Request for Proposals: 2024 OPEN Math Workshops

The OPEN Math Selection Committee is composed of a broad range of mathematics instructors, so be sure to write in a way that is clear to any hypothetical colleague. In particular, avoid insider jargon and acronyms as much as possible in your responses. This is also important in your title and public-facing descriptions so that your workshop appeals to the widest possible audience.

Please choose a point of contact for this OPEN Math Workshop proposal. Later we’ll ask for contact information for other workshop leaders, but the person listed here will be considered the point person for your workshop team.

• Name
• Job Title & Affiliated Organization(s)
• Email Address

Rubric Item 1: Is this a good online, summer workshop topic for the audience indicated?

Rubric Item 2: Is the indicated audience robust enough (to fill a workshop) within the mathematics community in general, and within the targeted groups (instructors for whom accessing traditional PD is a challenge)?

• Please provide a workshop title that is concise but makes the topic clear and gets the attention of the intended audience. There will be places where only the workshop titles appear (with links, of course).
• Please provide a full description (400 word limit) of your workshop that should appear on a registration page for this event.
• Please provide a short description (200 word limit) of your workshop that can be used for advertising and marketing this event – this description will be used when all the workshops appear in a single scrolling list.
• Who is the intended audience for your workshop? If you know of particular SIGMAAs, MAA Connect communities, or any non-MAA groups/organizations who will be interested, please list them here. Also, let us know if this work is connected to a grant or other project for which this workshop will support with dissemination and outreach. This will help us better understand your overall plans and provide a starting point for an advertising effort for your workshop.

Rubric Item 3: Is the workshop appropriately focused on some active-learning pedagogy?

Rubric Item 4: Are the learning objectives measurable and articulated clearly?

• Elevator pitch: In one paragraph, summarize the overall, big goals for your workshop, where the audience is a Selection Committee (composed of a variety of college mathematics instructors) who will be considering many different types of workshops. What makes yours distinct? timely? in demand? likely to have a big impact?
• What active and research-based pedagogies or practices are central to what workshop participants will learn? What part(s) of the IP Guide will you draw on? Are there any other resources you plan to use to support participants’ effective application of your topic? Please include specific linkage to the MAA Instructional Practices Guide or other appropriate references to evidence-based teaching practices. Note that the point here is not so much about boosting the MAA IP Guide specifically as it is to tying pedagogical practices to educational research.
• List 4-6 specific learning objectives for your workshop – what knowledge, skills, beliefs, etc from your workshop will help participants make progress toward implementation of the ideas in their classrooms? For evaluation purposes these objectives should be clear to any post-secondary mathematics instructor, should be realistic and measurable, and should be stated in terms of active verbs. Be aware that individual reviewers may not be familiar with acronyms and jargon specific to your area. The OPEN Math evaluation and research team will use these to develop survey items that are specific to your workshop, along with a set of general items for all the OPEN Math workshops. Here are some links that may be helpful for writing learning objectives.
  • Step by step guide, how to write learning objectives. From Robert Talbert, a math educator at Grand Valley State who thinks a lot about learning and teaching.
  • How to articulate your learning objectives, and how these relate to workshop activities and tasks (“assessments” in a course, here you can think of it as work that participants will generate in your workshop). From Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Teaching and Learning
  • A guide to using Bloom’s taxonomy to write learning objectives, with a good list of verbs. From U. Iowa’s Center for Teaching and Learning
  • A sketch of Dee Fink’s categories of significant learning – an expansion of Bloom’s taxonomy that goes beyond cognitive kinds of learning. The links have more good verbs! From U. Buffalo’s Center for Teaching and Learning

Rubric Item 5: Does the team have experience with, or realistic plans for, workshop activities that model active teaching and learning in their delivery of this online workshop?

Rubric Item 6: Is the list of “deliverables” realistic and likely to make an impact on the participant’s teaching?

• We’re asking workshop teams to follow one of the tested formats described below. This link provides examples of previous workshops that use formats #1 and #2. This link provides an example of of a learning community model (format #3). Note: In the format choices below, the ‘time per day’ includes the breaks. So, for example, “6-hour day” could consist of 5 hours of contact and 1 hour of breaks, and the “3-hour day” might be two 80-minute sessions with a 20-minute break in the middle.
  • Format choice #1: intensive workshop (roughly 6 hours per day for 4 days in one week)
  • Format choice #2: extended mini-course (roughly 3 hours per day for 3 days per week for three weeks)
  • Format choice #3: Learning Community model consisting of 3-4 hours of meetings before a semester followed by regular (every N weeks) meetings throughout the semester. This model is appropriate when participants will actively implement some pedagogical innovation during a semester and meet as a group for feedback and support.
• Give us some options for when you’d like your workshop to run.
  • If you are applying for a summer workshop (Format #1 or #2), please give at least TWO specific options (feel free to label them “first choice,” “second choice,” etc.) for the dates your workshop might run in summer 2024, between May 20 and August 6 (to avoid the days of MAA MathFest, August 7 - 10). We will need to know the firm dates by December 15, 2023, but for now please give us your best guess.
  • If you are applying for a Learning Community to take place in either Fall 2024 or Spring 2025, please give your best guess for a schedule (meeting days/times) to confirm that you are thinking about this. We do not need to pin this down precisely until roughly 3 months before the workshop starts.
• How will your team of facilitators model research-based teaching and learning in conducting the workshop? What core activities will you include as part of the workshop? Don’t worry now about how to fit into the schedule, but do itemize the main activities in asynchronous or synchronous modes. We will post some more detailed examples of workshop outlines on this page before the end of September.
• What deliverables will be expected from each participant? e.g. learning objectives, syllabi, course materials, problem sequences, assessments, projects, reflections, program plans…. We will post some more detailed examples of workshop outlines on this page before the end of September.

Rubric Item 7: Does the team have realistic plans for followup activities that will continue building a sense of community among participants and support participants’ implementation of new knowledge in their own classrooms?

Rubric Item 8: Does the team have experience with, or realistic plans for, workshop activities that model equitable and inclusive practices within their delivery of this online workshop?

Rubric Item 9: Does the team have experience with, or realistic plans for, teaching participants to apply inclusive and equitable practices in their course design and classroom practices?

• A key component of the workshop includes some synchronous follow up activities, perhaps in separate smaller groups. In addition, you will have access to a special Google Group email list and Google folder space for your workshop participants, so part of the followup plan could be a strategy for keeping the conversation going among participants.
  • What will you do to build a sense of community among participants during the workshop?
  • What will you do to support participants after the workshop in implementing new practices and plans?

• Another important component of all OPEN Math workshops is attention to issues of equity and inclusion, both as intentional parts of the online workshop design and as goals for the participants teaching their own courses.
  • What will you do to help participants make their own classroom or program work equitable and inclusive?
  • What will you do to model equitable and inclusive practice in conducting the workshop?

Rubric Item 10: Is the facilitation team adequate (in size, in expertise, in diversity, in experience, …) for meeting the workshop and project goals? 

• Please tell us a bit about your team of (prospective) workshop leaders, including their expertise, prior PD experience (face-to-face or online), and constituencies/networks/stakeholder groups they belong to. We encourage you to consider constructing your team with the broadest possible representation and involving at least one emerging professional development leader, thereby expanding the community of practice around professional development leadership.
• Please provide an estimated budget of up to $12,000. This may include stipends for leaders and presenters as well as any materials, software, or license fees associated with delivering the workshop. There must be at least 3 facilitators/leaders/presenters listed, and the maximum stipend for any individual is $4000.