Project Dissemination

Lesson Plans:

Dissemination of lesson plans developed was primarily through: (1) TeachEngineering; (2) lesson plan workshops for non-RET STEM teachers; (3) the dedicated RET website at UTA; and (4) participating ISD curriculum database. All lesson plans were required to meet TeachEngineering formatting guidelines. After implementation, evaluation and revision, qualified plans were submitted for publication on the TeachEngineering website (http://teachengineering.org). Table 2 presents a list of developed lesson plans and in how many classrooms they were implemented.

Website:

The dedicated RET website at UTA (http://www.uta.edu/ce/nsf/ret/) was developed and being continually maintained to disseminate program information and products. Additional dissemination occured through conference presentations and journal publications. Faculty members attended the NSF Education Conference to present the project findings.

Presentation:

Experience with prior RET, REU and IRES projects at UTA has shown that having participants develop Power Point and poster presentations to showcase the shared experiences is an excellent way to prepare and encourage them to continue to disseminate beyond the summer program. RET teacher alumni provided professional development workshops for their schools/districts and gave presentations at conferences. The artifacts contributed to the data archive and show teacher participant’s ability to apply what they learn towards knowledge production and scholarly products, as shown in Fig. 1.

Publications:

Teachers were encouraged to present their lesson plans and research findings in conferences, and publish papers in journals, co-authoring with the RET team members. The RET faculty provided advice to the teachers on the process, and also a list of prospective conferences and journals. Table 3 presents a list of such publications.