Conference Courses

National Conference in Kansas City • Oct. 25-28, 2023

A conference course is a series of sessions—presented by a group of leading experts in an intentional order—to deepen your knowledge of effective research-based approaches about a specific topic.

Conference courses are complimentary to all registered attendees. Attendees who complete a conference course earn a completion certificate, which can be submitted for clock hours or continuing education credits.

Step 1

Add a Course to Your Agenda

Course 1

Assessment

Have you wanted to develop three-dimensional assessments that connect to your curriculum and standards and are coherent to your students? Come join us and work together to design a prototype for a classroom task you can try out with your students using our new NGSS Task Design Workbook. Using lessons we have learned over 10 years of designing NGSS assessments, we will highlight the key elements of 3D assessment design—like problematizing phenomena, centering sense-making, ensuring tasks truly assess your targets at grade-level, and accessibility features that allow all students to make their thinking visible— that distinguish high quality assessments. These high-leverage components of task development will prepare you to adapt and design assessment tasks that center your students and engage them in using the 3Ds for sensemaking. Follow up sessions during the conference will dig deeper into the development and use of 3D assessments, providing useful feedback to students, lessons learned from pilot schools currently developing curriculum aligned assessments, and tangible resources to use with your students.

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Course 2

Crosscutting Concepts (CCC)

Join members of NSTA’s Professional Learning Committee for a deep dive into the crosscutting concepts (CCC) and the essential role they play in building student sensemaking. This conference course is spread out across four sessions and explores foundational aspects of the CCCs and why they are such an important dimension in science learning. Learn how to partner the CCCs with effective classroom discourse strategies, explore how the CCCs open the door for students to make sense of scientific data, and examine how to leverage the CCCs as assessment tools to uncover student thinking and understanding. Additional resources and tips to help you apply this dimension of science learning more effectively will be shared.

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Step 2

Claim Your Certificate & Credits

Claim Your Certificate

To claim your certificate you will need to evaluate the sessions you attended in the session browser and submit your transcript to conferences@nsta.org. Please allow 30 days for the certificate to be issued.

Submit Transcript

Earn Graduate-level Credits

$109 for one credit/unit | $218 for two credits/units

Earn one (1) or two (2) graduate-level credit/units in professional development through Dominican University of California course EDUO 9099. To obtain credit/units, you must be registered for NSTA National Conference in Kansas City and complete the required assignments.

To apply for graduate credit attendees must have a minimum of 8 hours on their transcript