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2007 ANNUAL REPORT - cosmos - Bowling Green State University

2007 ANNUAL REPORT - cosmos - Bowling Green State University

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In order to determine progress towards these goals, the Center worked with MetriKs to align the Center’s<br />

activities with each goal, formulate specific evaluation/research questions for each goal, and identify<br />

multiple instruments and data sources that could be triangulated to enhance the validity of the findings.<br />

Example: Goal 1: Effective Professional Development<br />

Evaluation of the effectiveness of the NWO professional development was accomplished<br />

by thematically analyzing and summarizing data gathered from six different sources:<br />

1. Teacher Beliefs and Practices Instrument (TBI survey).<br />

2. Session evaluation data (e.g., written evaluations of the professional development sessions).<br />

3. Faculty interview data.<br />

4. Teacher participant interview data.<br />

5. Professional development session observation data (ratings using Horizons Research PD<br />

Observation Protocol) provided by external observers.<br />

6. Other statistics collected by the Center about different activities (e.g., course and program<br />

modification documents, PD attendance data, MAT credit hour completion data, and<br />

Symposium participant involvement data).<br />

Further details on the evaluation methods can be found in the evaluation report (see Appendix T).<br />

Highlights of Findings<br />

Self-Efficacy and Participant Beliefs about Classroom Practices<br />

NWO programs have facilitated a significant increase in participant self-efficacy and<br />

participant beliefs about research-based classroom practices. Survey<br />

instruments, session evaluations, and interviews revealed that<br />

participants experienced greater confidence their ability to be<br />

effective leaders of inquiry-based and student-centered learning.<br />

I’m definitely a more inquiry-based teacher. I feel that my<br />

questioning skills have increased greatly and I have become<br />

more of a facilitator and not so much a giver of knowledge.<br />

– NWO Inquiry Series Teacher Participant<br />

[The students] have to write their own lab procedure, they have<br />

to come up with it and of course it’s great because they all come<br />

up with a perfect solution and it doesn’t work, so then they have<br />

to go back and do the problem solving and it’s a double period, so<br />

they have enough time to problem solve this. So it’s fun to do this.<br />

– NWO Inquiry Series Teacher Participant<br />

2 0 0 7 N W O Ce n t e r o f E xcellence • A n n u a l R e p o r t 21

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