GUIDELINES FOR ANNUAL AND FINAL REPORTS

All Annual and Final Reports must be submitted via FastLane. Following are recommendations (based on observations of recently submitted Annual and Final Reports from current GK-12 projects) for each of the FASTLANE sections. The aim of these guidelines is to help you submit a report that clearly presents your project’s activities and accomplishments during the past year. This, in turn, helps us: develop a sense of what individual projects are doing; amass a set of particularly notable achievements; and gain a clearer understanding of the overall impact of the program. It is possible for you to assemble all the information in a word document and then paste it into FASTLANE although that means some formatting and punctuation are mangled. If some of the information is easiest to present as a table, you can do that and submit it in PDF format as an appendix.

ANNUAL REPORTS

Participants Section
Senior Personnel
In addition to the names of Senior Personnel (PIs, co-PIs, whoever is listed in Section A of the budget) and an indication of how long they have worked, as requested in FASTLANE, please indicate their position in the project (e.g. PI, Co-PI, Coordinator, evaluator, etc), institutional affiliation and position, (e.g. physics faculty, University of A; science coordinator, Z school district) and a sentence or two describing their contribution to the project.

Post Doc
Some sites have postdocs employed as assistants to the evaluators or in other capacities. Please indicate majors and department as well as a sentence or two about what they do.

Graduate Student
Fellows: Indicate name, year in graduate program, masters or Ph.D. student, major, research topic, and include a sentence or two about where they are working and what they are doing. If you write a generic explanation the same for all students (which may be appropriate for some sites) just write it once at the beginning and say this is valid for all the students to follow.

Others: As with the Postdocs some sites employ graduate students in various capacities, other than as Fellows. Please note the same factors as for the Fellows and, in one or two sentences, clearly explain what they are doing

Undergraduate Student
Fellows: Name, year in school (junior or senior), major, potential career choices and a sentence or two describing what they do where.

Others: Please note the same factors as for the Fellows and, in one or two sentences, clearly explain what they are doing

Organizational Partners

Schools and school districts: The schools should be listed here. Indicate the number of Fellows at each and the number of teachers and classes affected. Also please include the following information for each school: whether it is urban, suburban, rural or inner city; socioeconomic status (percent on free lunch); percent minority, and academic standing (because of “No Child Left Behind’ most states designate schools in academic trouble based on the number of students reaching proficiency on state or local standard tests). Again a sentence or two indicating the number of Fellows, number of teachers and classes helps us understand the impact of the program. If teachers are included here please give school, subject and/or grade level taught The information may be submitted in Table form, attached as a PDF file.

Other: Many sites work with zoos and museums so list those here or under “Other Collaborators” and describe activities in a sentence or two.

Other Collaborators or Contacts

This is the section in which to list organizations contributing either dollars or in kind services or goods to the project. If you list someone or some organization be sure to identify the nature of the contributor and the contribution (e.g. XYZ Foundation provides handheld magnifiers for biology projects in grades 1-8 as part of their “Help the Schools Project”).

Activities and Findings

Research and Education Activities: Please briefly summarize what is being done. This section allows you to list and describe activities such as Parents’ Nights, Summer Camps, visits to the campus etc that are not part of the regular school day. The description should include the number and nature (students, teachers, parents, general public) of the participants and the purpose and outcomes of the activity.

Findings: Please list outcomes of any described activity. It is understandable that during their initial years sites will only be able to list what is being implemented. By the second year sites should be able to describe outcomes and discuss them in the context of what worked and why and what did not and why. Even if you have appended an evaluator’s report (and we hope you do) it helps to have a brief sentence or two along with each activity indicating the degree of success and the information employed to determine success. You can also use this section to report outcomes as regards Fellows, K-12 students, teachers, schools, enhanced opportunities within graduate education within the university, and partnerships developing between K-12 schools and the university. Please do not submit the raw data.

Training and Development: This is the section in which to list workshops and seminars. Please indicate date, place, subject matter, attendance and outcomes of the activity and who conducted the activity. If a seminar or workshop series is listed, there is no need to list each session separately. Just indicate the number of sessions in the seminar series, the subject matter, the number and type of attendees and who conducted the seminars.
Research Activities: Include as appropriate any research anyone is doing using GK-12 as a base. As an example, at some sites graduate students in education are using GK-12 as a base for or component of their research topic.

Journal Publications

If you have published an article on GK-12, please list each article in this section detailing: authors, name of article, name and volume number of journal and pages where found. Indicate if it is a refereed journal.

Books or Other One Time Publications

List GK-12 related chapters or sections the project has contributed to books. Give title of chapter, pages, authors, title of book, editors and year.

Web/Internet Site

URL(s): List your web site We will capture it and put it on our list of GK-12 websites as found on the GK-12 web site.

Description: One sentence or a phrase will do. Let us know if it is publicly available or something just available to participants in your project.

Other Specific Products
Contributions

List any curricular material developed by your project and indicate if others are adopting it. Indicate if the material developed is based on previous NSF supported efforts such as FOSS or Connected Math. Please do not attach actual modules or units; instead post them on your website and give the url here

Again, we appreciate receiving a copy of your evaluator’s report. It can be appended to the FastLane report (preferred) or sent separately by email.

FINAL REPORTS

The Final Report should be an overview of your project’s activities and outcomes. It should not just be a cobbled together version of each of the Annual Reports with no attempt to organize the information into a coordinated summary. For example under Graduate Fellows please supply a chart listing the Fellows by year, indicating whether each has graduated, the degree obtained (Ph.D., masters) and where they are at the time you made the report (still in graduate school, faculty member at Harvard, teaching 5th grade, postdoctoral position at ZZZ), and for undergraduates (in graduate school at X U studying bbb).

Under outcomes please be certain to note such things as those listed below and document your reasons for claiming outcomes in these areas: