2007 ANNUAL REPORT - cosmos - Bowling Green State University

tests attended PRAXIS II tutoring sessions, making it 100% attendance of those who could
benefit from the review attended the workshop. Finally, the average attendance data for seven
TeachOhio dinners was 89% ranging from 81% to 100%.
Channels through which they learned about TeachOhio included flyers in the mail, ads in the
paper, meetings, and personal referrals. The participants suggested the following measures that
can be taken for future recruitment:
� getting out info to all science teachers in a district, not just COSMOS teachers;
� addressing positives of teaching in the media so that people don’t shy away from the
profession;
� continue COSMOS’ focus on hands-on minds-on learning; Incorporate Soil and Water,
Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources, local business. “…bring science into people’s hands;”
and
� recruit within the high schools.
Ohio Junior Science and Humanities Symposium: 50 high school students participated in
this year’s OJSHS compared to approximately 100 student in the previous years. The OJSHS
does not directly recruit students into STEM disciplines. However, the experiences that the
OJSHS provides to these students make them more likely to pursue such careers. This is
evidenced by the comments that the OJSHS participants made on the evaluation forms. The
summary of these is presented in the next section.
Future Teacher Conference: no data were available for this event
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Goal 2 – Evaluation Question 2: How did these participants rate the effectiveness
of each activity?
TeachOhio: During the academic year, the participants in the TeachOhio Program attended the
following professional development events - Inquiry Series, NWO Symposium, PRAXIS II
tutoring sessions, and TeachOhio dinners. The numeric ratings of these sessions by the
TeachOhio participants were combined together with other groups’ ratings and reported earlier.
This section includes the summary of the qualitative responses that show that overall the
participants take the TeachOhio program very seriously as evidenced by their thoughtful
responses to the interview questions related to the quality of professional development
activities. The following were mentioned as the strengths of the NWO professional development
program:
- getting ideas for activities to use and ideas apply to students;
- getting lesson ideas, especially by first year teachers
- great relevance of the PD activities for first time teachers;
- learning about constructivist teaching strategies and 5E’s; one participant said she
actually applied these; several mentioned constructivism as the most helpful aspect of
the program;
- increasing content knowledge and confidence in what they can teach their kids and how
well they know what they are teaching;