Search for: All records

The Adapting an Experiment-Centric Teaching Approach to Increase Student Achievement in Multiple STEM Disciplines is a sponsored experiment-focused hands-on teaching pedagogy developed to promote motivation and academic achievement across seven STEM disciplines. The program is a large educational program with multi-Department STEM projects comprising approximately 200 tasks and 40 personnel. To facilitate the successful implementation of this STEM program, an efficient project management tool called Smartsheet was adopted to manage all the tasks to be carried out and the activities involved. Smartsheet software has helped facilitate efficient project coordination, scheduling deliverables, communicating with and assigning tasks to project team members, monitoring performance, and evaluation. The Smartsheet is a project management tool developed for coordinating and monitoring project activities, promoting productive guidance, efficient communication, appropriate supervision of the project team, optimization of the necessary allocated inputs, and their application to meeting the program’s objectives. The paper describes the effectiveness of the team as we utilized project management tools in managing this large group of STEM projects over the past three years. Additionally, the paper elaborates on the social management theoretical framework on which the project management principles are hinged. The impactful outcomes of the STEM program in increasing academic performance as well as improving key constructs associated with student success such as motivation, epistemic and perceptual curiosity, engineering identity, and selfefficacy through the team effectiveness metrics and the results of the Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis presented in the paper revealed an efficient management strategy anchored on the social management theoretical framework and facilitated by the project management tool. 

The COVID-19 pandemic grounded the implementation of many research projects. However, with the intervention of the NSF research grant awarded to a Historically Black College and University (HBCU), with a specific goal to increase students’ achievement in multiple STEM disciplines, the pandemic challenges provided opportunities to effectively achieve the project objectives. The Adapting an Experiment-centric Teaching Approach to Increase Student Achievement in Multiple STEM Disciplines (ETA-STEM) project aims to implement an evidence-based, experiment-focused teaching approach called Experimental Centric Pedagogy (ECP) in multiple STEM disciplines. The ECP has been shown to motivate students and increase the academic success of minority students in electrical engineering in various institutions. During the Summer of 2020, the ETA-STEM Trainees engaged in research activities to develop three instruments in their respective disciplines. This paper highlights the strategic planning of the project management team, the implementation of the ECP, a comprehensive breakdown of activities and an evaluation of effectiveness of the virtual training. The 13-week intensive virtual training using Canvas learning management system and zoom virtual platform provided the opportunity to effectively interact and collaborate with project team members. Some of the summer training activities and topics included: instrumentation and measurements in STEM fields, sensors and signal conditioning, assessing the performance of instruments and sensors, effective library and literature search, introduction to education research, writing excellent scientific papers, as well as the implementation and development of ECP curriculum with focus on home-based experiment. Prior to the training, ECP kits were shipped to the team and facilitators fully utilized the virtual platform to collaborate with team members. Overall, there was a great satisfaction and confidence with the participants designing three home-based experiments using the M1K and M2K analog devices. 

With support from the National Science Foundation, an evidence-based experimental centric pedagogy (ECP) is being implemented across STEM disciplines at an historically black university. This is the first of its kind, where the ECP is being extended to several STEM disciplines after its successful implementation in electrical engineering to promote motivation and enhance academic achievement of minority students. One of the project objectives is to organize workshops whereby STEM faculty in biology, chemistry, physics, civil engineering, computer science, industrial engineering and transportation systems will learn how to develop and implement ECP as an active learning pedagogy. This paper highlights the strategies used for planning, publicity, implementation, and assessment of the workshop conducted in Summer 2020. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the workshop was held virtually with 360 participants registering globally. The workshop’s focus was developing and implementing inexpensive home-based hands-on learning activities. Workshop assessment revealed that participants expressed positive outcomes, 84% reported that they believe the workshop was a good use of their time and 83% said they plan to implement what they had learned at the workshop in their own practice, affording the participants more opportunities to include home-based hands-on learning in their curriculum. This project seeks not only to increase public scientific literacy, but to also contribute to the development of a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce. 

The current COVID-19 pandemic has forced many colleges and universities to remain on a completely online or remote educational learning environment for the 2020 Spring and Fall semesters, however there is a growing concern in STEM fields about how students will be able to achieve one of the major ABET learning outcomes without conducting physical, hands on laboratory exercises as many STEM disciplines are switching to virtual laboratory; an ability to develop and conduct appropriate experimentation, analyze and interpret data, and use engineering/scientific judgment to draw conclusions. In addition to the limited achievement of the ABET outcomes, roughly half of the population of a historically black university communicated their anxieties during the pandemic to the University President via Change.org. The students’ main anxiety is portrayed in a statement culled from the petition as follows: “Most classes are very hands-on, and we are not able to do those from home because of the limited resources available at home”. This paper highlights the best practices for the implementation of home-based hands-on activities across multiple STEM fields. The paper further elaborates on the impact of remote and virtual labs on students’ attitude, interest, and performance in STEM over the home-based hands-on experimentation. Home-based hands-on laboratory activities were performed in biology, electrical engineering, industrial engineering, transportation system, and civil engineering. The results of a Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaires (MLSQ) survey that was administered to about 100 STEM students revealed better gains in key constructs associated with student success, such as motivation, critical thinking, and metacognition.