As the construction industry gears toward adopting data sensing technologies, there is a demand for creating and sustaining a workforce with skills for implementing the technologies and analyzing the resulting data to support decision-making. It is also essential to improve awareness of this Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) career option among all K-12 students, develop their understanding of the applications of data sensing technologies and improve their computational thinking skills in manipulating and using data.

This project uses neural and behavioral measures of learning as a basis for making improvements to an immersive high school course that trains students in flexible spatial cognition and data analysis. Tracking students into college, the project measures long-term effects of improved spatial cognition resulting from the modified geospatial course curriculum. Large-scale longitudinal studies have demonstrated the overwhelming benefit of advanced spatial cognitive abilities for success in STEM careers.

To compete in a continually changing and increasingly technology-focused career landscape, students will need a deep, conceptual, and applied understanding of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Yet, many students, especially students from underrepresented populations, perceive  STEM to be disconnected from their interests and career aspirations. New curricular approaches are needed, especially in mathematics, that increase students’ career interest and engagement in STEM, while also supporting the learning of rich and targeted STEM content.

Computer science knowledge and skills are essential in the digital world. Despite progress in the availability of computer science (CS) coursework in secondary school settings, a number of student groups remain substantially underrepresented in computing. This project aims to broaden youth participation in computing by focusing on innovative technology experiences centered around coding-based music. The project will engage Black, Latinx, and female youth during the critical middle school years when many students decide whether future opportunities in CS merit consideration.

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) by developing and testing a middle school science curriculum focusing on water and water-related career awareness.

This project 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, and mathematics (STEM). Research has indicated limited digital technology use and engineering instruction among elementary teachers. This project addresses two of the seven ITEST guiding questions: student experiences with emerging technologies and instructional and curricular innovations.

This project 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 engaging in hands-on field experience, laboratory/project-based entrepreneurship tasks and mentorship experiences.

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.

This project 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 producing empirical findings and/or research tools that contribute to knowledge about which models and interventions with K-12 students and teachers are most likely to increase capacity in the STEM and STEM-cognate intensive workforce of the future.

This project 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 bringing together youth (grades 2-5), their families, librarians, and professional engineers in an informal environment centered on engaging youth with age-appropriate, technology-rich STEM learning experiences fundamental to the engineering design process.