HI-TEC 2020: Transforming to a Virtual Event and Dissemination Opportunity

The challenges brought on by COVID-19 have forced the cancellation of conferences and workshops across the U.S. The High Impact Technology Conference (HI-TEC) face-to-face event scheduled for this year has been cancelled. Prior to canceling the in-person conference, significant efforts had gone into creating a program with 92 accepted presentations, 16 workshops, 20 poster presentations and six special interest group meetings, as well as an exhibit hall. This prior work will be leveraged to support the transformation of HI-TEC to a virtual event. HI-TEC has been produced since 2009 by a consortium of centers and projects funded through the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. This conference has provided a national forum for addressing critical issues in advanced technological education. Applications of cutting-edge technology, interactive workshops ,and sessions focusing on a broad range of related topics such as recruitment of diverse and underserved student populations, integration of research into the classroom, faculty development techniques, and best practices in education-industry partnerships have been hallmarks of the conference. This proposal supports transitioning the conference to a virtual event with the theme "Preparing America's Skilled Technical Workforce."

The virtual conference will support two main goals: 1) Engage and continue to build the technical education and workforce development community; and 2) Deepen sharing and broaden the implementation of evidence-based models and best practices for preparing the skilled technical workforce including an emphasis on post-COVID-19 strategies. The conference executive committee will reach out nationally to the technical education community through digital media. The producing NSF ATE centers and projects will participate in the outreach effort by disseminating conference information to their own networks. Keynote speakers who were identified for the face-to-face conference have agreed to speak at the virtual event. Panelists for an industry panel and an educator panel have been identified. Support will be provided to registrants to convert their presentations to a virtual format, and the event will be held using an online platform. Opportunities for audience interaction will be provided and participant questions will be fielded. Sessions will be recorded and made available after the event. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the nation's economy.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.