Building Capacity to Enhance an Online STEM Teacher Education Program with Simulations

This project aims to serve the national need to build accelerated, online pathways for STEM professionals, veterans, and others to obtain secondary STEM teaching licensure. The project will work with the American Association of Colleges Teacher Education (AACTE) to leverage a recently launched new initiative to advance the use of simulations in STEM educator preparation in Concord University's one-year online Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program.

To address the need for secondary STEM teachers in high-need schools in West Virginia, the project will also design recruitment materials to attract military veterans, STEM professionals, and others to STEM teaching careers. Further, a partnership with a local technical college will establish pathways for pursuing a STEM teaching career from community college through teacher licensure.

These efforts could produce a model for online teacher education based in classroom simulations, as well as insights into recruiting community college students, STEM professionals, and military veterans to secondary STEM teaching careers.

This Capacity Building project from Concord University in West Virginia, in partnership with New River Community and Technical College (NRCTC), proposes to prepare a strategic plan for recruiting individuals with STEM backgrounds from working professionals, veterans, STEM graduates, and others into a restructured, one-year Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program. Simulated classroom experiences will be utilized throughout the curriculum and developed with simulation specialist, Mursion.

The project has two goals. One is to enhance an online MAT program to meet student, industry, and partner needs, and increase enrollments and production of highly qualified STEM teachers in the future. The second goal is to enhance partnerships with local four-year and two-year colleges, school districts, military bases, and STEM-industry stakeholders, and to improve statewide and interstate marketing and recruitment for the MAT program.

The project will revise an existing, online MAT Program, as well as design a 1-year streamlined pathway to completion of that program and teacher licensure. Additionally, the project will collaborate with simulation technology company Mursion to develop classroom simulations to be embedded in this online teacher education program with the aim of producing highly skilled STEM teachers.

Further, the project will collaborate with NRCTC to revise articulation agreements to provide model pathways to secondary STEM teaching careers through this online program for institutions in the region. The project will be guided by input from working groups including community college, university, and high school STEM faculty. Through new recruitment strategies, the proposed project will contribute knowledge about how to attract second-career STEM professionals, military veterans, and others to secondary STEM teaching careers in high-need schools.

Outcomes of the effort could produce insights for other institutions nationwide about making STEM teaching careers more accessible and affordable for STEM majors and professionals through accelerated, online teacher education. The institution’s connections with the AACTE will enable widespread sharing of lessons learned. This Capacity Building Project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce).

The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 STEM teachers and experienced, exemplary K-12 teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. It also supports research on the effectiveness and retention of K-12 STEM teachers in high-need school districts.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.