The iDesign project engages underrepresented youth in creating computer games that are culturally and socially relevant. By engaging participants in the culture of information technology, the project is designed to move them from playing computer games to using tools that require programming and computation skills. The project culminates in the dissemination of a game-design curriculum that other after school programs can use.

This ITEST strategies project is providing high school students with experiences in robotics to galvanize their interest in STEM and prepare them for STEM programs at the college level. The project is delivering a pre-engineering experience, advanced math coursework, and project-based instruction. High school teachers receive technical training to build their STEM teaching competencies. Over 100 underrepresented students are being recruited from MC2 STEM High School in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

Bits-2-Bites is a strategies project that will engage middle school and high school students in learning to apply computational thinking and computer based tools to address STEM related community issues. Participants will learn about the biology and chemistry of food science, nutrition, food production, environmental sustainability, and how they relate to relevant community health issues such as the proliferation of obesity and diabetes.

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 SISTERS project reinforces the school curriculum through a theory-driven, after- school science and engineering education program for girls in grades 5 and 6 from low income communities. The girls are engaged in science and engineering lessons with technology-rich, hands-on experiences which foster critical thinking, and engineering practices. They discover and come to appreciate the iterative research process and learn the proper use of technological resources which builds their confidence in pursuing future STEM learning and careers.

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 Memphis Virtual STEM Academy at East High School project investigates the implementation of a virtual STEM curriculum that utilizes self-paced modules, face-to-face STEM laboratory projects, and field experiences designed to help students (grades 9-12) understand pre-engineering concepts and principles as well as develop an interest in and motivation to pursue STEM and ICT careers.

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.

The Howard University multimedia educational pilot project will design, develop, and test an innovative science education model and materials to motivate high school students in grades 10-11 to become interested in pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education by learning physics, astronomy, and cosmology (PAC) in multi-modal innovative ways.