Considerations for Participant Stipends

How to Evaluate "Full and Active Participation"

As the COE CS Champion responsible for coordinating Seasons of CS workshops in your region, you shall report a list of participants who fully and actively participated in each workshop you coordinate. Because your workshops may be virtual and may include educators from across California, you should be aware of unique situations that don’t necessarily meet the “full and active” participation definition:

• A participant logs into the workshop Zoom Meeting, completes the Seasons of CS Sign-In Form, and signs off from the workshop after 15 minutes.

• A participant attends the virtual workshop for the specified time, but does not turn on his/her/their camera, doesn’t engage in the chat, and doesn’t participate in whole-group and breakout room activities

• A participant registers for a workshop and delegates an AI Assistant/Notetaking bot to attend the workshop on his/her/their behalf.

• A participant appears to fully and actively participate in your workshop; he/she/they were attending another virtual Seasons of CS workshop simultaneously, as demonstrated by workshop attendance data in the Seasons of CS database.

• A participant fully and actively participates in the synchronous portion of your workshop but does not complete the asynchronous activity by the assigned due date; he/she/they request a partial stipend, which is not something that is offered as a part of the Seasons of CS model.

• A participant attends the synchronous workshop for a short period of time but completes the asynchronous assignment and requests full/partial stipend.

Above are examples of unique participation situations that are not considered full and active participation. This list will likely grow as we continue to encounter unique situations. We are stewards of the California taxpayer dollars that will be used to pay participant stipends; as such, we need to apply scrutiny when verifying full and active participation. When you verify full and active participation, you are giving your approval to the CDE Foundation to issue the stipend.

While verifying participation, you might consider these recommendations from the Seasons of CS Leadership Team:

• Apply the full and active participation definition that is presented to participants on the Seasons of CS website and the Seasons of CS Sign-In form to your review.

• Whether in-person or virtual, a participant should be fully and actively participating in your workshop for at least 67% of the scheduled time.

• So, if you are hosting a 3-hour workshop, you should expect that a participant attend at least 2 hours of the workshop.

• This recommendation is NOT published on the Seasons of CS website, and we do not recommend that you share this with potential participants.

You may be asked to respond to inquiries sent to the public Seasons of CS email account ([e-mail]) from participants of a workshop that you coordinate that question “full and active participation” decisions. These inquiries will be forwarded to you, and we ask that you respond in a timely manner, which the CDE Foundation considers to be within two business days.