NES Evaluation to Be Presented at Educational Research Conference
Wed Nov 14 2007
A paper detailing the NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future's evaluation of the NASA Explorer Schools (NES) program has been accepted for presentation at the 2008 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.
The paper, "Applying Blended Research Methods to School-based Intervention Evaluation," was selected from more than 12,000 proposals submitted. Dr. Laurie Ruberg, associate director of the Center for Educational Technologies®, home to the Classroom of the Future™, is the author.
The 2008 annual meeting will be held March 24-28 in New York City.
The Classroom of the Future was charged with evaluating the NASA Explorer Schools program since its inception in 2003. The evaluation of the first three cohorts of the program wrapped up earlier this fall with a final report.
Ruberg's paper will discuss the mixed method analysis of qualitative and quantitative data using a theory-based evaluation framework that the evaluation team applied to the NES project. The team's meta-analysis integrated survey data from all 149 NASA Explorer Schools from the program's first three years along with interpretive case study analysis of a cluster-based, randomly selected subset of 20 percent of the schools.
The evaluation concluded that NES met or exceeded guidelines for implementing the program and showed significant increases in use of effective teaching strategies, integration of educational technology, family involvement, and student interest and achievement in science and math. The analysis also provided recommendations for improving NES and replication efforts.
