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2024 NSF ITEST PI Meeting Project Summaries
Welcome to the ITEST Project Summaries Library! These one page artifacts were created to share information and unpack project work across the three ITEST pillars 1) Innovative Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning, 2) Partnerships for Career and Workforce Preparation, and 3) Strategies for Equity in STEM Education.
We invite you to search, filter, and explore these pages—and add comments to engage with your colleagues!
This three-year Developing and Testing Innovations project aims to support high school students to develop foundational knowledge in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and interest in AI-rich careers. Luckily AI is a highly interdisciplinary field and AI education can happen in a variety of settings. This project aims to integrate foundational AI education into disciplinary studies to reach students most underrepresented and underserved in the field. The project has the following objectives: (1)…
SRMPmachine is a joint effort of the American Museum of Natural History and Massachusetts Institute of Technology designed to teach high school students machine learning (ML) through scientific inquiry. The project innovates within the Science Research Mentoring Program (SRMP) by creating a 175-hour “Summer Institute in ML,” followed by mentored-research experiences using ML. SRMPmachine focuses on ML, a key subset of AI that allows machines to learn patterns from data to make predictions or…
As AI becomes increasingly integral to a broad range of industries, it is critical that the field develops equitable and justice-oriented instructional models that can support youth to integrate technical knowledge about AI with ethical principles for AI development and deployment. This project will design and study an online course for high school aged youth that is a collaborative learning experience for building workforce skills. The project will strengthen and broaden youth capacity for,…
Project eSPAC3 (pronounced "eh-space") is a four-year National Science Foundation initiative aimed at developing upper-elementary students' spatial computational thinking skills and awareness of computationally-intensive careers, with a focus on celebrating Latinidad. It utilizes Minecraft: Education Edition to create an immersive, culturally affirming learning experience. Through family engagement, near-peer mentorship, and expert modeling via career videos featuring Latin@…
The Connected Spaces (C/S) project consists of a technological toolkit and design framework to connect geographically distributed communities of middle and highschool makers to promote collaboration between peers and facilitate mentorship and technical assistance. The toolkit consists of a suite of four technologies. First, the Dashboard, an ambient profile display for students to showcase their interests as well as evolving skills and affinities across makerspaces to support help seeking among…
The World Smarts STEM Challenge is a virtual exchange that supports STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education in the United States and Ghana. Middle and high school students from Washington, DC, and senior secondary school students from across Ghana come together virtually to solve global issues in their communities with STEM solutions inspired by the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Our work engages high school youth in Massachusetts and Louisiana in transdisciplinary learning of computational science, artificial intelligence, engineering, and restorative ecologies through the installation of automated urban gardening robots that we are calling restorative gardens. These gardens offer an opportunity to bridge traditional gardening and 21st-century technological skills while fostering community engagement by supporting youth in using emerging technologies to address…
The WeatherX project developed and has been studying multi-week curriculum units for middle-school science classes to promote understanding of and interests in fundamental data practices and scientific data careers among students in low-income rural communities. Using WeatherX materials, students work with large-scale data to investigate typical and extreme weather in their local areas and on New Hampshire’s Mount Washington – a place nicknamed “The Home of the World’s Worst Weather.” The…
This Developing and Testing Innovations project leverages innovative technology, using professional-quality music software to teach computer science (CS) in a way that is culturally relevant to students under-represented in computing. This project seeks to leverage innovative music technology to facilitate learning of CS. It seeks to accomplish this through 4 inter-related goals and associated objectives: (1) use design-based research to design an instructional approach that highlights how…
The D&P Challenges in STEM is a novel curricular form that combines features of project-based learning (PBL), design-based learning (DBL), and entrepreneurial-based learning (EBL) within entrepreneurial pitch competitions. Given the growing appeal of entrepreneurship and the often integral role of STEM in entrepreneurial innovation, situating STEM instruction within entrepreneurship could be an effective means for increasing students’ interest and engagement in STEM, while also supporting…