The National Science Foundation recently issued a press release announcing the 54 teams that have been selected to advance to the Semi-final Round of the VITAL Prize Challenge. The advancing teams were selected from a group of 100 teams that participated in the Discovery Round, and from an initial application pool of more than 300 teams.
Digital Promise is excited to continue working with these teams during the Semi-final Round as they further develop innovative K-12 learning technologies that will improve the experiences of those who have been historically and systematically excluded from learning and education systems. Participating research and development teams will be given $20,000 to further develop their prototypes. They will also be matched with experienced educator mentors, who receive additional training and stipends of $15,000 for their support in co-designing the solutions from practical, equity-centered perspectives. The Semi-final Round will be led by Digital Promise staff and supported by partner organization, Character Lab.
For this stage of the challenge, Digital Promise has designed learning modules to help researchers and developers collaborate with educators throughout the design and development process to create innovative learning technologies that effectively address the strengths and needs of diverse learners, particularly those who have been systematically and historically excluded. The key learning modules, each with synchronous and asynchronous content, focus on topics such as Equity-centered Research and Design, Designing for Learner Variability, and Designing for Excluded needs.
Semi-finalist teams will be matched with educator mentors for the Semi-final Round. Educator mentors have been carefully selected by the Judging Panel and trained to engage teams in a co-design process to help teams ensure their concepts address the most important challenges for the communities they intend to serve, honor the context and lived experiences relevant to the challenges, and address systemic inequities that impact learners.
Digital Promise has partnered with Character Lab to offer teams additional insights during the design process, specifically from students in the Character Lab Interns Program (CLIP). Through this partnership, teams will have the opportunity to further develop and refine their products by working directly with diverse high school students trained to represent student voice in the research and development process.
At the conclusion of the Semi-final Round, teams will present their revised concepts based on learnings from the Semi-final Round, and the Judging Panel will select 18 teams to advance to the Final Round of the challenge and receive an additional $50,000 to develop their prototype further with the continued access to the support of CLIP student feedback and their dedicated educator mentors.
Visit VITALPrize.org to learn more about the challenge and sign up for the mailing list, and reach out to us with questions at VITALPrize@digitalpromise.org.
