Announcing the launch of the 2020-2021 ITEST Community Meetups! 

COVID-19 is changing many aspects of our life, including how we do our work. While “social distancing” has become the new normal, maintaining connections with our colleagues and stakeholders has become increasingly important. As the resource center for the ITEST program, we would like to provide an open space for currently funded projects to come together as a community.

COVID-19 is changing many aspects of our life, including how we do our work. While “social distancing” has become the new normal, maintaining connections with our colleagues and stakeholders has become increasingly important. As the resource center for the ITEST program, we would like to provide an open space for currently funded projects to come together as a community and discuss: 

COVID-19 is changing many aspects of our life, including how we do our work. While “social distancing” has become the new normal, maintaining connections with our colleagues and stakeholders has become increasingly important. As the resource center for the ITEST program, we would like to provide an open space for currently funded projects to come together as a community and discuss: 

COVID-19 is changing many aspects of our life, including how we do our work. While “social distancing” has become the new normal, maintaining connections with our colleagues and stakeholders has become increasingly important. As the resource center for the ITEST program, we would like to provide an open space for currently funded projects to come together as a community and discuss: 

During this informal online gathering, members of ITEST project teams met with STELAR's survey coordinator, Brianna Roche, to learn tips for completion and how to avoid common pitfalls. 

Topics included:

Over the past year, STELAR staff have been meeting with ITEST community members to learn more about the work projects are engaged in, and uncover challenges that projects have faced. In our review of these discussions, we identified three topic areas where examples of best-practices would benefit the community; Engaging schools as research partners (held May 16), Sustaining your ITEST Project (held July 18), and Developing STEM career competencies from K-12.  

In the fall of 2018 STELAR staff held a series of ‘virtual meetups’ with  ITEST Community of Practice members to learn more about the work that projects have been engaged in and to uncover the challenges that projects have faced. The STELAR team reviewed the discussions for common themes, and identified three topic areas where examples of best-practices would benefit the community. These topics are:

Many ITEST projects conduct research within schools and have shared with STELAR that doing so is extremely challenging. During this Strategy Share Meetup we will discuss ITEST project strategies for creating and navigating successful research partnerships with schools by discussing the following themes:

Buy-in: How to share the research plan with school administrators, educators, and parents such that they are excited to participate and engaged in the process
Study design: How to inspire folks who are not engaged in the educative intervention to participate in the research as a comparison participant
Logistics of data collection: How to collect extant data from schools and new data from teachers or students