Diversifying the STEM pipeline requires reforming school educator practices to adjust how STEM messaging and learning experiences influence diverse young people’s interests and trajectory into STEM long-term. Catalyzing Inclusive STEM Experiences All Year Round (CISTEME365) is an NSF multi-pronged project designed to offer professional development and networked community for school educators to improve their knowledge and implementation of STEM experiences for their students. We worked with school educators to create and implement informal hands-on activities with STEM technologies for

Distributed computing, computer networking, and the Internet of Things are all around us, yet only computer science and engineering majors learn the technologies that enable our modern lives. This paper introduces PhoneIoT, a mobile app that makes it possible to teach some of the basic concepts of distributed computation and networked sensing to novices. PhoneIoT turns mobile phones and tablets into IoT devices and makes it possible to create highly engaging projects through NetsBlox, an open-source block-based programming environment focused on teaching distributed computing at the high

Given the importance of broadening participation in the field of computing, goals of supporting personal expression and developing a sense of belonging must live alongside the goals of conceptual knowledge and developing disciplinary expertise. Integrating opportunities for students to be creative in how they enact computing ideas plays an important role when designing curricula. We examine how student creativity, as expressed through theme and the use of costumes, backdrops, and narrative in Scratch projects, is affected by using a themed starter project. Starter projects are Scratch projects

This paperpresents the results of an evaluation study on the use of telepresence robots in higher education. For the first time, infour seminars,35 teacher traineestook part both viatelepresence robot andviaSkype videoconference. Overall,we foundthat students showeda high acceptance ofusing telepresence robotsin higher education. Students’ acceptance was already high at the beginning of the seminars, increased further during the seminars,and exceeded the acceptance ofusingconventional videoconferences at the end of the seminars. In addition, students did not find the presence of the robots

Music is a source of joy and identity formation in all cultures and socio-economic strata, and its connections with science, technology, engineering, and math are numerous. One important connection is with the physics of waves. Listening to Waves (LTW) is a program designed to increase adolescents’ interest in STEM through the science of sound and music. Based on LTW’s early experience performing STEM outreach activities in schools, LTW recognized the need to create easily accessible tools for visualizing and manipulating sound. In particular, LTW has been developing browser-based

An authentic learning environment with the integration of technology can effectively engage students and improve their academic performance. Technology can support learning situations that relate to real life, and provide opportunities for inquiry and collaboration, fostering engagement. This paper will provide details of an authentic learning environment that utilizes flight simulation software to engage middle school students in the learning of several math and science concepts. Active learning lessons were developed using missions flown on the flight simulator. The pedagogical approach was

The declining levels of U.S. student achievement in mathematics and science were brought into focus by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which stated that the U.S., especially at the elementary and secondary levels, is struggling to remain competitive with other nations in STEM education (PCAST, 2010). Furthermore, according to a report issued by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NCES, 2015), less than 30 percent of students enrolled in the U.S. are proficient in the areas of science or mathematics. The landscape becomes more troubling when one

This work is part of an ongoing partnership that seeks to create a sustainable infrastructure to support GIS-infused instruction in a large urban school district. In this paper, we report an illustrative cross-case comparison of two teachers’ approaches to infusing GIS in their courses. The goal of this analysis is to examine how GIS-infused instruction is adapted in different contexts and to consider the affordances of divergent approaches. Findings illustrate the relationships among organizational context, individual and collective context, particularly teacher identity, and instructional

Understanding high school students’ perceptions and dispositions toward STEM, and the role science and math self-efficacy play in establishing STEM career aspirations is imperative to preparing the STEM workforce of the future. Project STEMulate is an industry-aligned technology-rich Problem-Based Learning (PBL) model. The goal of this NSF ITEST grant-funded study (2018-2020) was to improve students’ attitudes towards STEM. Project STEMulate focuses on Upward Bound students in Hawai'i and was implemented at three sites: University of Hawaiˋi (UH) Maui College, UH Hilo, and Windward Community

This Innovative Practice Work in Progress paper presents Catalyzing Inclusive STEM Experiences All Year Round (CISTEME365), a multi-year project funded by the National Science Foundation. We designed a networked community of middle/high school teachers, counselors, and administrators focused on improved understanding and promoting practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue science, engineering, technology, and mathematics (STEM) careers. We also collaborated with them to implement out-of-school-time STEM clubs that provide engineering design, project-based, and