The Sustainability Teams Empower and Amplify Membership in STEM (S-TEAMS), an NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot project, will tackle the problem of persistent underrepresentation by low-income, minority, and women students in STEM disciplines and careers through transdisciplinary teamwork. As science is increasingly done in teams, collaborations bring diversity to research. Diverse interactions can support critical thinking, problem-solving, and is a priority among STEM disciplines. By exploring a set of individual contributors that can be effect change through collective impact, this project will explore alternative approaches to broadly enhance diversity in STEM, such as sense of community and perceived program benefit. The S-TEAMS project relies on the use of sustainability as the organizing frame for the deployment of learning communities (teams) that engage deeply with active learning. Studies on the issue of underrepresentation often cite a feeling of isolation and lack of academically supportive networks with other students like themselves as major reasons for a disinclination to pursue education and careers in STEM, even as the numbers of underrepresented groups are increasing in colleges and universities across the country. The growth of sustainability science provides an excellent opportunity to include students from underrepresented groups in supportive teams working together on problems that require expertise in multiple disciplines. Participating students will develop professional skills and strengthen STEM- and sustainability-specific skills through real-world experience in problem solving and team science. Ultimately this project is expected to help increase the number of qualified professionals in the field of sustainability and the number of minorities in the STEM professions.
While there is certainly a clear need to improve engagement and retention of underrepresented groups across the entire spectrum of STEM education - from K-12 through graduate education, and on through career choices - the explicit focus here is on the undergraduate piece of this critical issue. This approach to teamwork makes STEM socialization integral to the active learning process. Five-member transdisciplinary teams, from disciplines such as biology, chemistry, computer and information sciences, geography, geology, mathematics, physics, and sustainability science, will work together for ten weeks in summer 2018 on real-world projects with corporations, government organizations, and nongovernment organizations. Sustainability teams with low participation by underrepresented groups will be compared to those with high representation to gather insights regarding individual and collective engagement, productivity, and ongoing interest in STEM. Such insights will be used to scale up the effort through partnership with New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability (NJHEPS).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Amy TuiningaAshwani VasishthPankaj Lai
The University of California, Irvine will lead this Design and Development Launch Pilot to engage with collaborators from the Orange County CA STEM Initiative, the Orange County CA Department of Education, the Orange County CA Workforce Investment Board, the Jamboree Affordable Housing Communities, the Orangewood Foundation for Foster and Community Youth Services, OCTANE-Technology Incubator, Project Tomorrow and Growth Section. This project was created in response to the Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES) program solicitation (NSF 16-544). The INCLUDES program is a comprehensive national initiative designed to enhance U.S. leadership in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) discoveries and innovations focused on NSF's commitment to diversity, inclusion, and broadening participation in these fields. The INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilots represent bold, innovative ways for solving a broadening participation challenge in STEM.
The full participation of all of America's STEM talent is critical to the advancement of science and engineering for national security, health and prosperity. Our nation is advancing knowledge and practices to address the computing technology education practices for recruiting, better educating, retaining and graduating a productive STEM workforce. However women who are members of underrepresented minority groups, with low socioeconomic status, historically underperform in STEM and specifically in computing technology. This project, NSF INCLUDES: Supporting Women Advancing Through Technology, has the potential to significantly advance a collaborative approach by a group of organizations to improve the success of poor, underrepresented minority women who are learning computing technology and transitioning to the STEM workforce.
The project will demonstrate the outcomes of computer science training for women, particular disenfranchised and underrepresented minority women that may be exiting foster youth services, living in low income housing, and/or having been denied access to programs particularly in technology due to their socioeconomic status. Partnering organizations will design, develop and launch a short-term, intensive training opportunity in computer science for women ages 16 to 34 who are unemployed or underemployed, and who desire to engage in upward career mobility. The program will include a replicable, custom curriculum and an educational approach that will be scalable. A boot camp will teach the fundamentals of Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS, SQL, JavaScript, and AngularJS, and prepare participants for a career in web development while enabling them to keep their day jobs and have childcare provided. Educating a randomized sample treatment group of up to 150 women in this launch pilot, the partners will also offer internships and/or job shadows, where participants gain client experience, learn from more experienced developers, and continue to build their portfolios. All of the women in the program will receive information, coaching and exposure to college and career opportunities. Job placement in STEM careers is the outcome goal of this design and development launch pilot.
This one-year Collaborative Planning project seeks to bring together an interdisciplinary planning team of informal and formal STEM educators, researchers, scientists, community, and policy experts to identify the elements, activities, and community relationships necessary to cultivate and sustain a thriving regional early childhood (ages 3-6) STEM ecosystem. Based in Southeast San Diego, planning and research will focus on understanding the needs and interests of young Latino dual language learners from low income homes, as well as identify regional assets (e.g., museums, afterschool programs, universities, schools) that could coalesce efforts to systematically increase access to developmentally appropriate informal STEM activities and resources, particularly those focused on engineering and computational thinking. This project has the potential to enhance the infrastructure of early STEM education by providing a model for the planning and development of early childhood focused coalitions around the topic of STEM learning and engagement. In addition, identifying how to bridge STEM learning experiences between home, pre-k learning environments, and formal school addresses a longstanding challenge of sustaining STEM skills as young children transition between environments. The planning process will use an iterative mixed-methods approach to develop both qualitative and quantitative and data. Specific planning strategies include the use of group facilitation techniques such as World Café, graphic recording, and live polling. Planning outcomes include: 1) a literature review on STEM ecosystems; 2) an Early Childhood STEM Community Asset Map of southeast San Diego; 3) a set of proposed design principles for identifying and creating early childhood STEM ecosystems in low income communities; and 4) a theory of action that could guide future design and research. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments.
The Colleges of Science & Engineering and Graduate Education, and the Metro Academies College Success Program (Metro) at San Francisco State University in partnership with San Francisco Unified School District and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce develop an integrated approach for computing education that overcomes obstacles hampering broader participation in the U.S. science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce. The partnership fosters a more diverse and computing-proficient STEM workforce by establishing an inclusive education approach in computer science (CS), information technology, and computer engineering that keeps students at all levels engaged and successful in computing and graduates them STEM career-ready.
Utilizing the collective impact framework maximizes the efficacy of existing regional organizations to broaden participation of groups under-educated in computing. The collective impact model establishes a rich context for organizational engagement in inclusive teaching and learning of CS. The combination of the collective impact model of social agency and direct engagements with communities yields unique insights into the views and experiences of the target population of students and serves as a platform for national scalable networks.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Keith BowmanIlmi YoonLarry HorvathEric HsuJames Ryan
While the term 'failure' brings to mind negative associations, there is a current focus on failure as a driver of innovation and development in many professional fields. It is also emerging from prior research that for STEM professionals and educators, failure plays an important role in designing and making to increase learning, persistence and other noncognitive skills such as self-efficacy and independence. By investigating how youth and educators attend to moments of failure, how they interpret what this means, and how they respond, we will be better able to understand the dynamics of each part of the experience. The research team will be working with youth from urban, suburban and rural settings, students from Title I schools or who qualify for free/reduced-price lunches, those from racial and ethnic minority groups, as well as students who are learning English as a second language. These youth are from groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM and in making, and research indicates they are more likely to experience negative outcomes when they experience failure.
The intellectual merit of this project centers on establishing a baseline understanding of how failure in making is triggered and experienced by youth, what role educators play in the process, and what can be done to increase persistence and learning, rather than failure being an end-state. The research team will investigate these issues through the use of qualitative and quantitative research methods. In particular, the team will design and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions on increasing the abilities of youth and educators in noticing and responding to failures and increasing positive (e.g., resilience) outcomes. Research sites are selected because they will allow collection of data on youth from a wide range of backgrounds. The research team will also work to test and revise their hypothesized model of the influence of factors on persistence through failures in making. This project is a part of NSF's Maker Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) portfolio (NSF 15-086), a collaborative investment of Directorates for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR) and Engineering (ENG).
This one-year Collaborative Planning project seeks to bring together an interdisciplinary planning team of informal and formal STEM educators, researchers, scientists, community, and policy experts to identify the elements, activities, and community relationships necessary to cultivate and sustain a thriving regional early childhood (ages 3-6) STEM ecosystem. Based in Southeast San Diego, planning and research will focus on understanding the needs and interests of young Latino dual language learners from low income homes, as well as identify regional assets (e.g., museums, afterschool programs, universities, schools) that could coalesce efforts to systematically increase access to developmentally appropriate informal STEM activities and resources, particularly those focused on engineering and computational thinking. This project has the potential to enhance the infrastructure of early STEM education by providing a model for the planning and development of early childhood focused coalitions around the topic of STEM learning and engagement. In addition, identifying how to bridge STEM learning experiences between home, pre-k learning environments, and formal school addresses a longstanding challenge of sustaining STEM skills as young children transition between environments.
The planning process will use an iterative mixed-methods approach to develop both qualitative and quantitative and data. Specific planning strategies include the use of group facilitation techniques such as World Café, graphic recording, and live polling. Planning outcomes include: 1) a literature review on STEM ecosystems; 2) an Early Childhood STEM Community Asset Map of southeast San Diego; 3) a set of proposed design principles for identifying and creating early childhood STEM ecosystems in low income communities; and 4) a theory of action that could guide future design and research. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments.
Georgetown County Library will improve the digital-age critical workforce skills of local young people through STEM-related digital activities. Classes relating to online STEM resources, digital video production, and app development will result in increased skills and interpersonal abilities, as well as an appreciation for the public library as a dynamic and informative place. By working with a number of community organizations, the library seeks to reach a local youth community that has historically experienced high rates of poverty and low rates of high school completion, and build on previous efforts to provide job fairs, skills training, and other initiatives.
This pathways project will design, develop and test Do-It-Yourself, (DIY), hands-on workshops to introduce and teach middle school females in underserved Latino communities computing and design by customizing and repurposing e-waste media technology, such as old cell phones or appliances -- items found in the students homes or neighborhoods. The major outcome of the project will be the creation of a workshop kit that covers the processes of DIY electronics learning taking place in the workshops for distribution of the curriculum to after school programs and other informal science venues. The PIs have implemented three pilot projects over the last three years that demonstrate the ability of hands-on DIY electronics curricula to motivate and encourage students and to enable them to acquire a deeper understanding of core engineering, mathematics and science concepts. This project would extend the approach to underserved Latino youth, particular girls of middle school age. This audience was identified because of the historically low rate of participation in STEM fields by people in this group and the particular challenges that females have in acquiring knowledge in technical STEM areas. The proposal suggests that the approach of using hands-on workshops that rely on low technical requirements -- essentially obsolete or discarded electronic equipment, primarily from homes of participants -- will encourage the target audience to experiment with items they are familiar with and that are culturally relevant. The hypothesis of the project is that this approach will lower barriers to experimenting with "circuit bending" - the hand-modifying of battery-powered children's toys to build custom electronic instruments and lead to greater participation and success of females in the target group. The project will provide free workshops in two neighborhood locations and be supported by undergraduate student mentors and volunteers and staff of two community groups that are part of the project, Machine Project and Girls, Inc. Participants will demonstrate the finished projects to the workshop group, mentors and parents. Each participant will receive a copy of the workshop handbook in both English and Spanish to take home so that parents, members of the community and caregivers can supervise and participate in future projects.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Garnet HertzGillian HayesRebecca Black
The purposes of the STUDIO 3D evaluation were to collect information about the impact upon student learning as a result of participating in the STUDIO 3D Project, as well as to elicit information for program improvement. Areas of inquiry include recruiting and retention, impact on project participants, tracking student impacts, and the project as a whole.
This article describes the Multimedia Arts Education Program (MAEP), an ongoing, intensive after school computer-mediated art technology program begun in 1996 by the Tucson Pima Arts Council (TPAC) in Tucson, Arizona. This five-semester program targets at-risk middle school youth from disadvantaged families. Students worked with professional artist/teachers, learning to do computer graphics and publishing, language arts and word processing, computer animation and video production.
Community technology centers (CTCs) help bridge the digital divide for immigrant youth in disadvantaged neighborhoods. A study of six CTCs in California shows that these centers also promote positive youth development for young people who are challenged to straddle two cultures.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Rebecca LondonManuel PastorRachel Rosner
Arizona State University (ASU) in collaboration with Arizona Science Center, Boeing, Intel, Microchip, Motorola, Salt River Project, AZ Foundation for Resource Education, AZ Game & Fish Department, US Partnership for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, Mesa Public Schools, and Boys & Girls Clubs of the East Valley, offer a three-year extracurricular project resulting in IT/STEM-related learning outcomes for 96 participants in grades 7, 8, and 9. The project targets and engages female and minority youth traditionally under-represented in IT/STEM fields in multi-year out-of-school technological design and problem solving experiences. These include summer internships/externships and university research in the science center and industrial settings where participants develop socially responsible solutions for challenging real world problems. The program includes cognitive apprenticeships with diverse mentors, opportunities to practice workplace skills such as leadership, teamwork, time management, creativity and reporting, and use of technological tools to gather and analyze complex data sets. Participants simulate desert tortoise behaviors, research and develop designs to mitigate the urban heat island, build small-scale renewable energy resources, design autonomous rovers capable of navigating Mars-like terrain, and develop a model habitat for humans to live on Mars. Together with their families participants gain first-hand knowledge of IT/STEM career and educational pathways. In addition to youth outcomes, the adults associated with this project are better prepared to positively influence IT/STEM learning experiences for under-represented youth. The evaluation measures participant content knowledge, attitudes and interest in IT/STEM subjects, workplace skills and intentions to pursue IT/STEM educational and career pathways to understand participant reactions, learning, transfer and results. Informal curricula developed through this project, field-tested with youth at Boys & Girls Clubs and youth at Arizona Science Center will be available on the project website.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Tirupalavanam GaneshMonica ElserStephen KrauseDale BakerSharon Robinson-Kurplus