Engineering | STELAR - STEM Learning and Research Center

Digital Youth Divas: ExploringNarrative-Driven Curriculum to SparkMiddle School Girls’ Interest inComputational Activities

Publications

Women use technology to mediate numerous aspects of their lives, yet women of color are grossly underrepresented in the fields of computer science and engineering. Decisions about participation in STEM are frequently made prior to high school, and these decisions are impacted by prior experience, confidence, and sense of fit with community. The Digital Youth Divas (DYD) is an out-of-school program that uses narrative stories to launch the creation of digital artifacts and support non-dominant middle school girls' STEM interests and identities through virtual and real-world community. This

Indigenous Making and Sharing: Claywork in an Indigenous STEAM Program

Publications

In this article we expand on ideas of making and maker spaces to develop Indigenous making and sharing. We draw from an ArtScience participatory design project that involved Indigenous youth, families, community artists, and scientists in a summer Indigenous STEAM program designed to cultivate social and ecologically just nature-culture relations grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and making. In this article we focus specifically on clay making and the ways in which onto-epistemic heterogeneity can be engaged to create transformative maker spaces. We present findings from an

Framework for P-12 Engineering Learning: A Defined and Cohesive Educational Foundation for P-12 Engineering

Publications

Engineering touches every aspect of human life, from providing access to clean drinking water to 5G telecommunications and vaccine development. Yet few young people ever encounter the subject in school or graduate with the foundational skills and knowledge to pursue engineering studies and careers. Now more than ever, we must inspire and prepare our students to grow into the informed designers and innovators the world needs to solve the tough challenges facing us today and in the future. In short, engineering learning is essential for every child in every school, town, city, and county in the

Take Flight

Poster

Take Flight is a free adaptable school curriculum program developed by Learning Scientists at CAST, the organization that founded Universal Design for Learning (UDL), funded by the National Science Foundation.

Through Take Flight, teachers middle school teacher have access to the curriculum, tools and resources they need to integrate drones into their STEM curriculum to help their students develop STEM skills and increase their motivation to pursue STEM careers.

2nd NSF Webinar for Dear Colleague Letter (NSF 23-115): Advancing Microelectronics Education

Video

In May 2023, The National Science Foundation published NSF 23-115, “Advancing Microelectronics Education” in response to the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (CHIPS Act). This Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) encourages submission of proposals for projects that will excite, motivate and prepare students for

Embodied Interactive Environment for Advancing Data Sensing and Computational Thinking Skills in the Built Environment

2023 - 2027

As the construction industry gears toward adopting data sensing technologies, there is a demand for creating and sustaining a workforce with skills for implementing the technologies and analyzing the resulting data to support decision-making. It is also essential to improve awareness of this Science

Catalyzing Inclusive STEM Experience All Year Round (CISTEME365)

Poster

The CISTEME365 project headquartered at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign hypothesizes that experiences with cutting-edge technology must exist all year-round to effect significant improvement. Thus, the fundamental project goal is to enable middle and high school Underrepresented Students (URSs) in STEM (female, underrepresented minority, and/or low-income) to participate in sustained, intensive, hands-on STEM learning experiences.

Preparing Students for the New Manufacturing Economy: An Integrative Learning Approach

Poster

This project advances a Career & Technical Education employing a Horizontal Learning Model (HLM) integrates knowledge/skills across multiple technology areas within an authentic practice. The HLM organizes learning expansively through a series of graduated projects that allows students to contextualize learning across fields by integrating skills and knowledge across constituent domains progressively.

Robot-Mediated Learning: Exploring School-Deployed Collaborative Robots

Poster

Project Overview: Advance robot-mediated learning in schools and investigate how collaborative tele-robots can facilitate optimal learning experiences.

Build a Better Book Teen Internships: Connecting Technical Work to Social Needs

Poster

The Build a Better Book Teen Internship Program engages teens from underrepresented groups in an empathy-driven, professionally structured engineering design internship focused on the design and fabrication of accessible products for children who are blind or visually impaired. Participating teens gain technical and STEM workplace skills, and broaden their perception of engineering as a social and collaborative discipline with potential to improve people’s lives.

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