skip to main content

Attention:

The NSF Public Access Repository (PAR) system and access will be unavailable from 11:00 PM ET on Friday, December 13 until 2:00 AM ET on Saturday, December 14 due to maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience.


Title: Inquiries and Frameworks: Synergistic Support for STEM Student Interns
Participants of the Institute for Scientist and Engineer Educators’ (ISEE) Professional Development Program (PDP) work in Design Teams to create inquiry activities that foster student learning of relevant STEM content and practices. These teams implement the inquiry activities in one or more teaching venues (i.e., a context in which Design Team members act as instructors or facilitators with actual learners or students). One such venue is the Akamai Internship Program’s PREP Course. Concurrent with running the PDP, ISEE supported the development of frameworks to help Akamai interns understand the projects they undertake during their internship. Two frameworks were developed: one focused on scientific explanations and the other on engineering solutions. This paper describes how PDP inquiry activities and the ISEE Frameworks come together in a mutually supportive manner during the Akamai PREP Course. This synergy becomes apparent as we examine the sequential placement of PREP sessions whereby the frameworks both push interns to make sense of their experiences with such activities (e.g., revisiting the explanation framework after a science-oriented inquiry) and prepare interns for effective engagement in upcoming inquiry activities (e.g., using the solution framework before an engineering-oriented inquiry). Recommendations include using a similar pairing of inquiry activities and frameworks in other teaching venues.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1743117
PAR ID:
10484600
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Editor(s):
Seagroves, Scott; Barnes, Austin; Metevier, Anne; Porter, Jason; Hunter, Lisa
Publisher / Repository:
Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators (ISEE)
Date Published:
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Seagroves, Scott ; Barnes, Austin ; Metevier, Anne ; Porter, Jason ; Hunter, Lisa (Ed.)
    ISEE Professional Development Program Teaching Teams, Akamai interns, and Akamai staff all participate in a multi-day Preparation for Research Experiences and Projects (PREP) course at the start of the annual Akamai Internship Program. One of the goals for the PREP course is to establish an inclusive, collaborative community amongst the varied participants. Integrated with the inquiry activities taught by Teaching Teams are several Akamai-designed and facilitated activities whose purpose is to build community as well as an understanding of and sensitivity towards an inclusive work environment. These activities include an opening icebreaker, a career pathways discussion, workplace integration role-plays, a workplace inclusion discussion, and a closing celebration dinner. This paper highlights specific connections between the Institute for Scientist and Engineer Educators’ Equity & Inclusion strand and the collaborative activities that engage Teaching Teams, interns, and staff during the Akamai PREP course. 
    more » « less
  2. Seagroves, Scott ; Barnes, Austin ; Metevier, Anne ; Porter, Jason ; Hunter, Lisa (Ed.)
    The Akamai Internship in Hawai‘i and the Professional Development Program (PDP) address key issues of sustaining a diverse, equitable, and inclusive STEM workforce in industry and academia. Established in 2002, the Akamai program builds capacity to overcome the brain-drain workforce problem that Hawaiʻi faces by connecting local undergraduate students with internship opportunities in the STEM industries on the islands of Maui and Hawaiʻi. The PDP provides opportunities for graduate students, early-career scientists and industry leaders to learn effective andragogical practices for teaching science and engineering to the next generation at the undergraduate level. A unique, grounding aspect of the Akamai program across all cohorts is a week-long course preparing interns to work with their local industry partners and build an inclusive community. The course is co-led by Akamai program staff and PDP alumni in collaboration with PDP design teams who run complementary inquiry learning activities. Since the first cohort of 2003, 451 interns and around 100 design team members have participated in Akamai. Of the 451 interns who participated in the Akamai program, at least 8 participants have become PDP design team members. The purpose of this panel discussion is to feature four of those alumni that participated in both Akamai and PDP programs. The panelists will share the factors that influenced them to become a PDP instructor as well as highlight the impacts that both programs had in shaping their respective life and career pathways. 
    more » « less
  3. Seagroves, Scott ; Barnes, Austin ; Metevier, Anne ; Porter, Jason ; Hunter, Lisa (Ed.)
    Much of the ISEE Professional Development Program (PDP)’s long-term value arises from participants transferring teaching approaches they develop in the course of designing and facilitating a PDP inquiry activity to other contexts throughout their careers. PDP participants encounter frameworks such as the inquiry framework and the equity and inclusion focus areas, and are encouraged explicitly to become informed consumers of further scholarship on teaching and learning. Many participants resonate especially with the PDP’s emphasis on equity and inclusion in STEM teaching, and meld lessons from the PDP with their lived experiences as well as other scholarship on equity-minded or culturally responsive educational practices. Our panel shares four perspectives on extending lessons from the PDP to new contexts: mentoring students and developing interactive lessons in molecular biology, designing astronomy activities from a culturally relevant and culturally responsive standpoint, incorporating inquiry activities into a large astronomy lecture course, and helping academic programs across a university adopt equity-minded practices for assessing learning outcomes. 
    more » « less
  4. Seagroves, Scott ; Barnes, Austin ; Metevier, Anne ; Porter, Jason ; Hunter, Lisa (Ed.)
    It seems intuitive that effective learning experiences in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) should be inclusive and should mirror authentic STEM as practiced by professionals. However, it is less intuitive what an authentic, inclusive STEM learning experience (AISLE) should look like or include. Over the course of 20 years, the Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators (ISEE) has grappled with this question, developing and refining a framework of six key elements of authentic and inclusive STEM learning experiences. Here, we present this framework, which grew from an exploration of what “scientific inquiry” means in the context of teaching and learning, and expanded to include practices and norms that are valued in engineering fields. ISEE’s framework is the cornerstone of its Professional Development Program (PDP), which trained early-career science and engineering professionals to teach STEM effectively, primarily at the college level, from 2001-2020. In addition to presenting the six elements of this framework, we describe how PDP participants implemented the elements, and we provide recommendations for putting the elements into practice through the design, teaching and assessment of STEM learning experiences. 
    more » « less
  5. Seagroves, Scott ; Barnes, Austin ; Metevier, Anne ; Porter, Jason ; Hunter, Lisa (Ed.)
    As part of the Institute for Scientist and Engineer Educators Professional Development Program (PDP), our team designed an activity for the Akamai internship program’s Preparation for Research Experiences and Projects (PREP) course. The activity focused on content around different renewable energy and storage technologies, and the widely applicable engineering practice of optimization through iteration and evaluating trade-offs. Here we describe the overall activity, with primary emphasis on how the PDP backward design process and integration of the Equity & Inclusion (E&I) theme led us to design and implement a unique model we call the “expert training model” that has important E&I implications. We found that an educational activity design that focuses on E&I considerations, such as identifying multiple ways to productively participate and developing learners’ identity in STEM, simultaneously satisfies criteria for being an engaging and authentic STEM experience. We also reflect on potential pitfalls and ways to improve and adapt this model. 
    more » « less