Visionary Interdisciplinary Teams Advancing Learning (VITAL) Prize Competition Stage 2 Training

Award ID: 2236811

This project will design and implement an eight-week entrepreneurial program for approximately 100 participating teams (each consisting of three researchers within the educational and learning technology field) focused on finding problem-solution fit and developing a minimum viable product (MVP). The training and curriculum proposed will be based on teachings from the NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program and the Lean Startup pedagogy that focuses on the identification of a business model. The curriculum will teach value propositions, stakeholder identification, methods to build customer relationships, and distribution processes. These educational sessions will be interspersed with customer discovery activities as well as interviews with industry experts to expand the teams awareness of the educational/commercial ecosystem. This experience has the potential to provide all teams with the resources and foundational tools necessary to move their proposed innovations in learning and technology out of the lab and into the market. 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.

NSF Program Director: Kerstin Mukerji