Resources

Understanding high school students’ perceptions and dispositions toward STEM, and the role science and math self-efficacy play in establishing STEM career aspirations is imperative to preparing the STEM workforce of the future. Project STEMulate is an industry-aligned technology-rich Problem-Based Learning (PBL) model. The goal of this NSF ITEST grant-funded study (2018-2020) was to improve students’ attitudes towards STEM. Project STEMulate focuses on Upward Bound students in Hawai'i and was implemented at three sites: University of Hawaiˋi (UH) Maui College, UH Hilo, and Windward Community

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)

This Innovative Practice Work in Progress paper presents Catalyzing Inclusive STEM Experiences All Year Round (CISTEME365), a multi-year project funded by the National Science Foundation. We designed a networked community of middle/high school teachers, counselors, and administrators focused on improved understanding and promoting practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue science, engineering, technology, and mathematics (STEM) careers. We also collaborated with them to implement out-of-school-time STEM clubs that provide engineering design, project-based, and

Many block-based programming environments have proven to be effective at engaging novices in learning programming. However, most restrict access to the outside world, limiting learners to commands and computing resources built in to the environment. Some allow learners to drag and drop files, connect to sensors and robots locally or issue HTTP requests. But in a world where most of the applications in our daily lives are distributed (i.e., their functionality depends on communicating with other programs or accessing resources and data on the internet), the lack of support for beginners to

Applications of Generative Machine Learning techniques such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are used to generate new instances of images, music, text, and videos. While GANs have now become commonplace on social media, a part of children’s lives, and have considerable ethical implications, existing K-12 AI education curricula do not include generative AI. We present a new module, “What are GANs?”, that teaches middle school students how GANs work and how they can create media using GANs. We developed an online, team-based game to simulate how GANs work. Students also interacted with

When designing learning environments and curricula for diverse populations, it is beneficial to connect with learners’ cultural knowledge, and the related interests, they bring to the learning context. To aid in the design and development of a computing curriculum and identify these areas of personal and cultural connection, we conducted a series of participatory design sessions. The goal of these sessions was to collect ideas around ways to make the instructional materials reflect the interests and voices of the learners. In this paper, we examine how the use of participatory design

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

In order to expand opportunities to learn computer science (CS), there is a growing push for inclusion of CS concepts and practices, such as computational thinking (CT), in required subjects like science. Integrated, transdisciplinary (CS/CT+X) approaches have shown promise for broadening access to CS and CT learning opportunities, addressing potential self-selection bias associated with elective CS coursework and afterschool programs, and promoting a more expansive and authentic contextualization of CS work. Emerging research also points to pedagogical strategies that can transcend simply

Fanfiction presents an opportunity as a data source for research in NLP, education, and social science. However, answering specific research questions with this data is difficult, since fanfiction contains more diverse writing styles than formal fiction. We present a text processing pipeline for fanfiction, with a focus on identifying text associated with characters. The pipeline includes modules for character identification and coreference, as well as the attribution of quotes and narration to those characters. Additionally, the pipeline contains a novel approach to character coreference that

Broadening participation in engineering is an important national priority and has led to increasing demands for engineering content to be integrated into traditional K-12 curriculum. However, expecting teachers to incorporate en- gineering into their classrooms without additional training or resources is unreasonable. Partnering teachers with industry partners is one promising way to prioritize integrated science and engineering content while also introducing youth to pos- sible career paths. In this programmatic article, we introduce the Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural