Project Title: Project EdTech

Project Lead's Name: Michelle L. Cosmah

Project Lead's Email: cosmahm@MiamiOH.edu

Project Lead's Phone: 513-529-2831

Project Lead's Division: EHS

Primary Department: EDT

Other Team Members and their emails:

• Brian Schultz: schultbd@MiamiOH.edu
• Sheri Leafgren: leafgrs@MiamiOH.edu

List Departments Benefiting or Affected by this proposal: Teacher Education-All programs

Estimated Number of Under-Graduate students affected per year (should be number who will actually use solution, not just who is it available to): 400

Estimated Number of Graduate students affected per year (should be number who will actually use solution, not just who is it available to): 50

Describe the problem you are attempting to solve and your approach for solving that problem:

This project supports the vision, specifically where the college serves as innovative leaders in the transformation of our students in a way that reflects our changing, global society. As technology continues to impact the way we live, learn, and work, our teacher preparation programs are constantly looking for innovative ideas to prepare our educators. As our enrollment continues to grow, instructional coaching decreases. In addition to large enrollment, course loads, and our university’s proximity to our partnership schools makes it increasingly more difficult for faculty to complete quality observations of preservice teachers instruction in the classroom.

Teacher Education faculty continue to seek alternative ways to provide quality and timely feedback to our teacher candidates. Unfortunately, most of this occurs during the student teaching semester, in the senior year. Swivl devices are a tool that can be used to easily record video of students for feedback, grading, and coaching toward a specific skill while the teacher candidate is off-site at a partner school. This pairs well with the GoReact software to allow faculty to provide early benchmarking to coach students and engage with them in a new way. Together, these two technology tools will help lower travel costs for site visits, allow multiple observers to provide feedback, and increase inter-rater reliability through faculty collaboration. Students will be able to change their practices sooner by reviewing the time-coded comments on the video.

The money from this fund would be used for four main purposes: faculty training, six Swivl devices, license for the software for 400 pre-service teachers, and evaluation support. As the project lead, I will take on the role of working with GoReact and Swivl to develop a training module specific to our college's needs.

As we continue to prepare pre-service teachers, our instructional methods need to be bring innovative technology tools to help transform the way we provide support to the field of education. The Teacher Education department has purchased three devices made by Swivl. Swivl provides video data capture to help achieve your organization, teacher, and student goals. In addition, our college (EHS) has funded a pilot trial for the observation software from GoReact.

How would you describe the innovation and/or the significance of your project: Teachers roles are constantly changing, therefore teacher preparation needs to continually move in a forward-thinking direction. While we continue to align course content to meet the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) requirements, most of the current coursework does not specifically outline how we meet the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards for teachers. If our curriculum does not address the standards for teachers, then we are likely not preparing our students to have the knowledge and pedagogical insights educators need to teach, work and learn in the digital age. Kolb (2017) provides insight into this by stating: Learning with technology doesn’t happen because a specific tool “revolutionizes” education. It happens when proven teaching strategies intersect with technology tools, and yet it’s not uncommon for teachers to use a tool because it’s “fun” or because the developer promises it will help students learn.” This project would allow us to meet the needs of preservice and practicing teachers to ensure they are implementing proven teaching strategies that prepare students for success in the digital age.

How will you assess the success of the project: An evaluation team will be assembled and tasked with determining the overall effectiveness of the observations. In addition, the GoReact software will provide data on specific observational outcomes.

Total Amount Requested: $28,300

Budget Details:

• $22,000 ($55/per student annual fee)
• $1,500 3-Day Professional Development Training for Faculty and Student Ambassadors ($500/all day training w/ lunch)
• $4,800 six Swivl devices ($800/each)

Is this a multi-year request: No

Please address how, if at all, this project impacts any of Miami's BCSAE, 2020, or divisional plans: This project helps meet the Boldly Creative Initiative by improving teacher educators to better instruct future students for careers that are not yet created. Schools are constantly changing as new policies and initiatives are developed. This proposal fulfills a need for our teacher education preparation program that we are struggling to currently meet. In order to remain a high-quality teaching program, we need to reimagine our current practices and how we are preparing future educators.