In this paper we lay out our strategy of our Scalable Game Design curriculum, which has been funded through a series of NSF (ITEST Strategy, CE21 Type II, and ITEST Scale Up) grants as well as the Google CS4HS program, and list some research questions relevant to bringing Computer Science education to middle schools.
The STEM College-Going Expectancy Scale (STEM CGES) was developed and validated in two studies conducted during 2010 and 2011. The STEM CGES is a self-report instrument measuring college-going expectancy, specifically for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) domains. In Study 1, 95 students in an urban high school completed an 11-item online questionnaire to measure college-going expectancy in STEM domains. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) retained 6 out of the 11 items for inclusion. In Study 2, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) used data collected from 658 students in
Future school science standards, such as the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), emphasize the integration of simulation and modeling activities in the classroom environment. The extremes of these activities have two vastly different implementations. On one hand, a teacher can have students experiment on a pre-made simulation associated with the material. On the other hand, students can use, for example, an end-user programming tool to create the simulation from scratch. This allows students to not only experiment on, but also, to model the real world phenomenon being studied, a key
In order to get students interested in computing, we teach middle school teachers of different disciplines programming with Alice and work with them on integrating computing into their discipline. Alice provides an interface for novices to create animations easily and quickly, which is attractive to and fun for students. We have been developing Alice curriculum materials for integrating computing into middle school disciplines for six years. Although our target audience is middle school, our materials are used by teachers from elementary school to introductory college level. This paper
Exergaming activities demonstrate how technology could be used as an instrument to reduce the impact of this disease. One can purchase commercial, technology-based exergames such as Nintendo Wii Fit or Xbox Kinect games; however, the authors developed a custom exergame using Phoenix Contact’s Nanoline microcontroller and nano Navigator software flowchart. The beauty of the flowcharting software is that people who have no or little programming experience can easily understand its structure.
This paper describes the journey of a group of university students as they worked with underserved middle school students as mentors in a STEM-based afterschool program. Design thinking provided a frame within which students learned how to be mentors, how to create user-centered learning experiences, and how to share their experiences as developing STEM professionals with middle school students.
Middle school is a crucial stage in student development as students prepare for a fast changing future. The science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills that students acquire in middle school lay the foundation for a successful career in STEM. Moreover, most STEM occupations require competencies in science, math and logical thinking prior to engagement in problem solving. Therefore, it is vital to prepare and develop interest in middle school students to participate in the future STEM workforce. This study examines the impact of hands-on authentic projects on middle school
The purpose of this study was to determine whether the changes found to occur pre- to post intervention in students' cognitive structures continued to persist two years later. Major findings were: 1) higher-order STEM-related constructs established during the treatment year tended to persist two years later, even as component dispositions varied, and 2) gender differences in level of persistence emerged in only one of the four higher-order constructs identified. For the participants taken as a whole, perceptions of science and STEM as a career became more aligned with interest in being a
Findings included that the residential early admissions students had STEM dispositions more similar to STEM professionals and less similar to traditional high school students. Analyses of disaggregated data characteristics based on attributes such as gender are also presented.
In this study we examined three after-school settings for 8 weeks focusing on storyboarding, chatting on a social network site, videotaped conversations with volunteer facilitators, presentations the youth made at the end of the program, and structured interviews with researchers to look for evidence of learning in afterschool spaces.