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1. Gamifying Virtual Exploration of the Past 350 Million Years of Vertebrate Evolution

   https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.836783  

   Mead, Chris ; Bruce, Geoffrey ; Taylor, Wendy ; Buxner, Sanlyn ; Anbar, Ariel D. ( March 2022 , Frontiers in Education)

   Surviving Extinction is an interactive, adaptive, digital learning experience through which students learn about the history of vertebrate evolution over the last 350 million years. This experience is self-contained, providing students with immediate feedback. It is designed to be used in a wide range of educational settings from junior high school (∼12 years old) to university level. Surviving Extinction ’s design draws on effective aspects of existing virtual field trip-based learning experiences. Most important among these is the capacity for students to learn through self-directed virtual explorations of simulated historical ecosystems and significant modern-day geologic field sites. Surviving Extinction alsomore »makes significant innovations beyond what has previously been done in this area, including extensive use of gamified elements such as collectibles and hidden locations. Additionally, it blends scientifically accurate animations with captured media via a user interface that presents an attractive, engaging, and immersive experience. Surviving Extinction has been field-tested with students at the undergraduate, high school, and pre-high school levels to assess how well it achieves the intended learning outcomes. In all settings we found significant gains pre- to post-activity on a knowledge survey with medium to large effect sizes. This evidence of learning is further supported with data from the gamified elements such as the number of locations discovered and total points earned. Surviving Extinction is freely available for use and detailed resources for educators are provided. It is appropriate for a range of undergraduate courses that cover the history of life on Earth, including ones from a biology, ecology, or geology perspective and courses for either majors or non-majors. Additionally, at the high school level, Surviving Extinction is directly appropriate to teaching adaptation, one of the disciplinary core ideas in the Next Generation Science Standards. Beyond providing this resource to the educational community, we hope that the design ideas demonstrated in Surviving Extinction will influence future development of interactive digital learning experiences.« less
2. Adding Authenticity to Inquiry in a First-Year, Research-Based, Biology Laboratory Course

   https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-07-0126  

   Indorf, Jane L. ; Weremijewicz, Joanna ; Janos, David P. ; Gaines, Michael S. ; Hatfull, Graham F. ( September 2019 , CBE—Life Sciences Education)

   Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are an effective way to integrate research into an undergraduate science curriculum and extend research experiences to a large, diverse group of early-career students. We developed a biology CURE at the University of Miami (UM) called the UM Authentic Research Laboratories (UMARL), in which groups of first-year students investigated novel questions and conducted projects of their own design related to the research themes of the faculty instructors. Herein, we describe the implementation and student outcomes of this long-running CURE. Using a national survey of student learning through research experiences in courses, we found that UMARLmore »led to high student self-reported learning gains in research skills such as data analysis and science communication, as well as personal development skills such as self-confidence and self-efficacy. Our analysis of academic outcomes revealed that the odds of students who took UMARL engaging in individual research, graduating with a degree in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) within 4 years, and graduating with honors were 1.5–1.7 times greater than the odds for a matched group of students from UM’s traditional biology labs. The authenticity of UMARL may have fostered students’ confidence that they can do real research, reinforcing their persistence in STEM.« less
3. ABET & Engineering Accreditation - History, Theory, Practice: Initial Findings from a National Study on the Governance of Engineering Education

   Akera, A. ( January 2019 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   Who and by what means do we ensure that engineering education evolves to meet the ever changing needs of our society? This and other papers presented by our research team at this conference offer our initial set of findings from an NSF sponsored collaborative study on engineering education reform. Organized around the notion of higher education governance and the practice of educational reform, our open-ended study is based on conducting semi-structured interviews at over three dozen universities and engineering professional societies and organizations, along with a handful of scholars engaged in engineering education research. Organized as a multi-site, multi-scale study,more »our goal is to document differences in perspectives and interest the exist across organizational levels and institutions, and to describe the coordination that occurs (or fails to occur) in engineering education given the distributed structure of the engineering profession. This paper offers for all engineering educators and administrators a qualitative and retrospective analysis of ABET EC 2000 and its implementation. The paper opens with a historical background on the Engineers Council for Professional Development (ECPD) and engineering accreditation; the rise of quantitative standards during the 1950s as a result of the push to implement an engineering science curriculum appropriate to the Cold War era; EC 2000 and its call for greater emphasis on professional skill sets amidst concerns about US manufacturing productivity and national competitiveness; the development of outcomes assessment and its implementation; and the successive negotiations about assessment practice and the training of both of program evaluators and assessment coordinators for the degree programs undergoing evaluation. It was these negotiations and the evolving practice of assessment that resulted in the latest set of changes in ABET engineering accreditation criteria (“1-7” versus “a-k”). To provide an insight into the origins of EC 2000, the “Gang of Six,” consisting of a group of individuals loyal to ABET who used the pressure exerted by external organizations, along with a shared rhetoric of national competitiveness to forge a common vision organized around the expanded emphasis on professional skill sets. It was also significant that the Gang of Six was aware of the fact that the regional accreditation agencies were already contemplating a shift towards outcomes assessment; several also had a background in industrial engineering. However, this resulted in an assessment protocol for EC 2000 that remained ambiguous about whether the stated learning outcomes (Criterion 3) was something faculty had to demonstrate for all of their students, or whether EC 2000’s main emphasis was continuous improvement. When it proved difficult to demonstrate learning outcomes on the part of all students, ABET itself began to place greater emphasis on total quality management and continuous process improvement (TQM/CPI). This gave institutions an opening to begin using increasingly limited and proximate measures for the “a-k” student outcomes as evidence of effort and improvement. In what social scientific terms would be described as “tactical” resistance to perceived oppressive structures, this enabled ABET coordinators and the faculty in charge of degree programs, many of whom had their own internal improvement processes, to begin referring to the a-k criteria as “difficult to achieve” and “ambiguous,” which they sometimes were. Inconsistencies in evaluation outcomes enabled those most discontented with the a-k student outcomes to use ABET’s own organizational processes to drive the latest revisions to EAC accreditation criteria, although the organization’s own process for member and stakeholder input ultimately restored much of the professional skill sets found in the original EC 2000 criteria. Other refinements were also made to the standard, including a new emphasis on diversity. This said, many within our interview population believe that EC 2000 had already achieved much of the changes it set out to achieve, especially with regards to broader professional skills such as communication, teamwork, and design. Regular faculty review of curricula is now also a more routine part of the engineering education landscape. While programs vary in their engagement with ABET, there are many who are skeptical about whether the new criteria will produce further improvements to their programs, with many arguing that their own internal processes are now the primary drivers for change.« less
4. Scholarship Program Initiative via Recruitment, Innovation, and Transformation

   https://doi.org/10.18260/p.24693  

   Ferguson, Chip ; Yanik, Paul ; Chang, Guanghsu ; Kaul, Sudhir ( June 2015 , American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition)

   The National Science Foundation’s funded ($625,179) SPIRIT: Scholarship Program Initiative via Recruitment, Innovation, and Transformation at Western Carolina University creates a new approach to the recruitment, retention, education, and placement of academically talented and financially needy engineering and engineering technology students. Twenty-Seven new and continuing students were recruited into horizontally and vertically integrated cohorts that will be nurtured and developed in a Project Based Learning (PBL) community characterized by extensive faculty mentoring, fundamental and applied undergraduate research, hands-on design projects, and industry engagement. Our horizontal integration method creates sub-cohorts with same-year students from different disciplines (electrical, mechanical, etc.) to workmore »in an environment that reflects how engineers work in the real world. Our vertical integration method enables sub-cohorts from different years to work together on different stages of projects in a PBL setting. The objectives of the SPIRIT program will ensure an interdisciplinary environment that enhances technical competency through learning outcomes that seek to improve critical skills such as intentional learning, problem solving, teamwork, management, interpersonal communications, and leadership. Support for the student scholars participating in this program incorporates several existing support services offered by the host institution and school, including a university product development center. This paper will discuss several aspects of the program including participant selection and initial cohort demographics; implementation of the vertical-based cohort model in PBL; program and student assessment models; and associated student activities and artifact collection used to foster student success in the program and after graduation. Successful implementation of the SPIRIT program will create a replicable model that will broadly impact 21st century engineering education and workforce preparedness.« less
5. The Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Principal Investigators (PI) Guide: Development of a best practices website.

   Iglesias Pena, Mariangely ; Gilbert, Stephen B ; Payton, Jamie ( June 2018 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   With the help of the National Science Foundation (NSF), many Principal Investigators (PIs) have been able to mentor undergraduates through Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) site awards. These REU sites are critical to the development of future graduate students, but can be challenging to run due to several required skills outside the scope of most faculty members' expertise, e.g., recruiting applicants, navigating the logistics of housing visiting undergraduate students, and tracking student outcomes after their REU experiences. In recent years, REU PIs in NSF's Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) Directorate have come together through PI meetings to sharemore »best practices for running a successful REU site. While PIs inevitably take different approaches to running their sites based on their research projects, there is still a need to provide new PIs with guidance on the different aspects of an REU site such as identifying resources that can assist in recruiting women and underrepresented minority applicants, providing training for graduate students acting as mentors, and strategies for keeping a mentoring connection to undergraduate researchers after they return to their home institutions. Currently, REU site preparation and orientation for new PIs is a face-to-face process that requires careful planning and significant travel costs. The REU PI Guide, a set of web-based resources at https://www.vrac.iastate.edu/cise-reu-pi-resources/, was developed to share best practices of experienced PIs and build capacity within the REU PI community in a more scalable and cost-effective way. The REU PI Guide allows PIs to look up advice and guidance when needed and share their own best practices. This paper describes our approach to designing the REU PI Guide. The Guide is a database of documents, examples, and overviews of the different aspects of running an REU site. The Guide was developed by assessing new PIs' needs at an NSF workshop for new PIs, gathering existing resources from experienced PIs, creating and refining a website, and evaluation with new PIs. The website’s content and design will be refined through on-going feedback from PIs and other REU site stakeholders. This site has the potential broader impact to share best practices with REU PIs outside the CISE directorate and significantly ease the process of engaging future scientists via REU sites.« less