STEMscopes selected by Texas

Board of Education picks Rice University program as option for online science education

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff

The Texas State Board of Education has put an online science curriculum developed by Rice University on a list of instructional materials schools may select as a supplement to older textbooks this year.

STEMscopes, a completely digital science curriculum resource developed for grades 5-8 by Rice’s Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning, is the only program created at an educational institution on the approved list of publishers. (STEM is shorthand for science, technology, engineering and
mathematics.) The Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced the selections July 22.

“It was a long and enlightening process to become fully accredited and approved for adoption by the State Board of Education,” said Reid Whitaker, director of STEMscopes.

“STEMscopes is a comprehensive curriculum teachers can use over the course of a year,” he said. “It includes videos, interactive games and experiments to address the new alignment
of TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills)
science content.” The curriculum also incorporates classroom work, homework, independent activities for students and assessment tools for teachers. “We were fortunate to have the expertise of several of Rice’s
science faculty involved in reviewing our content,” Whitaker said.

Beginning Aug. 8, Texas school districts may choose one program to be paid for by the state from among nine to 14 offered at each grade level. A major criterion for selection to the list was that materials align with new or revised parameters set by the board under TEKS. Panels of teachers assembled in Austin to review the details of each product submitted.

STEMscopes’ competitors include commercial textbook publishers Pearson Education (Prentice Hall), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, McGraw-Hill and others. “They’re historically the big publishing companies,” Whitaker said.

According to TEA, this is the first year the state has exclusively adopted what it calls “supplemental
materials” rather than a mix of traditional textbooks and online materials. By purchasing online curricula for selected grades and subjects rather than textbooks for kindergarten-12, the board expects to cut the cost of materials from $347 million to $60 million this year.

Rice began developing STEMscopes’ predecessor, TAKScopes, in 2007, but Whitaker said a major revision was required since Texas has now ended high-stakes TAKS tests in favor of end-of-course exams and made changes to elementary science TEKS requirements. “STEMscopes had to be rebuilt from the ground up in order to address state guidelines,” he said.

Whitaker said Rice is in a good position to maximize the opportunity presented by the state’s budget-driven initiative. TAKScopes was already part of more than 150 Texas independent school districts (ISDs), including districtwide partnerships with Austin and El Paso ISDs and a strong presence in Houston ISD. He said many of those previous customers have indicated they will transition to STEMscopes this year.

“There were no online resources for elementary science when we started in 2007,” Whitaker said. “We
were among the first ones with materials truly aligned to the curriculum standards.” Though the state did not seek K-4 programs, STEMscopes covers those grades as well, he said.

“This is a huge first step,” Whitaker said of the Rice program’s selection. “Our next course of action is to evaluate the efficacy of our new materials and determine how a similar model might be taken to the national level.”

Rice established the Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning in 1995 to address the ways in which information technology can expand and enrich education on the Rice campus as well as in other settings. The center’s mission is to undertake research that makes technologies for learning more productive, accessible and engaging. Recently the center has focused on the use of games in science and health education.