NSF Award
1041410
Native American tribal governments and public educators in UT, AZ and NM have developed a new creative and accelerated means to propel forward a broad spectrum of much-needed Information Technology (IT) education and training. Their goal is to benefit adult citizenry and K-16 student populations to meet escalating college preparatory and regional/tribal workforce demands for 21st century digital job-ready IT skills. Utah Valley University (UVU), led by a team of experienced student success researchers, mentors and Native American K-12 educational specialists, have joined with global IT industry certification and training leaders to create an innovative, research-based cyber learning environment capable of realistically meeting the specific educational challenges faced by the traditionally underserved Native American communities and individuals with a 2 year integrated research and leaning project. The Native American Regional IT Industry Workforce Development Project (NA-CIT) builds upon best practices and lessons learned from a previous 2008-10 CI-TEAM demonstration project in order to accomplish its major objectives. This multi-state program, managed across institutions and a broad range of IT disciplines, deploys a synergized, culturally-relevant online delivery (Web 2.0) methodology coupled with stringent process assessment and mentored support mechanisms to maximize participant learning\success rates and outcomes. <br/><br/>A classroom and CI (hardware/software) were previously in place at the three primary training hubs: Central/Southeast Utah, Holbrook, AZ and Window Rock/Ft. Defiance on the Navajo Nation. Accomplishment of the objectives of this project portends to have far- reaching effect toward making cyber-technology more accessible to the Native American youth and young adults (age 12-50) and in opening doors for them to contribute directly to society as scientists, engineers, educators, and community leaders. NA-CIT is training between 400-500 participants over a 24 month project period. <br/><br/>The proposed demonstration project is: (1) Organizing and implementing a synergistic CI enabled instructional delivery support system (high-tech) with local counselors, mentors and teachers (high-touch) and students at 3 regional locations both via the internet and within technology-assisted classroom, teacher-led and peer-mentor supported environments, and (2) Assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of the above described synergistic approach in bringing the participants to a high level average validated competency within a broad spectrum of workplace ready skill-sets (from basic computer fundamentals to higher orders of competency in web-design, network administration/support and programming e.g. - MS.Net and Linux.Net). All programs are implemented with a view to extending a similar approach to possible future full degree level programs in the IT field, and to making this comprehensive learning system scalable and replicable to other Indigenous educational environments. <br/><br/>Broader Impacts: This implementation project will provide a model for the scientific, engineering, and technology education of many indigenous, rural, and other minority populations throughout the world that do not have easy access to learning in these fields. Because all of the instruction and proposed coursework has a sound integrated design, a positive experience with this select population will have broad implications for similarly deployed online and/or mentored classroom IT educational environments. The probability of the success of this project is enhanced by the groundwork and physical cyber-infrastructure work that is already in place and by the cooperative efforts with companies and educational experts who have already accomplished a great deal in the technical education of the students within this demographic. <br/><br/>Intellectual Merit: The intellectual merit of this project is not so much in the development of the individual components as it is in the combining of all the components to provide an immersive learning environment with learning activities, student tracking, hands-on mentoring and assessment practices that will engages and motivates the students in the course to reach a high level of competency in the subject matter area at the completion of the coursework. The infusion of CI-enabled environments and curricula with strategies based on a Native American philosophical and cosmological paradigm that influences the way Native Americans think and learn is based on current educational research and adds to the complexity and merit of the project.
