clearinghouse. We are able to track at which institutions our graduates enrolled, how many semesters they were enrolled, when they graduated, and what degree and major they received. With this data, we have created a baseline of how many NCSSM graduates from the classes of 2000 to 2009 have completed a STEMrelated bachelor’s degree within at least 6 years (the generally accepted period to measure postsecondary completion). We will also be able to use this database to track the impact of the implementation of the Strategic Plan moving forward.
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Since there is no widely accepted list of STEMrelated disciplines, we have been using the definitions that UNC General Administration uses in reporting on STEMrelated degree completion across the UNC system. Those categories, which are based mostly on a federal definition of STEMrelated degrees that is used for immigration purposes, include the following disciplines: ● Agriculture, Agricultural Operations, and Related Sciences ● Natural Resources and Conservation ● Computer and Information Sciences ● Engineering and Engineering Technologies ● Biological and Biomedical Sciences ● Mathematics and Statistics ● Physical Sciences As was discussed at the October Strategic Planning meeting, this list of STEMrelated disciplines is very conservative and is missing some key areas of interest to NCSSM, like the health professions and STEMrelated education degrees. In order to more clearly align with NCSSM’s vision of a STEM graduate, we have broadened that definition to include degrees in the health professions (such as medicine, nursing, dentistry, and veterinary medicine), education degrees in STEMrelated areas (such as mathematics education and science education), forensic science degrees, degrees in architecture, and anthropology degrees. Below is a comparison of the percentage of NCSSM graduates from the Classes of 2000 to 2009 who completed a STEMrelated degree under the UNC / federal definitions and the NCSSM expanded definition of STEMrelated degrees.
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Percentage of NCSSM Bachelor’s Degree Completers from the Classes of 2000 to 2009 Who Completed a STEMRelated Bachelor’s Degree
Source: National Student Clearinghouse with analysis by NCSSM Institutional Research Collaborative Partnerships with a Majority of School Districts The Strategic Planning team in October 2013 discussed two key areas with this metric that needed further clarification. One area was how to define a “collaborative partnership” with a school district. To help clarify this definition, we have created a partnership continuum that details the different levels of partnership that NCSSM has or could have with school districts around the state. Currently, we have identified three levels of partnerships, each with varying degrees of collaboration. The three levels of partnership are 1. Affiliated Partnership At this level, NCSSM is working with a school district to provide interactive videoconferencing enrichment sessions to students and / or districtspecific teacher professional development sessions. Both IVC enrichment sessions and teacher professional development sessions primarily involve a shortterm engagement with the district. 2. Cooperative Partnership At this level, NCSSM is collaborating with a school district around providing courses for credit to students through interactive 5
videoconferencing and / or dualenrolled NCSSM Online courses. This level of partnership involves a deeper engagement between NCSSM and the school district often involving scheduling students in courses, providing classroom spaces for courses, and adding completed courses to student transcripts. 3. Engaged Partnership At this level, NCSSM is working with a school district on providing joint programming for students. For instance, NCSSM and a school district could be jointly creating curriculum for a STEMfocused school or academy where students will be taking courses from NCSSM and from local school district faculty. This level could also involve partnerships where NCSSM and a school district are jointly seeking grant opportunities to expand educational opportunities for students. Typically, this level of partnership would involve a Memorandum of Understanding that would define the roles and responsibilities of NCSSM and the school district in the collaboration. Partnerships that fall into each level described above would be counted as “collaborative.” But disaggregating the depth of the collaboration can help us better identify areas for growth and opportunities to deepen our partnerships with school districts around the state. The second area that needed clarification was centered on using congressional districts as the organizational structure for counting school district partnerships. While NCSSM uses congressional districts (CDs) for student selection into the residential and Online programs, CDs are not a natural fit for organizing school district partnerships. School districts in North Carolina are primarily countybased, while congressional districts often cut across county lines. For instance, more than onethird (35 percent) of the state’s 115 school districts are split across 2 or more congressional districts. For this metric, we are currently using two additional organizational structures for counting school district partnerships. 1. Education Regions – The NC Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) divides the state into eight regions known as Regional Education Service Areas or RESAs. NCDPI often provides professional development and technical assistance at the regional level. In addition, several RESAs have independent associations that provide further professional development and technical assistance. Given the existing organizational infrastructure and the fact that the regions are contiguous with school district boundaries, the eight education regions seem like a natural structure in which to count school district partnerships.1 2. County Wealth Tiers – The NC Department of Commerce annually classifies the state’s counties into one of three wealth tiers based on the relative economic Based on a law passed by the North Carolina General Assembly, the NC Department of Public Instruction reorganized the state’s LEAs into new regions that took effect for the 201516 school year. For consistency in this analysis, the new regions were applied to LEAs for 201213, 201314, and 201415 school years. 1
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wellbeing of the county. The 40 most economically distressed counties are classified as Tier 1, the next 40 are classified as Tier 2, and the 20 least economically distressed counties are Tier 3. By organizing our outreach around the wealth tiers of the state’s counties, NCSSM could better target our efforts to more economically distressed regions of the state. Based on the partnership definitions above, the number of LEAs with which NCSSM has a 2 collaborative partnership has grown from 53 in 201213 to 81 in 201415. For the 201415 school year, 74 LEA partnerships were cooperative partnerships and 7 were engaged partnerships as defined above. Below are the percentages of partner school districts within each NC education region and in each county wealth tier for the 201213, 201314, and 201415 school years. Percentage of NCSSM Partner School Districts by NC Education Region, 201213 to 201415
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Until the 201314 school year, the NCSSM Online program was not keeping records of which NCSSM Online students were dualenrolled with their home high school. Because we do not have records of dualenrolled students for the 201213 school year, we used the senior NCSSM Online students who are dualenrolled during the 201314 school year as a proxy for which districts allowed students to dualenroll during the 201213 school year under the assumption that as juniors during the 201213 school year those students might have also been dualenrolled.
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Percentage of NCSSM Partner LEAs by Wealth Tier of the County Where the LEA is Located, 201213 to 2014153
Engage 1,000,000 Students and 100,000 Teachers For this metric, we are currently counting students and teachers who are engaged with NCSSM through direct products and services, which includes ● Residential, interactive videoconference (IVC), and Online courses; ● IVC and onsite enrichment sessions; ● Summer programs, like Step Up to STEM and Summer Ventures; ● Sponsored student conferences, like the Ethics and Leadership Conference; ● NCSSMled teacher professional development, like the Teaching Contemporary Mathematics Conference; ● And NCSSM facultyled conference presentations. Over the first three years of the Strategic Plan, NCSSM has conservatively served just over 35,000 students and just over 4,300 teachers through direct products and services. 3
The 2012 County Wealth Tier designations were used for this analysis to ensure consistency across years.
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Number of Students Served by NCSSM Through Direct Products and Services, 201112 to 201415
Number of Teachers Served by NCSSM Through Direct Products and Services, 201112 to 201415
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Not included in the counts above are views of NCSSM digital assets and curriculum materials that are posted online at sites like STEM@NCSSM and on YouTube. NCSSM’s expanding collection of digital assets, though, is an important part of our outreach efforts. Over the past two years, the videos on NCSSM’s YouTube channel have received more than 1,000,000 views per year. The difficulty with counting views of digital materials, though, is that it is nearly impossible to measure both who viewed the materials and the level of engagement that individual had with the materials. NCSSM’s Creative Services team analyzed data from the views of the digital assets on the school’s YouTube channel. The analysis found that about 30% of the views on NCSSM’s YouTube channel were for 10 videos, all of which were instructional videos (i.e. video of a cat dissection, chemistry demonstrations, etc.). Based on that analysis, we have attempted to quantify how many views of the digital assets might be educationrelated, and, therefore could have been by students or teachers. Below is a chart outlining an estimated number of views for educationrelated videos on NCSSM’s YouTube channel. Estimated Number of EducationRelated and Other Views to Videos on NCSSM’s YouTube Channel, 201213 to 201415
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