The Florida Center for Research in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (FCR–STEM) was created by the Florida Legislature and competitively awarded to Florida State University in 2007. It is another highly respected center operated by LSI faculty and staff.

The mission of FCR-STEM is to help the State of Florida improve STEM teaching and learning in grades K- 12 and prepare students for higher education and STEM careers in the 21st century. Through impacts on teacher knowledge and classroom practice, FCR-STEM strives to improve student achievement, narrow student achievement gaps, and increase student pursuit in STEM fields.

These broad goals are addressed primarily through high-quality research, teacher professional development, and the development of innovative resources and tools to support instruction aligned with curriculum standards.

Among FCR-STEM’s significant accomplishments are the impacts of professional development on teacher and student outcomes, the design and delivery of intensive professional development for over 40,000 teachers in Florida, and the development of CPALMS (www.cpalms.org).

Through research conducted at FCR-STEM, our staff works to answer the question, “How can we improve STEM integration and teaching and learning for all students?” Our staff advocates for a scientific approach to educational research and supports the use of open science and experimental design in our work. The work includes reports of the impact of educational interventions on student learning in mathematics and statistics through various teacher learning programs involving formative assessment, Cognitively Guided Instruction, lesson study, and statistics curriculum and professional learning opportunities.
 

CPALMS Impact

CPALMS now offers more than 13,000 high-quality educational resources developed by FSU faculty and K-12 educators. During the pandemic, LSI made all the CPALMS resources accessible to students, parents, and educators around the globe to support them in teaching and learning from home. More than 20 million students depended on CPALMS during that period. Since CPALMS started offering educational resources, more than one billion resource views/downloads have been delivered. During the last year, CPALMS had more than 70 million resources delivered to Florida’s educators and students. A unique type of resource, CPALMS includes 500+ Perspectives Videos which are standards-aligned short (~5-min.) video resources highlighting experiences and ideas from experts, teachers, professionals, and skilled enthusiasts. The CPALMS video production team ensures videos are ready for teachers and students to understand technical content, learn new approaches to teaching, and highlight the appearance of STEM concepts in practical, real-world situations.

Original Student Tutorials

CPALMS also features over 1,300 Student Tutorials which are interactive online lessons for students to explore math, science, English language arts, and social studies content. The development of these tutorials is a collaboration between K-12 educators, subject specialists, instructional designers, graphic designers, narrators, and others who collectively spend 200-400 labor hours to create each tutorial. During the last year, several tutorials crossed a million views.

CPALMS.org

Where Educators Go For Bright Ideas
CPALMS is an online toolbox of information, free vetted resources, and interactive tools to help educators effectively implement teaching standards.
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IMPACT Driven

• More than 1,000,000,000 resource downloads on CPALMS.org
• Over 260,000 Florida educators have an active CPALMS account
• Approximately 3M FLorida students actively use CPALMS
• 13,000+ free resources
• More than 40,000 Florida teachers have received training from CPALMS.

Recent FCR-STEM Projects