OpenSciEd High School Developers Consortium: Supporting Equity and Building Capacity through Collaborative Science Curriculum Development

Northwestern University (NU) will serve as an OpenSciEd HS Project Development Center, directed by PI Brian J. Reiser, working with the University of Colorado Boulder (CU) and BSCS on the OpenSciEd high school program. 1. NU will assist the CU OpenSciEd development center and BSCS in developing a Program Scope and Sequence for a 3-year Scope and Sequence for the OpenSciEd 3-year High School Program. The Program Scope and Sequence will bundle the high school NGSS performance expectations into three courses, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, with the Earth Science Performance Expectations distributed within these three courses. i 2. NU will lead the development of the Chemistry course. The course will be a year-long course, expected to consist of five units addressing the high school NGSS chemistry performance expectations, and the Earth and Space Science performance expectations assigned to the chemistry course in the Program Scope and Sequence. The work will include these phases: a. NU will consult with the OpenSciEd State Steering Committee (SSC) to get their input on candidate phenomena and storyline for the unit. b. NU will consult with CU to conduct a thorough review of unit materials developed in earlier work at CU and prepare a strengths and weaknesses analysis of the unit to guide development of the OpenSciEd pilot unit. c. NU will collaborate with CU to conduct a co-design process, to be conducted by a team of teachers who tested earlier versions of the CU Ihub chem unit, developers with expertise in the disciplinary content of the unit and in the focal practices and cross-cutting concepts in the unit, and in any areas that have been identified as weaknesses of the unit. The Co-Design team will revise the unit to produce a pilot version based on the strengths / weaknesses analysis. d. NU will work with a small group of teachers drawn from the Co-Design process to pilot test the unit. e. The unit design team staffed by curriculum development specialists at NU and CU, assisted by consult teacher lesson writers, will revise the pilot unit based on the pilot tests and based also on feedback solicited from the OpenSciEd SSC to produce a field trial version of the unit. f. NU will work with CU and the UT Dana Center to provide materials for the formal field test conducted by the UT Dana Center. g. NU will work with CU and the UT Dana Center to work with the feedback from field test teachers to identify needed revisions in the field test version. h. NU will share the revision plan with the OpenSciEd SSC for feedback. i. NU will work with CU to revise the field test unit for a public final release version. The cycle of pilot development, pilot test, revision, field test, revision, and final release will be conducted on staggered basis, with each unit beginning development in 2021, piloting in the 2021-2022 academic year, field test in the 2022-2023 academic year, and final release Summer to Fall 2023.