The project aims at helping middle school students understand the relationship between energy, economics, and climate change by monitoring home-energy consumption. Students use energy-monitoring equipment to assess the amount of stand-by power consumed by their home appliances and entertainment devices when these units are powered off. Service-Learning is the theoretical foundation underlying the project, which is based on a student empowerment model that values their contributions to solve problems.

The TECHFIT project fosters middle school student enthusiasm for STEM disciplines. This is accomplished by equipping teachers with skills and tools to engage their students and show them how engineering technology knowledge can help them become innovators of interesting, fun, and valuable products. TECHFIT recruits teams of 2-5 science, technology, math, and physical education teachers from partner schools to complete a 6-day, professional development summer workshop.

Tuskegee University engages 150 students in grades 8-12 in three-week summer workshops featuring STEM content, web-design, the multi-disciplinary area of human-computer interaction, and career study seminars/webinars. Students design a website incorporating STEM content, and then use a technology called eye-tracker to test the effectiveness of their communication. The project design combines three aspects of best practices in learning and extends them to a technology-based pedagogy: writing-to-learn, learning-to-write, and project-based learning.

The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center at the Monterey Community College in collaboration with Washington State University is engaging in a scale-up study of the remote operated vehicle (ROV) program to new audiences of middle and high school students and teachers. Using a train the trainers approach, the MATE ROV project is conducting at least 45 regional professional development workshops in 15 regions for a total of 500 teachers.

This project is developing and testing a collaborative game-based interactive environment where students, ages 12-18 form a product design team to create a concept model and pitch for a sport product design challenge. Participants, sport researchers, and product experts determine the best pitches with awards for top designs. SportsLab:2020 brings together pedagogical frameworks from game- and project-based learning together with design challenge curriculum that foster learning and understanding of 21st Century skills and STEM concepts.

The University of Nebraska partners with the National Center for Research on Rural Education, The Center for Science, Mathematics & Computer Education (UNL), and Nebraska's 18 Educational Service Units (ESU 1-ESU 18) to utilize distance education and communication technologies to provide university outreach opportunities to students and teachers through science research to high schools in Nebraska.

This project is creating a replicable, prototype community-based model for engaging middle and high school students in challenge-based programs such as robotics competitions (Botball and iARoC), engineering challenges (Kid Wind), and research events (Sea Perch). The project is serving 110 teachers and 750 students representing 7 school districts and 75 schools. Partners include organizations that broadly represent the science educational institutions of the San Diego area. There is a cadre of volunteer STEM professionals who are mentoring teachers and students.

Smart Clothing, Smart Girls is a strategy proposal using apparel design as a vehicle to attract middle school girls to STEM learning and engineering careers. Based on a theoretical framework that supports mechanisms for engaging young, female participants in STEM, the project team has thoughtfully designed an intervention that is hands-on, collaborative, and relevant - all combinations that have shown to improve how girls develop STEM identities, build self efficacy, and become motivated to pursue STEM-related activities.

This Learning and Research Center will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by providing technical support to all ITEST projects, facilitating national dissemination of ITEST project outcomes, and further developing the ITEST research and development community.