Welcome to the STEM-ID showcase!

I am a research faculty at Georgia Tech and PI of the NSF DRK-12 STEM-ID project. Our video highlights the middle school engineering courses (STEM-Innovation and Design (STEM-ID). STEM-ID aligns with national math and science standards, promote the use of the engineering design process, introduce students to advanced manufacturing tools, incorporate engineering concepts, increase student awareness of career paths, problem solving, teamwork and communication skills. Three year middle school course sequence was developed as part of another NSF funded project, AMP-IT-UP.  In this new DRK-12 Impact study, we plan to implement the curriculum in 29 middle schools to study the impact in a larger setting.

Please check out the curriculum site, STEM-ID, you can request the full curriculum by sending us an email at ampitup@gatech.edu. 

We look forward to your comments!

Meltem

 Engineering design courses are of a great need at middle school level. It's great to see this project. It seems like this would improve students' 21 century skills, too.  

Thanks so much for this informative video, and congratulations on your recent award that scales your prior AMP IT UP project! When watching this video and reading this abstract, I had two questions that came to mind. The first was surrounding the phrase "interesting and engaging." How do you select or create engineering design challenges that are interesting and engaging to youth? This question becomes even more important when you are seeking to broaden participation among youth with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Second, are the engineering courses mandatory or optional for youth? If they are optional, what strategies do you have in place for recruiting students who might not historically have enrolled in these courses? Thanks again for sharing this work, and I look forward to reading the findings from this study!

Great video. Thanks for sharing the project. The video talks about ensuring that the curriculum works for a diverse range of students. I'm curious to hear more about the strategies that are built into the activities and teacher resources to support this goal. I'm also curious if you've looked at identity negotiation in the classroom around these engineering activities. I did some work on identity and engineering in afterschool settings, so I'd be interested to hear any reflections you have on this topic. Thank you!

Thanks for the question, Scott.  We developed an extensive amount of curriculum for the AMP-IT-UP MSP project.  This included the STEM-ID engineering courses as well as 1-week modules for use in the middle school math and science classes. (For an example of the modules, see our NSF video at https://multiplex.videohall.com/presentations/1... All of the curricula were designed using PBL practices and pedagogy drawn from the science education literature and from How People Learn. Our curriculum design team was rooted in projects such as Learning By Design (Kolodner et al), and Project-Based Inquiry Science.  All activities promote constructivist, collaborative learning and require students to participate in extended, guided inquiry and design challenges that lead to non-convergent solutions. Within the curriculum, teachers are able to arrange groupings and adjust the level of scaffolding to support a diverse range of learners.  This worked well within the initial four middle schools, which were all challenging school settings, and with the handful of additional schools that have adopted the curriculum.  One of the goals of the current project is to identify whether different issues arise in a completely new setting.

We did not look directly at identity negotiations in these classes, though we did build in different roles that rotate between students within their groups.  Meltem led up the research in AMP-IT-UP, so might have more to say about this.

Thank you for sharing this project! This seems like a very interesting program that engages students in various aspects of engineering design, including the use of technology. Scaling up the implementation of the curriculum to 29 schools is wonderful opportunity to collect data on how it’s working in various settings. I appreciated that you incorporated a case study approach in your research design. 

I am curious about how you are measuring academic engagement. Do you have specific instruments you are using for this purpose? Are you developing an observation protocol for the case studies? 

You also mentioned in the video that you are measuring the impact of the professional development. Can you elaborate more on the PD that the teachers receive? It would also be interesting to hear a little bit more about the feedback from teachers who previously implemented AMP-IT-UP courses. Were there any specific challenges they identified? 

What an exciting project, and so impressive that you've had this ability to implement the curriculum and program in multiple schools across the state. We also work with middle school and high school students, although we have more of a focus upon science practices vs. engineering. I noticed that as one outcome measure, you use standardized test scores in science and math--we also use those measures in a number of our programs at the museum, but we often struggle to help a larger audience understand the effect size and what any kind of statistical impact means...especially if it seems relatively 'small.' I'm curious about the effect sizes you've seen and how you have supported conversations about how to make sense of the reliability and validity of test scores as an outcome, as well as to help people not view it as the 'only' important outcome. 

Very interesting work and great video! Is the graph on 00:28 of your video measuring STEM engagement? Why do you think Year 2 and Year 3 had no change for Math? I just requested a copy of the curriculum. I'm very interested in learning more!

Thank you for visiting our site. We found that participating 2 years or more makes a significant impact on the test scores. we some more impact on the science side in terms of test scores, but the cut point was taking the courses at least 2 years during the middle school. Here is the published study about it.

Thank you for requesting the curriculum, please let us know if you have any questions. We are always looking for sites to implement the curriculum. 

Thank you for sharing your meaningful work! I am curious about your 29 engineering teachers. Do they regularly teach only engineering, or are they primarily math and science teachers taking on these new courses? I also wonder, how do schools "fit" these courses into an already filled day? Are they full on courses, small projects that are embedded in their science and math courses, or something else entirely?