Designing a Curriculum to Broaden Middle School Students’ Ideas and Interest in Engineering
As the 21st century progresses, engineers will play critical roles in addressing complex societal problems such as climate change and nutrient pollution. Research has shown that more diverse teams lead to more creative and effective solutions (Smith-Doerr et al., 2017). However, while some progress has been made in increasing the number of women and people of color, 83% of employed engineers are male and 68% of engineers are white (NSF & NCSES, 2019). Traditional K–12 approaches to engineering often emphasize construction using a trial-and-error approach (ASEE, 2020). Although this approach may appeal to some students, it may alienate other students who then view engineering simply as “building things.” Designing engineering experiences that broaden students’ ideas about engineering, may help diversify the students entering the engineering pipeline.
To this end, we developed Solving Community Problems with Engineering (SCoPE), an engineering curriculum that engages seventh-grade students in a three-week capstone project focusing on nutrient pollution in their local watershed. SCoPE engages students with the problem through local news articles about nutrient pollution and images of algae covered lakes, which then drives the investigation into the detrimental processes caused by excess nutrients entering bodies of water from sources such as fertilizer and wastewater. Students research the sources of nutrient pollution and potential solutions, and use simulations to investigate key variables and optimize the types of strategies for effectively decreasing and managing nutrient pollution to help develop their plans.
Throughout the development process, we worked with a middle school STEM teacher to ensure the unit builds upon the science curriculum and the activities would be engaging and meaningful to students. The problem and location were chosen to illustrate that engineers can solve problems relevant to rural communities. Since people in rural locations tend to remain very connected to their communities throughout their lives, it is important to illustrate that engineering could be a relevant and viable career near home.
The SCoPE curriculum was piloted with two teachers and 147 seventh grade students in a rural public school. Surveys and student drawings of engineers before and after implementation of the curriculum were used to characterize changes in students’ interest and beliefs about engineering. After completing the SCoPE curriculum, students’ ideas about engineers’ activities and the types of problems they solve were broadened. Students were 53% more likely to believe that engineers can protect the environment and 23% more likely to believe that they can identify problems in the community to solve (p < 0.001). When asked to draw an engineer, students were 1.3 times more likely to include nature/environment/agriculture (p < 0.01) and 3 times more likely to show engineers helping people in the community (p< 0.05) Additionally, while boys’ interest in science and engineering did not significantly change, girls’ interest in engineering and confidence in becoming an engineer significantly increased (Cohen’s D = 0.28, p<0.05).
The SCoPE curriculum is available on PBS LearningMedia: https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/solving-community-problems-with-engineering/
This project was funded by NSF through the Division of Engineering Education and Centers, Research in the Formation of Engineers program #202076.
References
American Society for Engineering Education. (2020). Framework for P-12 Engineering Learning. Washington, DC. DOI: 10.18260/1-100-1153
National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. (2019). Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2019. Special Report NSF 17-310. Arlington, VA. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf21321/.
Smith-Doerr, L., Alegria, S., & Sacco, T. (2017). How Diversity Matters in the US Science and Engineering Workforce: A Critical Review Considering Integration in Teams, Fields, and Organizational Contexts, Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 3, 139-153.
more »
« less
Detection of Collaboration: Relationship Between Log and Speech-Based Classification
Research in the field of collaboration shows that students do not spontaneously collaborate with each other. A system that can measure collaboration in real time could be useful by, for example, helping the teacher locate a group requiring guidance. To address this challenge, my research focuses on building and comparing collaboration detectors for different types of classroom problem solving activities, such as card sorting and hand writing. I am also studying transfer: how collaboration detectors for one task can be used with a new task. Finally, we attempt to build a teachers dashboard that can describe reasoning behind the triggered alerts thereby helping the teachers with insights to aid the collaborative activity. Data for building such detectors were collected in the form of verbal interaction and user action logs from students’ tablets. Three qualitative levels of interactivity was distinguished: Collaboration, Cooperation and Asymmetric Contribution. Machine learning was used to induce a classifier that can assign a code for every episode based on the set of features. Our preliminary results indicate that machine learned classifiers were reliable.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1840051
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10185612
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Artificial Intelligence in Education, AIED 2019
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 327-331
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
null (Ed.)A key strategy for bringing computer science (CS) education to all students is the integration of computational thinking (CT) into core curriculum in elementary school. But teachers want to know how they can do this on top of their existing priorities. In this paper, we describe how our research-practice partnership is working to motivate, prepare, and support an elementary school to integrate equitable and inclusive computer science into core curriculum. Data were collected from teachers at a K-5 school where 65% of students are Hispanic or Latinx, 46% are English Learners, and 65% are eligible for free or reduced lunch. Data included semi-structured interviews, educators’ written reflections, and observations of classroom implementation and professional development. The findings show how the school is building buy-in and capacity among teachers by using a coaching cycle led by a Teacher on Special Assignment. The cycle of preparation, implementation, and reflection demystifies CS by helping teachers design, test, and revise coherent lesson sequences that integrate CT into their lessons. Contrasting case studies are used to illustrate what teachers learned from the cycle, including the teachers’ reasons for the integration, adaptations they made to promote equity, what the teachers noticed about their students engaging in CT, and their next steps. We discuss the strengths and the limitations of this approach to bringing CS for All.more » « less
-
Collaboration is a 21st Century skill as well as an effective method for learning, so detection of collaboration is important for both assessment and instruction. Speech-based collaboration detection can be quite accurate but collecting the speech of students in classrooms can raise privacy issues. An alternative is to send only whether or not the student is speaking. That is, the speech signal is processed at the microphone by a voice activity detector before being transmitted to the collaboration detector. Because the transmitted signal is binary (1 = speaking, 0 = silence), this method mitigates privacy issues. However, it may harm the accuracy of collaboration detection. To find out how much harm is done, this study compared the relative effectiveness of collaboration detectors based either on the binary signal or high-quality audio. Pairs of students were asked to work together on solving complex math problems. Three qualitative levels of interactivity was distinguished: Interaction, Cooperation and Other. Human coders used richer data (several audio and video streams) to choose the code for each episode. Machine learning was used to induce a detector to assign a code for every episode based on the features. The binary-based collaboration detectors delivered only slightly less accuracy than collaboration detectors based on the high quality audio signal.more » « less
-
International collaborations for community colleges are important for students who will be competing for employment yet are often overlooked due to the perception that international means expensive. The International Education Initiative (IEI) provides opportunities for international collaboration among community college faculty and students. The IEI is a multi-tiered program that allows different levels of participation and cost for faculty and students through funding from the National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education Program and the French Embassy in the United States. While the main focus is engineering and technology courses, partners have also included business and communications classes, creating a truly interdisciplinary program. Students participating in these programs can expect to have greater cross-cultural maturity and awareness of the wider world, increased confidence in finding future success in the global workforce, and increased ability to deploy 21st Century skills such as technology and teamwork. Faculty participating in the program can expect to have increased confidence and skills in faculty to support students in achieving 21st century skills; increased ability to co-teach and work effectively with and overseas partner, and more motivation and readiness to sustain overseas partnerships and help grow the international program. The Connecticut Collaborative Learning for International Capabilities and Knowledge (CT CLICKs) provides the opportunity for students to receive a global experience as part of a course they are already taking. During the first year of the program, Faculty from Connecticut community colleges partnered with faculty from French Insitituts universitaires de technologie (IUTs), French equivalent of community colleges, to co-teach curriculum modules to their participating classes. The second year added the option of co-facilitating a project between the two classes. All teaching, assignments, and projects were completed through virtual platforms. Several travel opportunities have been provided for student and faculty participants. These have either been through the attendance of international technology bootcamps that were organized by the French Embassy or a partner IUT or through a travel program organized by the IEI. Both travel options include experiences that provide an overview of French engineering and technology education, industry, history, and culture. A faculty recruitment and preparation model has been created to continuously onboard new faculty for the IEI program. The model includes a program overview workshop, partner matching, and curriculum design workshop that all take place virtually. The CT CLICKs program has built steadily and quickly. The number of teachers participating grew from 6 to 29 in the first three years with more than 6 teachers repeating or developing new modules. A total of 334 students have participated in the CT CLICKs program since fall 2017. The number of Connecticut campuses grew from 1 to 8 and overseas partner campuses grew from 2 to 5. Participant survey data shows that the program is continuously improving in helping students gain a better worldview and how to collaborate cross-culturally and helping faculty incorporate international collaboration into their courses.more » « less
-
International collaborations for community colleges are important for students who will be competing for employment yet are often overlooked due to the perception that international means expensive. The International Education Initiative (IEI) provides opportunities for international collaboration among community college faculty and students. The IEI is a multi-tiered program that allows different levels of participation and cost for faculty and students through funding from the National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education Program and the French Embassy in the United States. While the main focus is engineering and technology courses, partners have also included business and communications classes, creating a truly interdisciplinary program. Students participating in these programs can expect to have greater cross-cultural maturity and awareness of the wider world, increased confidence in finding future success in the global workforce, and increased ability to deploy 21st Century skills such as technology and teamwork. Faculty participating in the program can expect to have increased confidence and skills in faculty to support students in achieving 21st century skills; increased ability to co-teach and work effectively with and overseas partner, and more motivation and readiness to sustain overseas partnerships and help grow the international program. The Connecticut Collaborative Learning for International Capabilities and Knowledge (CT CLICKs) provides the opportunity for students to receive a global experience as part of a course they are already taking. During the first year of the program, Faculty from Connecticut community colleges partnered with faculty from French Insitituts universitaires de technologie (IUTs), French equivalent of community colleges, to co-teach curriculum modules to their participating classes. The second year added the option of co-facilitating a project between the two classes. All teaching, assignments, and projects were completed through virtual platforms. Several travel opportunities have been provided for student and faculty participants. These have either been through the attendance of international technology bootcamps that were organized by the French Embassy or a partner IUT or through a travel program organized by the IEI. Both travel options include experiences that provide an overview of French engineering and technology education, industry, history, and culture. A faculty recruitment and preparation model has been created to continuously onboard new faculty for the IEI program. The model includes a program overview workshop, partner matching, and curriculum design workshop that all take place virtually. The CT CLICKs program has built steadily and quickly. The number of teachers participating grew from 6 to 29 in the first three years with more than 6 teachers repeating or developing new modules. A total of 334 students have participated in the CT CLICKs program since fall 2017. The number of Connecticut campuses grew from 1 to 8 and overseas partner campuses grew from 2 to 5. Participant survey data shows that the program is continuously improving in helping students gain a better worldview and how to collaborate cross-culturally and helping faculty incorporate international collaboration into their courses.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23207-8_60
