Principal Investigator Interview Protocol

Principal Investigator/Co-PI Interview Protocol

Personal Background

1) Please tell me about yourself.
a. What is your current role? How long have you had this position?
b. How long have you been involved with this ITEST project?

Project Background
2) Tell me a little bit about how the ITEST project came to be?
a. What was the motivation to apply for the award?
b. Was the project based on a previously funded ITEST project?
3) Tell me a little bit about the planning process?
a. Who was involved in the planning process? Probe for:
i.
Key staff from your institution
ii.
Key external partners
iii.
Key stakeholders
b. If your project works with schools, was there a process for selecting schools to
participate?
4) Is there additional funding for the project beyond the NSF ITEST funding?
a. What are those specific funding sources?
b. How have they been used?
5) What were the project’s key goals as conceived at the beginning of the project?
a. Have those goals changed since the beginning of the project?
6) Were there any other external/contextual factors that had a large influence on the design of
the project? Probe for:
a. Resources (or lack thereof) in the local community or schools
b. Local school district initiatives
c. Priorities of your institution
d. Priorities of other local institutions

Project Participants
7) Who participates in the program? Probe for:
a. Special characteristics of participants
b. Numbers of participants
8) How are participants recruited to the program?
a. Which methods are most successful (and how do you know)?
b. What do you think motivates participants to become involved?
9) Do most participants persist through the entire program?
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Project Activities
10) Briefly describe what your project does.
a. Include activities and number of contact hours.
b. Is there any variation in the experience of the participants?
c. What technologies are used (or learned) by participants or by the project at large?
d. How are technologies used (e.g., as a learning tool, for data collection, for data sharing,
to disseminate findings)
11) Which strategies have been implemented well and what has facilitated implementation?
12) Which strategies have been the most difficult to implement?
a. What is being/has been done to address these challenges?
13) How has the project evolved over time?
a. What changes were made? Why?
b. Have these changes been effective?
c. What changes do you see (if any) going forward?

Evaluation and Outcomes
14) Do you have any data on the effectiveness of your project?
15) Describe your external evaluation.
16) How are the evaluation results used?
17) What have been the key short-term and long-term outcomes for the teachers involved in
your project?
a. How do you know?
b. Do outcomes vary based on group (e.g., cohort, grade level, school)
18) What have been the key outcomes for the students involved in your project?
a. How do you know?
b. Do outcomes vary based on group (e.g., cohort, grade level, school)?
19) What have been the key contributions and benefits to project staff (e.g., knowledge,
relationships, connections and networks, etc.)
20) What have been the key contributions and benefits to the host institution (e.g., increased
capacity, shifts in mission, etc.)?
a. What about for external partners involved in the project?

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Sustainability and Scale-up
21) What are the current plans for the project when the grant period ends?
a. What resources are needed to continue the project?
b. If you plan to continue in some way, what is the plan for providing the resources to
support the project?
22) Has the project model been implemented at other institutions or in other communities?
a. If yes: What part(s) of the model was implemented? Were there any challenges in
scaling-up the model?
b. If no: What would it take to scale up and reach multiple institutions or communities?
What do you see as the barriers to scaling up this type of work?

The ITEST Community
23) To what extent does your project interact with the LRC?
a. What do you see the most important role or roles of the LRC?
b. How would you describe your interactions with the LRC?
c. What have you gained, if anything, from the LRC?
24) To what extent do you work with, share advice, or otherwise interact with other ITEST
projects?
a. What do you interact about? How often? Where?
b. What have you gained, if anything, from these interactions?
c. Do you know of any examples where insights you’ve shared about your project have
helped to improve other projects?
25) To what extent are project staff contributing to the larger ITEST or STEM education
community. Probe on:
a. Attending ITEST PI meetings
b. Participating in LRC working groups
c. Uploading instruments to the LRC
d. Publishing journal articles or presenting papers at conferences.
e. Creating products that can be of use to STEM educators

Closing Questions
26) What have been the major successes of your project? What about major challenges?
27) What are the key features and lessons learned from this project that might be of interest to
others engaged in similar work with teachers or youth?
28) What is the likelihood that participating in this project will influence the STEM academic and
career outcomes for youth participants, or students of teacher participants?

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