Physics and astronomy | STELAR - STEM Learning and Research Center

Career Exploration Lab: 3D Printing and STEM Engagement for High School Students with Visual Impairments and their Educators

Poster

The STEM Career Exploration Lab (CEL) program is conducting across the United States a series of summer camps for high school students with Blindness / Visual Impairment (B/VI) to stimulate their interest in STEM fields and STEM careers. We use astronomy and assistive technologies, including 3D printing and 3D printed tactile models, to bolster students' STEM skills.

Accessible Playground Design: A Community-Connected Elementary Engineering Unit Focused on Designing Accessible Playground Equipment

Publications

In the ConnecTions in the Making project, researchers and district partners work to develop and study community-connected, integrated science and engineering curriculum units that support diverse elementary students’ science and engineering ideas, practices, and attitudes. In the community-connected units, students in the third, fourth, and fifth grades use human-centered design strategies to prototype and share functional solutions to a design challenge rooted in the students’ local community while scientifically exploring the phenomena and mechanisms related to the challenge. One of the

Simulation Technology and Student Engagement

Publications

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

Mapping Students’ Engineering Processes with Design Zones

Publications

The engineering design process (EDP) can be a wonderful tool to nurture creative problem-solving abilities, prepare students to tackle problems with intentional planning, and encourage learning from failures. Many lesson plans and instructional strategies are guided by the EDP (Hill Cunningham, Mott, and Hunt 2018). Visual representations of the EDP often show a set of actions arranged in a cycle. For example, many of you are probably familiar with the Engineering is Elementary graphical aid that shows five labeled steps, “Ask, imagine, plan, create, improve” (Museum of Science, Boston 2020)

Embedding Life Design in Future Readiness Efforts to Promote Collective Impact and Economically Sustainable Communities: Conceptual Frameworks and Case Example

Publications

This is the first of two sequential papers describing the design and first-year implementation of a collaborative participatory action research effort between Sociedad Latina, a youth serving organization in Boston, Massachusetts, and Boston University. The collaboration aimed to develop and deliver a combined STEM and career development set of lessons for middle school Latinx youth. In the first paper, life design and the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals are described in relation to the rationale and the design of the career development intervention strategy that aims to help middle school

Make Way for Trains! Holding Back Earth Materials

Curricular Materials

A Community-Connected Elementary Geotechnical Engineering Unit In the “Make Way for Trains” unit (MWT), students explore key concepts of geotechnical engineering in the context of a train track expansion for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA): as railway corridors are widened, the sloping earth material surrounding the tracks must simultaneously support existing structures and not fall onto the tracks. Developed specifically for the Boston, Massachusetts, context, the unit begins with a look at how MBTA workers employ science and engineering for the geotechnical support for

Motion & Design of Accessible Playgrounds A Community-Connected Elementary Science & Engineering Unit

Curricular Materials

In the “Motion and Design of Accessible Playgrounds” unit, 3rd grade students will explore core ideas of balanced and unbalanced forces, changes in motion, and interactions between magnets. They will have an opportunity to extend and refine these ideas as they address engineering and technology standards during an accessible playground design challenge. This teacher guide begins with a navigation guide that overviews each day of the unit, focus questions, NGSS and Massachusetts (MA) standards, and science and engineering practices (SEPs), followed by the detailed lesson plans and required

STEM and MyCAP Lessons

Curricular Materials

Open Access STEM and MyCAP Lessons

SageModeler

Curricular Materials

Simple Systems Modeling Free, web-based, and open-source software to engage students in systems thinking through designing, building, and revising models. An easy to use drag-and-drop tool for basic diagramming of the structure of a system or creation of static equilibrium or time-based dynamic models.

Exploring Waves Through Sound

Curricular Materials

Each of the lessons linked below can be explored independently or within a larger unit of sound/waves. The order below is a recommended learning sequence in exploring the basics of soundwaves. This lesson sequence uses the anchoring phenomenon of a deaf person claiming he can feel music. Throughout each lesson, students will have to use evidence from their activities to explain this phenomenon.

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