Everyday AI for Youth: Investigating Middle School Teacher Education, Classroom Implementation, and the Associated Student Learning Outcomes of an Innovative AI Curriculum

2021 - 2023

Everyday Artificial Intelligence for Youth (EdAI) addresses the need to develop a diverse workforce with the knowledge and skills to work with Artificial Intelligence (AI). The ubiquity of AI technologies in industry and in daily life calls for accessible and age-appropriate AI preparation of all learners. Broadening participation in AI is important in ensuring that AI technologies of the future are founded on principles of inclusivity and equitability.

Read More

Transforming Preschoolers’ Spatial Orientation: Leveraging New Technologies for Learning in Early Childhood Classrooms and at Home

2021 - 2024

The development of spatial orientation (SO) skills – the ability to identify the position of objects in space – is a strong predictor of math skills and later school success and academic achievement. However, even with the increasing evidence in the importance of SO skills for children, they are rarely included in kindergarten and primary school curriculum. This puts children at a severe learning disadvantage; children who lag behind their peers in school-entry mathematical skills are at high risk to continue to do so.

Read More

STEM Opportunities in Prison Settings (STEM-OPS)

2019 - 2024

Potential STEM talent is lost each day for some of the most underserved and underrepresented populations in our nation's incarcerated men, women, and youth. With years devoid of quality STEM education and opportunities while in prison, incarcerated individuals are often significantly underprepared in STEM and for the STEM workforce. This educational debt exacerbates the pattern of marginalization for these vulnerable populations. Their STEM literacy, employability and potential for earning sustainable wages upon release are stifled.

Read More

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

2020 - 2024

This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase student motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM). For these students with visual impairments (VI), the possibility of a future in astronomy, or any science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field, seems daunting.

Read More

Fostering Joint Parent/Child Engagement in Preschool Computational Thinking by Leveraging Digital Media, Mobile Technology, and Library Settings in Urban and Rural Communities

2020 - 2023

This project will teach foundational computational thinking (CT) concepts to preschoolers by  creating a series of mobile apps to guide families through sequenced sets of videos and  hands-on activities.  To support families at home it would also develop a new library model to build librarians? computational thinking  content knowledge and self-efficacy so they can support parents? efforts with their children.

Read More

Empowering Informal Educators to Prepare Future Generations in Wireless Radio Communications with Mobile Resources

2020 - 2024

Wireless radio communications, such as Wi-Fi, transmit public and private data from one device to another, including cell phones, computers, medical equipment, satellites, space rockets, and air traffic control. Despite their critical role and prevalence, many people are unfamiliar with radio waves, how they are generated and interact with their surroundings, and why they are the basis of modern communication and navigation.

Read More

Influence of Industry-Informed STEM Pathways on Student Experiences and Outcomes in Non-Selective Urban School

2018 - 2022

This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase student motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM). This Industry-Informed STEM Pathways for Students is a project concerned with underrepresentation of people of color and women in STEM fields.

Read More

Seeding the Future of STEM researchers through emerging agricultural technologies

2018 - 2023

Researchers at Boston College will engage high school aged youth in a three-year pathway framework that will engage the youth in conducting authentic scientific research. The project will involve emerging agricultural technologies like transparent soil (a recent discovery which is a hydrogel that behaves like soil), a near-peer and college-focused mentoring model, and interaction with scientists. The youth will learn to build and code Raspberry Pis (small and affordable computers that students can use to learn programming) to share their data with agronomists and plant scientists.

Read More

Beyond Rubrics: Moving Towards Embedded Assessment in Maker Education

2017 - 2019

This project is supported by the STEM+Computing (STEM+C) program, which advances applied research integrating computational thinking and computing activities within disciplinary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics teaching and learning in early childhood education through high school (PreK-12). Because of its fundamental focus on collaborative, iterative, process-based learning--key 21st century skills--maker education's learning outcomes cannot be adequately tracked by tests, the traditional means of assessment in classrooms.

Read More