Frequently Asked Questions

Can you advise if this is open to American institutions only or if proposals from Canada universitites would be entertained?

Is this funding opportunity limited to institutions offering existing ESSEA courses, or can it be used to support other courses developed by other organizations?

Do we need to host the courses and communication tools on our site?

Beyond your website, where can we get a description of the program that has been developed to this point?

Can institutions propose who were funded under the original ESSEA?

For the purpose of clarification would you please respond to the following question: Do these courses have to be online?

How can I access the ESSEA course modules?

How do I submit a Notice of Intent?

What if the professor offering the course is not very knowledgeable about the subject being taught?

Do the courses take a lot of time if you teach online?

On page 4 of the RFP it states that "Institutions will have the option to offer up to two of their four ESSEA course offering as "short courses" that consist of less than the full 16-week ESSEA course (e.g., a 3, 6, or 9-week course for 1 credit-2 credits - picking 1, 2, or 3 modules to include in the short course)."

Bullet 2 on p. 4 of the RFP requires Partners to "Offer the ESSEA courses... at least four times between Summer 2007 and Fall 2009.' Does that mean offering four individual courses (i.e. approx. 12 semester hours), or offering the entire sequence four times (i.e. approx. 60 semester hours)?

What is the obligation of Partner institutions with respect to implementing the ESSEA modules? How much freedom can faculty have in designing their own program of instruction?

What are NSF's desired outcomes for the ESSEA program? We are considering several possible program configurations, each of which places a different amount of emphasis on the following three objectives: creating new courses; improving existing courses; and building/marketing a coherent program of courses that leads to state endorsement in earth/space science. Do NSF's goals for the ESSEA program prioritize on some of these objectives above others?

Do we need to host the courses and communication tools on our site? What are the technical requirements?

It's unclear to me how these courses are to be packaged and delivered. Can you tell me more about ESSEA course delivery systems and what the requirements are?

Are there any restrictions to us hosting content developed through an ESSEA grant by our faculty in our LMS (WebCT Vista)? Can we mirror the content in both places? If there is some content that must live on your servers, is it possible to develop some pass through authentication scheme so that students in UNM courses don't have to re-authenticate?

 

Question: Can you advise if this is open to American institutions only or if proposals from Canada universitites would be entertained?
Answer: Because our funding source is a U.S. Federal Agency (National Science Foundation), funds can only be provided to support U.S. institutions. Proposals would be considered that include collaborations between U.S. and foreign institutions, but the participation of the non-U.S. Institution would be on a no exchange of funds basis. As stated on page 10 of the rfp:

VI. Eligibility

All categories of U.S. organizations are eligible to submit proposals, including educational, non-profit, and for-profit institutions. Special consideration will be accorded those proposals from institutions that serve minority, underrepresented, and/or disadvantaged populations.

Collaborations are encouraged. Access to unique equipment, facilities, and/or geographical locations, and the opportunity to collaborate with outstanding foreign researchers and educators may provide substantial benefits to the proposed activity. However, note that U.S. funds cannot be used to support participation of foreign partners or participants.

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Question: Is this funding opportunity limited to institutions offering existing ESSEA courses, or can it be used to support other courses developed by other organizations?
Answer: Funding is limited to supporting institutions offering the ESSEA courses.

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Question: Do we need to host the courses and communication tools on our site?
Answer: Yes, participating institutions offering the courses online will be required to run the courses from their server. Below are the technical requirements for offering the ESSEA courses:
     1. A secure web server (JavaScript enabled) using one of these operating systems:

• Windows NT
• Solaris with Apache Web server
• Linux with Apache Web server

     2. A dedicated Internet connection.
     3.Threaded discussion and/or asynchronous software, e.g., HyperNews (Unix), HyperMail (Unix), WebBoard (NT), WebCT, BlackBoard.
     4.Space requirements:

• ESSEA Middle School Course (3MB)
• ESSEA High School Course (3MB)
• Threaded discussion and/or asynchronous software, allow for 20MB once installed to store messages

     5. A word processing package.

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Question: Beyond your website, where can we get a description of the program that has been developed to this point?
Answer: A paper on ESSEA was recently published in the Journal of Geoscience Education and can be downloaded by clicking here (3.5 MB PDF file).

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Question: Can institutions propose who were funded under the original ESSEA?
Answer: Yes, we are accepting proposals from institutions funded under the original ESSEA for partnership status. Please note on pages 5-6, ESSEA teams that were funded from 2000-2005 have to commit to doing at least 2 of the additional activities noted. These are:

• Develop and contribute at least two new Earth system science modules annually that can be used as part of the ESSEA courses. IGES will provide a template for the modules, which will be modeled after the three-week cycles in the current courses (e.g., a problem-based learning - PBL - module on an Earth system science topic not currently included in the ESSEA courses). IGES plans to review and publish new modules on the ESSEA web site so that they are available to all ESSEA participants (e.g., faculty will be able to pick and replace modules in the current courses with these new modules). Proposers should identify topics and briefly describe the new modules they plan to contribute.
• Serve as a mentor to a new ESSEA institution. Proposers are encouraged (but not required) to recruit institutions to apply for ESSEA Partnership that they propose to mentor, and can identify that institution in their proposal. Mentoring of minority-serving institutions is strongly encouraged. Proposers should elaborate on what the nature of the mentorship could be - what are the resources and/or areas of strengths that they could share?
• Serve as instructors/facilitators at the summer ESSEA conference. This could include providing training and instruction to new faculty in how to run the courses, best practices in implementing an inquiry-based education environment for teacher education and professional development, a current topic in Earth system science research, or other related geoscience or education topic.
• Special consideration will be given to teams planning to conduct research studies, particularly controlled randomized trials, to show the impact of ESSEA on teacher education/professional development or student learning. For example, a study might examine one of the following:
     1) Change in evidential reasoning between students in ESSEA coursesversus students in other Earth science courses versus students in anon-Earth science course.
     2) Change in content knowledge in students randomly assigned to ESSEA and non-ESSEA instructional groups.
     3) ESSEA course graduates' use of ESSEA materials with middle-high school students.
     4) Change in confidence of in-service teachers as a result of the community learning environment and/or immersion in the pedagogy.

• Submit at least one paper on their ESSEA research results and/or experience for publication to a professional journal.

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Question: For the purpose of clarification would you please respond to the following question: Do these courses have to be online
The following text taken from the Program Announcement is somewhat confusing "The ESSEA online or face-to-face courses are collaborative, inquiry-based electronic environment..." Please would you expand on the face-to-face part of this.
Answer: There are several issues here that could use some clarification:
1. The courses are housed on a server and are accessed by users using their browser. All of the evaluation instruments feed to a digital database, requiring computer access.
2. The courses use a knowledge-building community in which groups of participants work together to address a science question. This community is online in a threaded
     discussion space which also serves as a record of thediscussions and the Earth Systems model the participants create.
3. Another question might be: do the courses have to be conducted in a "distance learning" mode where the instructor never sees the participants? This reveals a flexibility in the
     courses because the instructor can:
     a. conduct all classes online, never seeing the participants face to face.
     b. meet regularly for discussions and perhaps to have "just in time" lectures, yet still have participants put their work in digital format.
     c. a combination in which participants meet with the instructor a few times during the course (perhaps at the beginning, middle and end) and then conduct the rest of the
     course online.

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Question: How can I access the ESSEA course modules?
Answer: The ESSEA course modules can be accessed from our website, essea.strategies.org, by following the link for ESSEA Courses. All the modules can be accessed from this page: essea.strategies.org/courses/

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Question: How do I submit a Notice of Intent?
Answer: Following are the instructions for the Notice of Intent follow (from Page 17 of the rfp):
Notice of Intent to Propose can be made by sending an email with the subject "Notice of Intent to Propose" to: essea@strategies.org and including the following information:

• PI and Co-I names and addresses, (including Zip + 4);
• Title of proposal;
• Telephone number;
• Fax number;
• Email address; and
• A brief summary of what you plan to propose (Please limit this summary to no more than 300 words).

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Question: What if the professor offering the course is not very knowledgeable about the subject being taught?
Answer: The courses are set up to be a knowledge-building community or student-centered environment. Instead of readings and lectures, the participants work together to solve a problem or get to the root of an Earth system anomaly. Even the least knowledgeable may make major leaps in ESS content knowledge in these courses.

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Question: Do the courses take a lot of time if you teach online?
Answer: Yes, the courses take time. You need to stay abreast of what is taking place and visit the site at least once daily, if not more often. Often all it takes is to just check to see if someone has left a question needing to be addressed by the instructor.

There are many web sites devoted to online teaching, for example: http://itdl.org/Journal/Oct_04/article04.htm.

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Question: On page 4 of the RFP it states that "Institutions will have the option to offer up to two of their four ESSEA course offering as "short courses" that consist of less than the full 16-week ESSEA course (e.g., a 3, 6, or 9-week course for 1 credit-2 credits - picking 1, 2, or 3 modules to include in the short course)."
Answer: If your school is on the quarter system, then it is acceptable that your offerings of the ESSEA courses will need to fit within that schedule (e.g., 10-12 weeks rather than the full 16-weeks). Institutions from the original ESSEA have structured the courses to fit within a quarter schedule; we can work with you in structuring the courses for a quarter schedule.

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Question: Bullet 2 on p. 4 of the RFP requires Partners to "Offer the ESSEA courses... at least four times between Summer 2007 and Fall 2009.' Does that mean offering four individual courses (i.e. approx. 12 semester hours), or offering the entire sequence four times (i.e. approx. 60 semester hours)?
Answer: This does mean offering four individual courses (and not the entire sequence four times). However, note that the next bullet on page 4 states that "Institutions will have the option to offer up to two of their four ESSEA course offerings as "short courses" that consist of less than the full 16-week ESSEA course (e.g., a 3, 6, or 9-week course for 1 credit-2 credits - picking 1, 2, or 3 modules to include in the short course)." So there is some flexibility, for example, if you wanted to pick individual modules to use as part of other courses or programs.

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Question: What is the obligation of Partner institutions with respect to implementing the ESSEA modules? How much freedom can faculty have in designing their own program of instruction?
Answer: Faculty can select which ESSEA modules they would like to use in their courses, make minor adjustments/adaptations for their unique situation, or create new modules using the instructional design of the existing modules. For example, plans are to have an online template (modeled after the existing ESSEA modules) for creating new Earth system science modules, which we would peer review and make available to all ESSEA institutions.

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Question: What are NSF's desired outcomes for the ESSEA program? We are considering several possible program configurations, each of which places a different amount of emphasis on the following three objectives: creating new courses; improving existing courses; and building/marketing a coherent program of courses that leads to state endorsement in earth/space science. Do NSF's goals for the ESSEA program prioritize on some of these objectives above others?
Answer: Of the three items you list, using the courses/modules as part of a program of courses that leads to state endorsement in Earth/space science would be of greatest interest. We would expect that the participating institutions' experiences in using the courses/modules would lead to improvements and/or minor adaptations to their unique situations; however, we're not seeking proposals to revise the courses. The emphasis of NSF's GEO-Teach Program (which ESSEA is funded under) is to provide access to existing high-quality curricular materials - not development of new resources. Therefore, we are not seeking to fund institutions to develop new courses.

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Question: Do we need to host the courses and communication tools on our site? What are the technical requirements?
Answer: Yes, participating institutions offering the courses online will be required to run the courses from their server. However, please note that the ESSEA courses consist of content that will sit on IGES' server and participating universities will link to from their university website/threaded discussion (e.g. WebCT). Please see the answer to the next question for more information. The technical requirements are fairly simple:

--A dedicated Internet connection.

--Threaded discussion and/or asynchronous software, e.g., HyperNews (Unix), HyperMail (Unix), WebBoard (NT), WebCT, BlackBoard (allow for 20MB once installed to store messages).

--Links to the ESSEA course content can be embedded in your course software.

Please note that these requirements are less than what was originally published in the rfp. We have been designing the new course interface in parallel with the release of the rfp - knowing that the technical requirements for participating institutions would not be more than what was required under the original ESSEA.

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Question: It's unclear to me how these courses are to be packaged and delivered. Can you tell me more about ESSEA course delivery systems and what the requirements are?
Answer: The ESSEA courses consist of content that will sit on IGES' server and participating universities will link to from their university website/threaded discussion (e.g. WebCT). Faculty will have the ability to create courses by selecting the ESSEA modules they want to use in their course offerings.
If you go to http://essea.strategies.org/courses/ you can link to examples of the current 16-week courses and see the content that will sit on IGES' server (important note: the courses are being updated and expanded, but this will give you a sense of the basic type of information that you will be linking to). A "module" is currently a three-week block - e.g., in the current middle school course, if you go to the "Course Outline" page (http://www.strategies.org/docs/ESSEA_29OCT/5-8/coutline/weekbyweek.html) you will see the following modules:

Brazilian Deforestation - Weeks 4-6
Mt. Pinatubo Eruption - Weeks 7-9
Ice Sheets - Weeks 10-12
Hurricane Dennis - Weeks 13-15

Faculty will be able to select which ESSEA modules they would like to use in their courses, make minor adjustments/adaptations for their unique situation (such as 2 or 4 week modules), or create new modules using the instructional design of the existing modules. For example, plans are to have an online template (modeled after the existing ESSEA modules) for creating new Earth system science modules. IGES will peer review the new modules and make the new modules available to all ESSEA institutions.

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Question: Are there any restrictions to us hosting content developed through an ESSEA grant by our faculty in our LMS (WebCT Vista)? Can we mirror the content in both places?
Answer: Since our goal is to reach as many teachers as possible, making the courses available to other faculty/programs to use would make sense. In this case we recommend having a faculty member from this other program also attend the ESSEA conference to learn how to facilitate the courses. IGES will provide resources (separate from the $40K budget) for two representatives from each Partner institution to attend this conference, which will be held August 6-8, 2007. If you would like more than two faculty to attend this conference, you could also allocate funds in your ESSEA budget for this purpose.

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Question: : If there is some content that must live on your servers, is it possible to develop some pass through authentication scheme so that students in UNM courses don't have to re-authenticate?
Answer: Students will login to IGES' server since the course has a built in portfolio for their assignments that will be private. Professors will enter their students for each course, so they could use the same usernames and passwords. We are continuing to look at how this can be done as simply and user-friendly as possible.

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