Education Applications (EA)
Proposal Due Date: December 3, 2009

Please direct inquiries to: Ian Bennett (ibennett@nsf.gov)

Administrative Information

The required 400-word project summary should discuss the intellectual merit and broader impact in two separate ~200 word paragraphs that specifically answer the following questions: Paragraph 1) Intellectual merit: What is the problem to be solved? How will the problem be solved? What is the innovation in the proposed approach? Paragraph 2) Broader Impacts: Why is your solution better than competitive technologies? Who is going to buy your solution? Who are the other key players? If these answers are not addressed, the proposal may be returned without review.

Proposals must address the potential for commercialization of the innovation and how it would lead ultimately to revenue generation. It is important that the proposed technology increase the competitive capability of industry, be responsive to societal needs, and be sensitive to solving "real" problems driven by critical market requirements. There is considerable overlap between the subtopics so proposers should pay attention to the areas indicated under each subtopic to assist the program director in placing these proposals on review panels.

Letters of Support for the Technology

Inclusion of letters of support for the technology within the proposal is strongly encouraged for this solicitation. Letters of support act as an indication of market validation for the proposed innovation and add significant credibility to the proposed effort. Letters of support should demonstrate that the company has initiated dialog with relevant stakeholders (potential customers, strategic partners, or investors) for the proposed innovation and that a real business opportunity may exist should the technology prove feasible. The letter(s) must contain affiliation and contact information for the signatory stakeholder.

Importance of Communication with Program Officer

A company considering a proposal submission is encouraged to communicate (via email) with the program officer to help gauge the responsiveness to the solicitation (see below for contact information). When contacting the cognizant program officer, please provide a brief 2-3 page executive summary with background on the: 1) company/team including experience with previous SBIR awards, 2) market opportunity, 3) technology/innovation and 4) competition. You may contact the program officer via email at any time before the submission deadline. Note, however, that communication with the program officer will become increasingly difficult as the deadline nears.

Proposals must address one of the subtopics that are outlined below. Proposals that are not responsive to the subtopics outlined below will be returned without review. When submitting a proposal to the EA Topic, code the proposal to the corresponding subtopic under which you are submitting the proposal, e.g., EA1, for proposals in the area of "Teaching and Learning Applications". In addition, use the code as the first item in the key words/phrases portion of the Project Summary of your proposal.

Education Applications

The Education Application (EA) topic addresses the challenges of advancing STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education for all American students, to nurture innovation, and to ensure the long-term economic prosperity of the Nation. The urgency of this task is underscored by the need to ensure that the United States continues to excel in science and technology in the 21st century. It must develop the ideas that could transform and strengthen the economy, ensure a skilled workforce for American industry, and guarantee that all American students are provided the educational resources and tools needed to participate fully in the science and technology based economy of the 21st century.

EA1. Teaching and Learning Applications

Computer and communication technologies have profoundly altered many aspects of our lives and seem to hold great promise for improving education as well. But technology is only a tool. Fulfilling its promise for education will require innovative education applications and tools that can be used for teaching and learning in traditional and non-traditional settings, such as video game-based applications, which not only have the potential to deliver science and math education to millions of simultaneous users, but also significantly affect learning outcomes in the STEM disciplines.

The rapid and widespread use of computers, mobile phones, other personal electronic appliances and multi-player Internet games have provided users with engaging new interfaces and forms of immersion in both virtual and augmented realities. Together with the growth online education, these interfaces and technologies have created new opportunities for faculty, educational institutions and students to raise standards, provide access and improve pedagogical approaches to teaching and learning. Also the introduction and availability of open educational resources has expanded and significantly altered the imagination and energy of developers. Innovative educational applications that build upon information, communication technologies, immersive interfaces and open educational resources are encouraged.

EA2. Entrepreneurship Education Applications

Entrepreneurship education has emerged in recent years to become an area of ever broadening interest and applicability and is a key building block in the entrepreneurship process because it is defined as a process of fundamental transformation - from an innovative idea to enterprise, and from enterprise to value. Because entrepreneurship is not an isolated activity, and because it integrates such diverse topics as opportunity recognition, product entry, intellectual property, legal requirements and business constraints of new businesses, among others, the focus of entrepreneurship education should be how to harness quickly a greater variety of different ideas to successfully exploit a business opportunity. To this end, innovative educational applications exploiting advanced software and hardware can be developed to integrate curricula and training to serve this growing and important segment of education, which is a critical component for success in the contemporary global economy.

EA3. Assessment Applications

The large scale testing of educational outcomes can benefit from innovative applications that provide solutions for development, administration, scoring and reporting of tests and other assessment procedures. Such innovative applications can provide practical solutions that combine knowledge, critical thinking and problem solving not well addressed in paper-based assessment tests, and can provide balanced assessment testing across classroom, district, state and national levels.

EA4. Assistive Applications

Innovative assistive applications are those that support the educational needs of individuals with disabilities -- vision- and hearing-impaired, cognitive and motor-related.