caise

A: While the basic structure of the solicitation hasn’t changed (e.g., the project types; maximum funding amounts and durations; the primary focus on out-of-school settings; and the valuing of innovation, evaluation, partnerships, and field-building) A few notable revisions were made in the new solicitation. The revisions in the new solicitation are as follows:

• The due dates for submitting preliminary and full proposals to the ISE program have been changed from those in NSF 10-565.
• Preliminary Proposals are now optional.
• The description of the ISE program has changed. The Communicating Research to Public Audiences (CRPA) project type is now Connecting Researchers and Public Audiences (CRPA) and the description of this activity has been changed to permit the submission of proposals based on current research awards or within 12 months after their final expiration date.
• Some elements of the proposal preparation process have changed.
• The types of supplementary documents that can be submitted with a proposal have been changed.
• Additional information is provided regarding the new revised NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) and requirements for the data management plan (all proposals) and postdoctoral mentoring plan (as appropriate).

 

A: Spring/Summer of 2012

A: Late Summer through Fall (variable)

A: The current solicitation does not place any limits on the number of proposals that a PI can submit.

A: Yes. Proposals can be submitted by non-profit and for-profit organizations.

A: Proposals to the ISE Program can include any combination of organizational types, including not-for-profits.

A: No. Each proposal is evaluated on the merits of the case that is made for funding and on the qualifications of the PI and team, whether they have received NSF funding before or not.

A: CAISE ISE Spotlights

A: informalscience.org is a resource and online community for informal learning projects, research and evaluation. Search CAISE, informalscience.org, and 5 other informal science education websites using informalcommons.org.

A: Links to information at CAISE about the NSF ISE program.

A: The primary mission of the Informal Science Education program is to stimulate innovations in learning STEM outside formal school settings. This doesn’t mean that informal learning can’t occur inside school buildings, such as after-school or community programs. What we don’t fund is the development of, for example, 5th-grade classroom earth science instructional materials developed exclusively for a formal, K-12 academic program. However, formal education audiences, including teachers, may be appropriate secondary audiences and are often targeted as part of the outreach efforts of exhibit and television projects when constituting a small fraction of the total audience. Innovative linkages between formal and informal educational practices are encouraged, as are innovations that are cross-setting or independent of setting, such as those involving mobile technologies.

A: Undergraduates can be considered “professional audiences” if the project’s goal is to train them to contribute to the education of the public about STEM or to otherwise advance the knowledge and skills of informal STEM education professionals – the same way that, say, science center volunteers might be trained to work with visitors. One issue is whether that training comes as part of a formal education experience where tuition and fees are involved. The ISE program does not pay for undergraduate tuition and fees (though graduate tuition is allowable).

A: Typically, health and medicine are not eligible for NSF funding, but would be eligible at NIH. However, the operative rule is that, if one can find that NSF supports research in the discipline of interest, then one can submit to the Informal Science Education program for an education project. For example, microbial ecology research is funded by NSF, so education related to that is eligible. Health education and clinical medicine would not be. Refer to the Grant Proposal Guide.

A: You are not required to have the IRB process completed by the time the full proposal is submitted. However, it is important that the Human Subjects issue is addressed in the proposal and that the determination has been made whether to check the box on Human Subjects on the front cover of the proposal.

A: An IRB approval letter is not required for preliminary proposals. However, an official IRB letter must be in place before funding can be received after a full proposal has been recommended for funding. Generally, proposers wait until they get to the negotiation phase before obtaining an IRB letter. So, it depends on the availability of your IRB to process your required documents and produce the IRB letter once funding is imminent. In other cases, research protocols cannot be established until sometime after the project has been underway. In such cases the award letter will stipulate that the research cannot be conducted until the IRB letter has been received.

A: The program funds informal science education research as well as the development, production, and evaluation of innovative out-of-school learning experiences. It does not fund the actual operations of those experiences once they are developed and evaluated. So, for example, –the program doesn’t fund the operational expenses of a summer camp as a stand-alone endeavor. But it can fund the development and evaluation of new ideas on how to improve the STEM learning outcomes of summer camps or summer camps that are part of a comprehensive youth program. Similarly, the program can’t fund a competition but it can fund development of an innovative type of competition, a study of how to develop effective competitions, or a competition as part of a larger project with other learning materials.

A: Book publishing as a stand-alone activity is not something that we can fund. However, a book can be a secondary deliverable that accompanies or results from an exhibit, media, research, conference, or other ISE project.

The maximum funding level is for the life of the project, not for each year. For example, a research project may have a 1-year duration, up to a 4-year duration, but the total requested for all the years may not be more than $1.2 million

A: Book publishing as a stand-alone activity is not something that we can fund. However, a book can be a secondary deliverable that accompanies or results from an exhibit, media, research, conference, or other ISE project.

A: Funding for the following are not supported by the ISE program: capital or operating expenses; purchase of major or office equipment; vehicles; undergraduate tuition; paid advertising; admissions or similar fees; operating expenses for school field trips, camps, science fairs or similar competitions; or projects whose primary focus is health or medicine. ISE also does not fund development of a print publication or a curriculum as the primary public deliverable. Budgets cannot include in line items costs already recovered through the organization's federally negotiated indirect cost rate.

A: This means that you can’t put direct cost line items into your budget that are appropriate for the indirect cost line items. In other words, you can’t ask for the same funding twice in the budget.

A: The ISE program budget allows for graduate student tuition, as do most of the NSF-funded projects. Undergraduate tuition funding is not permissible.

A: The NSF requirement on PI and other ISE personnel time was designed with university researchers in mind; it is not unusual for an ISE proposal to request senior personnel at more than 2 months. At the same time, ALL proposers exceeding the 2 months limit must provide a brief rationale for the time beyond 2 months in the budget justification section.

A: The best thing to do is contact a program officer to explain the total budget situation and get advice on how best to proceed.

A: No. The ISE program no longer requires fiduciary information related to cost sharing. Line item “M” should always be entered as $0 for the ISE program, regardless of a project’s intent to acquire additional funding resources.

A: In moving from preliminary proposals to full proposals, the project type can change and in some instances, reviewers might actually suggest that the PI consider changing the project type. Such comments are advisory, as is the Encourage or Discourage evaluation. The PI can also change, although it is best if the change is to make a Co-PI the PI. Consideration needs to be given to the fact that the preliminary proposal forms the basis of the reviews that the PI will receive, and thus a full proposal should benefit from those reviewer comments. However, the submitting institution cannot change.

A: The guidelines indicate no limits on the number of proposals that can be submitted. The number of awards to an institution or PI does depend on a range of portfolio-balancing assessments that are taken into account at NSF.

A: Collaborations are not mandatory, but highly encouraged for all proposal types; it is a rare proposal that cannot be strengthened by collaboration.

A: Yes. However, it is also a good idea to have an advisory board so that the work is informed by a diversity of perspectives.

A: Since 2009 we expanded the planning grant category into what is now called Pathways, which allows for a range of activities as described in the guidelines.

A: A Pathways proposal must provide sufficient information that clearly indicates (a) what is the team’s intent, at the time the Pathways proposal is submitted, for what a future full-scale project might entail, and then, related to that, (b) what major issues/problems/decisions (via a feasibility study, pilot program, front-end audience work, etc.) need to be explored during the Pathways project to help clarify what the concept of the full-scale project will be.

A: Every project distributes its funds in different ways. There is no specification on that distribution. When the full proposal is submitted in January, the budget justification pages are where NSF staff and reviewers will look to see your rationale for the budget components.

A: Full-scale development is intended for the development of major NEW deliverables, e.g. TV programs, exhibits, youth and community projects, etc. Broad implementation is intended specifically for expanding the impact of deliverables that have already been developed and proven their worth and results of the summative evaluations of the original work must be described. If you need to clarify this issue, it is important to discuss your particular case with a program officer.

A: It’s not required for all Broad Implementation projects, but it is expected for those that are planning significant adaptations to reach new audiences.

A: You need to identify the consultants or the type of consultants and their expected qualifications that your project will require. As with an exhibit development project, it might not be possible to identify the fabricator of the exhibit at the time of the submission. That is fine. If awarded, the award letter will contain a clause about the requirement for having the fabricator approved by the program officer when the project gets to that stage.

A: The Project Rationale section is the primary place where the proposal should explain the intended outcomes. Since Rationale, Design and Management are inter-related, the format allows PIs to continue to build and reinforce their case for the work. In addition, some evaluation materials (such as detailed plans, findings of prior work, impacts and indicators worksheets and logic models) may be put in Supplementary Documents if desired.

A: Yes.

A: We are trying to reinforce the idea that supplementary documents should not be extensive. The reasons for this are: (a) equity and a level playing field for PIs and (b) to reduce the burden on reviewers. ISE proposals have had a long history of including supplementary documents, some quite lengthy. Evaluation plans have not infrequently been longer than the proposal itself and have included pages of boilerplate descriptions of the evaluation firm. We have specified page limits for supplementary documents related to details of evaluation. Samples of draft materials, which are optional, are not specified in terms of length because different kinds of proposals have different needs, but all are encouraged to be brief. Letters of commitment are not subject to any length constraints.

NSF has distinguished between “Appendices” and “Supplementary Documents,” a distinction that is not always understood by PIs. Like the rest of NSF, ISE can allow Appendices only if they receive prior authorization.

The ISE program staff still encourages PIs to make sure that evaluation processes are well integrated into the 15 pages. This stems in part from our attempt to be responsive to the evaluation community’s interest in being fuller players in the conceptual development of proposals and, of course, in the project implementations.

A: Yes, a references cited page is required for the full proposal submissions.

A: In general, review panels will be organized as has been done in the past. However, ISE program staff and management continue to assess how to improve these processes, especially as we continue to get proposals from the field that combines several kinds of deliverables.

A: Yes

A: All NSF awards are eligible to request from the program that gave the award a small amount of supplemental funding to assure adequate completion of the original scope of work. Typically, these involve additional research for a research award or, in the case of ISE, increasing the potential impact of an exhibit, TV program, youth program, etc. The CRPA projects were once designated as supplemental funding but are now distinct grants available to NSF researchers. Supplemental awards are small awards made to existing ISE grant projects of up to six months beyond the project end date to ensure the adequate completion of the original scope of work. CRPAs are considered to be regular awards, not supplements.

A: This is fine. The main point is that the submitting PI must have an active NSF research award, and the proposal is submitted via that PI’s institution; therefore, funding of the co-PI will pass through the lead institution to the other.

A: There are no deadlines for the CRPA project type.

A: All CRPA proposals go through the NSF merit review process and must have at least 3 written reviews and ratings. Reviewers have backgrounds in the science under consideration and in design experience in informal science education. Evaluation processes are also important. We try to process proposals no longer than 6 months after the submission date. Since there is no deadline for CRPAs, decisions are made throughout the year, either through a panel process or individual reviews.

A: The proposal format for the CRPA is the same as for other project types.

A: The intent of the CRPA is to communicate to the public about the scientific research of the PI. Education research is eligible.

A: The intent is to fund projects whose goal is to help the public understand some aspect of the research that the PI has conducted. Often such work needs to be put in a broader context, which is fine.

A: Public lectures are rarely funded via the CRPA mechanism. The objective is to engage the public with learning experiences that go beyond traditional educational formats. These experiences could involve mobile media, exhibits, online experiences, film, radio, citizen science, and other communication vehicles.

A: The main issue here is that the proposal must include the award number of the NSF-funded research that forms the basis of the proposed project.

A: Staffing for CRPA projects can include anyone who needs to be part of the team to do the job. Remember that NSF requires that postdocs have mentors who are identified in the proposal, and one-page mentoring plans included in the Supplementary Documents. Also, for CRPA projects, successful proposals include professionals with experience in informal science education on their teams – i.e. who know what the best practices are with respect to the informal education experiences that are proposed. The communication vehicles should not be activities like giving public lectures.

A: CRPA projects are usually relatively small in scope; however, the ISE program expects that informal science education evaluation professionals will be involved in these projects. Typically, evaluation should include some front-end analysis of the audience (especially since the STEM content will focus on current research), formative evaluation pertinent to the kind of project, and a modest summative evaluation indicating how well the intended impacts have been achieved. This year, the solicitation requires that the summative evaluation be conducted by an external evaluator. As with other ISE projects, the Framework for Evaluating Impacts of ISE Projects(PDF, 956KB) document is a helpful tool.

A: Yes. Those are awards that are generic to all NSF programs. For ISE they are supplements to active ISE awards. Supplements to research awards of other NSF programs are submitted to the research program. The NSF grants manual explains more about supplements.