2021 Google CS-ER Grant

Advice to Jacob Wolf

Hey Chris! I’ve been thinking about the research/distribution for making with code and I have an idea to run by you (edited)

I considering making a proposal to fablearn to stay on with them working on the making with code project after my contract ends at ISF in the summer. One part of the proposal would be to get the curriculum into a more sharable place so that it can be more easily found and used by other schools. The other part would be to more intensely focus on the research agenda of the course, either by wrapping up the research project at ISF, planning for it’s continuation, or planning how to research the course implementation at other schools (depending on what fablearn’s priorities are)

I’m wondering if you think this is a good idea, if it would be aligned with Fablearn’s goals for the project, and if it would be overlapping with Jonathan’s role too much

I know you’re super busy right now, so no rush on a response. Just wanted to share before we start focusing on the research again next week

Before pitching the idea, though, I think it would make sense to think through the niche your work would occupy in the FabLearn economy. In practice, FabLearn’s relationship to ISF is that of an education services nonprofit. FabLearn helps ISF plan and implement its education offerings and ISF pays FabLearn a bunch of money. The hope is that research comes out of it, but this isn’t the factor that determines the success or failure of the project. ISF is most interested in having innovative teaching with a US brand name university attached. FabLearn is most interested in funding its ongoing operations, in particular funding graduate students and maintaining the lab. In contrast, most research-practice partnerships are not money-makers for the researchers: they are generally funded by grants which are either explicitly oriented toward producing research about the school, or which serve the school as part of NSF’s “broader impact” mandate (1).

From this perspective, I’m not sure a proposal from you to get paid for doing research is going to get much traction unless it’s linked to an income stream. I get paid as a consultant supporting teaching and learning at ISF, but not for research. That’s fine for me, because my job already pays me to do research, and research is the key to keeping my job (tenure). FabLearn does fund grad students to do research, but they are in a different category. In a sense, the central function of TLTL is to sustain the academic world inhabited by professors, postdocs, and grad students. I observe that the status of non-grad-student members of the lab is substantially lower, and regular lab activity doesn’t necessarily advance their careers the way it does for grad students.

So, a few promising-feeling approaches to carving out your niche:

(1) If the research work you propose is somehow essential to maintenance or expansion of income-producing partnerships. This could be via ISF or another wealthy school, but it could also be pitched at other partners, particularly in Brazil or Thailand, where wealthy benefactors seek to transform their countries’ educational systems and economies.

(2) If the research work you propose would lead to income through trainings or workshops. A lot of these happened at Stanford–industry or governmental groups pay something like $10k per person (not including travel or accommodations!) to send a group to Stanford for a week, which is a nice perk for the attendees–swanky setting, catered food, time with experts, and a Stanford certificate for the CV–and it brings in a lot of money. (The d.school seems to do a lot of this.) Is it money well-spent by the organization? I don’t worry about this when it’s a fancy private school or a captain of industry, but I’m not keen on leaning on a big urban school district to send their assistant superintendants for training. You will find you get pushed in this direction with your proposal though.

(3) If the work you propose would be funded by “soft money” from grant funding. Big NSF grants are a lot of work (I just submitted one that came to 18k words), uncertain (20% acceptance), and comes with a lot of paperwork, but it can provide stable funding for five years or so. Paulo would likely be into this because I don’t know that he has NSF funding right now and having all your monet coming from private sources isn’t a great look. (Perhaps you could get paid for work writing the grant, and then your work would be funded by the grant if it went through.)

(4) If you become a grad student. The most direct line would be pitching Paulo directly on this, whether he would have interest and funding in you at TC working on this project as your PhD work. Even if you’re most interested in practice, nonprofits, or policy, having a PhD is a pretty good idea in the medium-long term as it is expected for a lot of roles. A still-untested alternative would be working with me at UB and getting funded through FabLearn. This would be unusual, but the advantages for Paulo would be that I’d be doing the work of managing you while he still got publication credit. UB’s PhD isn’t as prestigious for sure, but it is relatively quick and easy, and can be done almost entirely remotely. You could be enrolled by this fall, spend as little as one semester on campus, and otherwise do the whole thing remotely. This isn’t living the dream of long langourous afternoons reading Witgenstein (I mean, you can have that too if you want!), but I have friends who have done instrumental PhDs, bascially get-in-and-get-out, and it can work out well.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful. I don’t think it’s wise to frame your pitch so candidly, but I think it’s worth being aware of how it might play. I’d be happy to talk more on any of this.

(1) NSF embraces the logic of Pasteur’s Quadrant in its framing of the role of science. The idea is that science can be described in terms of two axes: (a) does it contribute to fundamental understanding? (b) Is it immediately useful. NSF’s two overriding criteria for reviewing all their activity is “intellectual merit” and “broader impact.” In practice, this sometimes manifests as university-based basic research projects needing to find community partners to justify their broader impact. Some schools get really good at these partnerships: how about if you give us microscopes or a computer lab, and send your grad students over for a few days, and we’ll talk about how impactful your research is beyond the lab…

Joe Kraft

  1. The application process involves a direct submission from the PI. Do I need to go through an approval or notification process with SPS prior to submission?

This is treated as a normal grant submission. Complete the CLICK approval form prior to submitting the form.

  1. As Google states they do not pay for overhead, can you please advise me on how I should approach budgeting? They do not appear to want a detailed or highly-formalized budget, but I would like to know whether there are factors which would mean I should budget for less than the the net grant amount.

As long as they clearly do not allow overhead, SPS will honor no overhead.

  1. I am actually planning two submissions (they welcome multiple submissions). One will be in collaboration with a colleague at Columbia Teachers College. Are there additional complications I should know about? For example, do we need two separate budgets? If so, are there factors I should keep in mind when deciding whether funds ought to flow through UB or TC to their eventual expense?

Someone will be the lead, the other on a subaward with a scope of work. Then we could put together a quick letter of intent. Sponsoring a grad student: stipend & tuition.

  1. A substantial part of the budget would go toward hiring a teacher I have been collaborating with for the past two years as a consultant to formalize and disseminate a curriculum we have developed together. I assume he would have to go through some kind of SUNY service provider registration to get paid, but are there additional complications I would need to keep in mind at the grant-writing stage? Will there be any kind of overhead? Are there limits on the type or amount of work he can do as a consultant?

We can add consultant costs to the project.