Evaluation Study of Summer of Innovation Stand-Alone Program Model FY 2013: Outcomes Report

“This report, the third in a series of reports from the FY2013 evaluation, presents the evaluation’s findings related to student outcomes of interest to [Summer of Innovation (SoI)], addressing research questions six and seven. It begins with a brief overview of SoI, which draws on information gleaned from previous evaluations. The next section describes the evaluation design and methodology used to analyze both qualitative and quantitative data. The following section reports the findings based on student baseline surveys, student follow-up surveys, the Common Instrument Validation (CIV) dataset, parent surveys, camp registration, and camp observations. The report concludes with a discussion of the findings related to the specific research questions and recommendations for future SoI programming” (p.3).

“SoI is a multi-year project intended to engage the nation’s youth in NASA’s broad mission and to inspire them to pursue education in STEM leading to involvement in the country’s STEM workforce. Through partnerships with educators, STEM learning networks and a variety of organizations, SoI provides middle school students, including those who are traditionally underrepresented and underserved in STEM (i.e., females, minorities excluding Asians, and low-income students), with opportunities to engage in NASA-developed activities during the summer” (p.1).

(Abtractor: Author and Website Staff)

“Based on the findings of this report, SoI and other NASA out-of-school time STEM programming should consider the following recommendations when making future program improvements: • Continue to emphasize the importance of incorporating hands-on and problem solving activities in SoI, as students and teachers both reported that these were the most compelling aspects of SoI, and increase the proportion of camp time and professional development support available for these activities. • Attention to the types of activities engaged in during SoI could provide insight into why particular students are attracted to SoI and how programming could be structured to foster the greatest long-term interest in STEM. • Encourage camps to consider employing K-12 certified teachers and maintain educator-to-student ratios of 1:20 or higher as these staffing strategies appear related to more positive changes in student interest and engagement in science. • Students may have many experiences, both in and out of school, that affected their interest and engagement in STEM in between their participation in SoI during the summer and the survey administration in late fall of the subsequent school year. These additional experiences make it difficult to attribute any observed changes to SoI participation.” (p.vi). • “Future evaluation could include a larger sample of SoI camps to better understand variation in student outcomes attributable to camp characteristics. The correlational analysis of camp characteristics and student outcomes was limited to characteristics that varied across study sites and to those for which there were available data. • Continued use of the PEAR Dimensions of Success (DoS) tool to assess camp quality will likely provide additional valuable information about successful implementation of SoI and how camp quality relates to student outcomes” (p. vii). • “The SoI project has successfully engaged a large proportion of students from groups that are traditionally under-represented in STEM. However, SoI students’ high levels of motivation have implications for future considerations around recruitment and outreach. Future evaluation efforts could examine recruitment procedures” (p. vii). (Abstractor: Author)

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2014
• Author(s): Martinez, Alina; Linkow, Tamara; Velez, Melissa; and DeLisi, Jackie.
• Organizational Author(s): Abt Associates and Education Development Center, Inc.
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Long Dang
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies