G403 EquIP HQ Play Testing Submission Request 2024

Request for Approval under the “Generic Clearance for the Collection of Routine Customer Feedback” (OMB Control Number: 0651-0080)

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: G403: EquIP HQ Classroom Play Testing 2024

PURPOSE: EquIP HQ is a digital platform owned by the USPTO, created and maintained in a contracted effort by Second Avenue Learning. EquIP HQ has lesson plans, projects, activities, videos, and other educational materials, with the goal of bringing invention education and intellectual property concepts into classrooms across America. The website has been live for almost two years and is being used by K-12 teachers and students across the country. To help improve upon the website and the resources it offers, Second Avenue Learning would like to conduct classroom observation sessions and focus groups with students and teachers. The purpose of this information collection is to understand students’ ability to complete various activities in EquIP HQ and gauge their engagement and enjoyment. USPTO also wants to understand how teachers use EquIP HQ in their classrooms.

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDENTS:

Respondents are students ages 5-18 and teachers at public and private schools.

TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one or multiple)

[ ] Customer Comment Card/Complaint Form [ ] Customer Satisfaction Survey

[X] Usability Testing (e.g., Website or Software [ ] Small Discussion Group

[X] Focus Group [ ] Other: _________________

CERTIFICATION:

I certify the following to be true:

1. The collection is voluntary.

2. The collection is low-burden for respondents and low-cost for the Federal Government.

3. The collection is non-controversial and does not raise issues of concern to other federal agencies.

4. The results are not intended to be disseminated to the public.

5. Information gathered will not be used for the purpose of substantially informing influential policy decisions.

6. The collection is targeted to the solicitation of opinions from respondents who have experience with the program or may have experience with the program in the future.

Business Unit: EquIP HQ Students and Learners Edition, Office of Public Engagement

To assist review, please provide answers to the following questions:

Personally Identifiable Information:

1. Is personally identifiable information (PII) collected? [ ] Yes [X] No

1a. If Yes, is the information that will be collected included in records that are subject to

the Privacy Act of 1974? [ ] Yes [ ] No

2. If applicable, has a System of Records Notice been published? [ ] Yes [ ] No

Gifts or Payments:

Is an incentive (e.g., money or reimbursement of expenses, token of appreciation) provided to participants? [ ] Yes [X] No

BURDEN HOURS

Name of Instrument	No. of Respondents	Participation Time	Burden
Screening questions	1,000	3 minutes	50 hours
Classroom observations (teachers and students K-12 from 14 classrooms)	325	20 minutes	108 hours
Focus groups (teachers)	32	60 minutes	32 hours
Totals	1,357	- - -	190 hours

The USPTO estimates that all of the respondents in the screening questions and focus groups will be will be conducted electronically, while none of the classroom observations will be conducted electronically. Therefore, a total of 76% of responses will be conducted electronically.

FEDERAL COST: $80,000 allocated from a contract with Second Avenue Learning (Contract #1333BJ21P00220002)

If you are conducting a focus group, survey, or plan to employ statistical methods, please provide answers to the following questions:

The selection of your targeted respondents

1. Do you have a customer list or something similar that defines the universe of potential respondents and do you have a sampling plan for selecting from this universe? [X] Yes [ ] No

If the answer is yes, please provide a description of both below (or attach the sampling plan)? If the answer is no, please provide a description of how you plan to identify your potential group of respondents and how you will select them?

Second Avenue Learning will provide a banner on its website with a link for those who may be interested in providing feedback on EquIP HQ. The link will contain a set of screening questions to determine their background and other relevant information. Respondents will be individuals who complete the screening questions, as well as those gathered from existing email lists of individuals who have expressed interest.

The focus groups and classroom observations will occur separately, therefore their order is not dependent on each other. They will likely occur concurrently. There may be teachers who wish to do participate in both the classroom observation and the focus group, but they won't necessarily be the same respondents.

The USPTO will select teachers who have experience using EquIP HQ in their classroom and meet age-band and geographic specifications, i.e., to ensure that USPTO has a diverse spread of teachers across grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12 and within different geographic locations. To obtain a wider spread of responses, USPTO intends to use different teachers for the focus groups and classroom observations.

The students participating in the classroom observations will be selection based on the following criteria:

Subject Balancing

To meet our objectives and considering feedback from focus groups as another research resource, we are skewing our testing towards older ages as they will be able to verbally provide more qualitative feedback.

We will balance the tests as follows:

Grade band	Number of sessions
K-2	2 sessions
3-5	2 sessions
6-8	5 sessions
9-12	5 sessions

Geographic balancing

We will seek to leverage existing relationships for recruiting and also get a representative sampling of the country as best we can with limited testing.

We will balance the tests as follows:

Location	Number of sessions
North East	4 sessions
South	2 sessions
Midwest	4 sessions
West coast	4 sessions

Administration of the Instrument

1. How will you collect the information? (Check all that apply)

[X] Web-based or other forms of social media

[ ] Telephone

[X] In-person

[ ] Mail

[] Other, Explain:

2. Will interviewers or facilitators be used? [X] Yes [ ] No

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