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 The integration of advanced educational technologies into Indiana school classrooms will be strengthened through Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology's Portal Resources for Indiana Science and Mathematics (PRISM) project, supported for the next three years by a $950,000 grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.
Started in 2003 through an initial Lilly Endowment grant, PRISM has become a valuable educational resource for Indiana middle school science, technology, (pre) engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers. The project offers a digital library of more than 2,300 resources indexed by the Indiana Academic Standards and cross referenced by learning concepts for grades 6-8. These learning tools mirror the actual practice of science and engineering in the workplace, according to PRISM Director Patricia Carlson. More than 5,000 Indiana educators have PRISM accounts that grant access to online course materials for over 10,000 Indiana students. Many other educators use the open access library of simulations, modeling packages, cognitive skills games, and software that increases student task engagement and motivates learning. The PRISM Web site (www.rose-prism.org) averaged 1,190 unique users per day at the end of the 2007-08 school year, and PRISM was named in 2006 as one of the top 15 educational technology innovations in the nation by the Journal of Technology Horizons in Education. "PRISM is the premier Web site for Indiana middle school teachers' STEM coursework and has become a nationally recognized project," stated Carlson, who is also a professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. "PRISM has three well-defined strengths: a library of reviewed digital resources indexed by Indiana Academic Standards; a convenient framework for integrating Web resources into the classroom, and workshops and e-course offerings for teacher development." The latest Lilly Endowment grant will continue to integrate advanced educational technologies into STEM education in Indiana. A major transforming agent for education in the near future will be the rapid advancements in informational technology used in the workplace, according to Carlson. New tools for knowledge workers indicate that the next wave of educational reform may well require a focus on academic standards that incorporate emerging information technology proficiencies into the traditional STEM curricula. To meet this rising need, PRISM began offering free distance education courses to train teachers in the use of the Moodle course management system and the PRISM digital resource library. Teachers are instructed on how to create their own online learning environment that allows them to post interactive assignments and design informative Web pages that allow their students to submit assignments electronically and critique the work of classmates. Over 300 teachers have completed the course since January. Teachers have praised PRISM and comment that students show improved problem-solving skills and recognize connections between the classroom and real-world events. Using well-known regression techniques, the statistical evidence for the project's assessment indicates there is a direct -- and statistically significant -- relationship between the use of PRISM at a school and students' performance on the eighth grade I-STEP math exam for the years 2003 and 2006, according to Carlson. "Increased use of PRISM by a school's teachers, holding everything else constant, leads to larger increases or smaller decreases in their eighth-grade students' I-STEP math scores," says the Rose-Hulman professor.
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