ITEST Projects

This project will develop a suite of digital tools designed to support positive messaging around skill-based education and careers and to improve mentors' communication with middle school-aged youth mentees. Maintaining U.S. economic advantage requires attracting talent to high-growth, high-demand skill-based, STEM-related careers that are traditionally attained through Career and Technical Education (CTE). Replacing old negative perceptions with new, more accurate messages about CTE and then reaching youth with these messages before high school is essential. Career-focused mentoring is a vehicle for delivering these messages and supporting youth exploration of CTE as a possible path for their own lives.

The University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Hall of Science plans a five-year project to investigate the capacity of a previously developed clean energy-focused intervention model to affect positive learning outcomes and greater career awareness among a broader audience of under-represented group students aged 14-16.

Nationwide, middle-school youth from underrepresented communities have few opportunities to engage in authentic STEM investigations that build on the students' intrinsic interests in space science and robotics to increase their interests in both ICT and STEM careers.

Involving more students from urban and rural areas in STEM fields and careers has been at the forefront of national STEM education reform efforts for decades. Research shows that engaging these students in STEM activities relevant to their everyday lives is critical to increasing their motivation, interest, learning, and participation in STEM.

The main goal of this Strategies project is to experiment with new content and methods for engaging students who are underrepresented in STEM fields in the computing sciences via a place- based curriculum that asks students critical questions about the environment and culture of their own region.

Building on the highly energized national Maker's Movement involving government offices, schools, and businesses now sweeping the country, this project will explore ways to engage more children in the effort and become motivated and interested in STEM. The project will target 200 children at grades 3-5 to involve them in the "Maker's mindset" from an early age.

Project ReCharge will engage middle school and high school students as energy detectives in their schools. Using tablet computers to collect data on school energy use, students will learn to track electrical loads in their buildings.

This project innovatively aims to motivate early teens to pursue careers in engineering and computer science through an afterschool program. This program combines these subjects with business entrepreneurship by engaging students in designing computer science and engineering products.

STEM Career Clubs builds on a successful and research-based Strategic Teaming Model to increase the likelihood that participating students will pursue STEM majors and careers.

To address the needs of the US to increase the ICT workforce with enhanced preparation and a diverse population of prepared secondary students, this strategies ITEST project will strengthen the current regional partnerships in place between secondary schools, the University of Cincinnati's IT and STEM education programs, and local industries.