MSP Learning Network Conference 2013: Overview, Theme, and Strands
Implementation: From Vision to Impact
February 11-12, 2013
Renaissance Washington Hotel
999 Ninth Street NW, Washington, DC
Meeting Goals, Theme and Strands
Meeting Goals
The overarching goal of the 2013 LNC meeting is to engage the MSP community in building and sharing new knowledge, best practices, and tools critical to increasing the impact and sustainability of our work over time. The meeting will provide opportunities for networking and substantive dialogue among projects and constituencies. To foster collaboration, the meeting will feature a general poster session, informal conversations, plenary presentations, concurrent awardee-led sessions, and interactive, featured-topic sessions.
Theme: Implementation: From Vision to Impact
The MSP Learning Network Conference brings together a diverse group of IHE STEM and education faculty, K-12 administrators and teacher leaders, researchers, and evaluators each contributing a valuable perspective on the implementation of STEM improvement efforts. This conference is designed to help attendees take advantage of that diversity of experience and insight by encouraging conversations about the process and experience of translating a vision into reality.
Strand I: Life Cycle of Implementation
A particular project's path from vision to implementation can be seen developmentally, and this development begins well before funding, in the creation of a partnership, the negotiation of a shared vision, and the articulation of methods and measures towards success. Projects at different stages of their development can have much to say to each other about how their implementations are challenged and how they respond.
Strand II: Different Perspectives on Implementation
Each of the MSPs has created rich partnerships that bridge institutional cultures and bring together educators who operate with different constraints, goals, and priorities. Indeed, this diversity of perspectives is at the heart of the MSP experiment, and each project's implementation can, and must, be shaped by how the vision is understood and adopted from all these different perspectives.
Strand III: Evaluation, Research, and Implementation: The Feedback Loop
As projects develop, their vision and implementation may change over time in response to findings by evaluators and researchers. In turn, carefully crafted evaluation plans need to be responsive to project changes, some of which are intentional and others that are responding to the needs of their particular context. Evaluation efforts are critical to judging and sharing models that promise long-term impact and may be worthy of adaptation to new contexts.