ATE Research Outreach project

The AERA session will provide an overview of targeted research themes as established by the participants in the current umbrella grant, application procedures, and a question-and-answer panel composed of both ATE program officers and selected ATE center and project directors. The webinars will include a 90-minute overview of the ATE program and a series of up to five 1-hour customized sessions focused on each of the recommended research themes. We expect to engage leading interdisciplinary educational researchers from pedagogy, andragogy, economics, sociology, and higher education to engage with ATE practitioners in developing ideas on how to generate research that directly informs practice in technician education. The prototype technical support system will focus on providing researchers with access to a broad set of research methodologies and dissemination strategies to document and apply ATE program research findings. It would be integrated into the NSF-supported Online Evaluation Resource Library (OERL) system, an established Web library of evaluation plans, reports, instruments, and professional development modules. Last year, the OERL website received more than 101,000 requests for its modules and 71,800 requests for its instruments.

Intellectual Merit. This work will establish a foundation for future research in the ATE program. It will aggregate and disseminate the foundational efforts of the researchers working on the umbrella grant during 2008-2010. It will establish a model for linking new researchers to the ATE program.

Broader Impacts. This outreach effort seeks to engage a greater number of educational researchers in contributing to applied research in the field of technician education. This effort also seeks to involve leading educational researchers in reflection on how to apply their insights to technician education. It will document the initial set of research themes and recommended research methodologies for broader use.