It's been a whirlwind year for educators for sure!  We made some modifications in so many ways to accommodate our students and community.  This video highlights a few, but I'm curious to learn about changes you had in education this year; as a student, parent, or teacher.  I'm also wondering what your thoughts are on how education might see some permanent changes due to the pandemic.  I know we will be adopting some new projects and practices. Thanks for taking the time to watch our video! 

Thanks for sharing your ideas about how to pivot in the pandemic. As you may know, Lipscomb University just launched Noyce Scholars, and COVID delayed the recruitment of the first class by a year. I've shared your video with my colleague, the lead on Lipscomb's Noyce Scholars, Dr. Kara Krinks, so she may connect with you. https://www.lipscomb.edu/education/academic-pro...

Thank you for sharing your project! Community service is a "high impact teaching practice" (AAC&U) that is known to lead to students' developing a sense of belonging, and to increase self-efficacy, and persistence at the university. It is great that you generated novel ideas to continue this work during the pandemic for the community and students. Love the kits with videos the Scholars made. Did your Scholars make these as part of paid internships from the grant or were they volunteers? How did you supply the materials for the kits? Did the Scholars design inquiry lessons/learning modules/curricula to go with each kit or were they already developed? How did you manage/evaluate quality of the learning modules and kits? Were there any concerns with safety (since they appear to be for elementary age students, it appears everyday materials were used)? What methods have you or will you use to evaluate impacts of your work?

Hi Ann,

So many great questions!  I will do my best to answer them. :)

The scholars were not paid to create the videos; this work was part of their required 8 hours of service.  The kit materials were provided with outreach funding from the IDoTeach program (our STEM Teacher Preparation Program at Boise State) The lesson ideas were provided for the scholars but they worked to create the video script and video recording to go along with the activities.   If there were safety issues for a particular activity they were addressed in the video but these were pretty simple activities with easy to access simple materials. We do plan to do some research on the impacts the service projects are having on our scholars, but have not begun that process yet.  Methods we are considering are interviews and surveys. Thanks! 

I love the idea of virtual service. Will you continue that aspect of the program after everything goes back to normal to reach students who might not be able to access the more traditional in person science fairs and other activities? 

Excellent videos with the kits. Very useful.