Thank you for viewing the video preview of our PK-12 resources resulting from Building a Strong Workforce Alliance for Biofabrication & Bioengineering through K-12 Education!  We hope to impact our little learners with dreams of becoming scientists and engineers by empowering their participation in learning science. Our STEM from the Start episode helps PK-2 teachers with lesson organization and challenges with help from alien Quinks that our students love! Our elementary, middle, and high school units utilize storylines and curriculum connections from foundational science to limb regeneration and homeostasis! Our diverse Scientist Profile videos foster learning about workplace skills, science and engineering practices, and varied academic pathways to successful careers. Students see themselves in the scientists' roles, and their very human stories will warm your heart, as will their passion for “doing cutting-edge scientific work" to improve human lives!

We are very interested to hear from you and your teachers about your experiences with our lessons and video resources.  As we are just finishing up our project, we appreciate your suggestions for measuring the impact of our resources.

• How do they motivate students to want to learn more?


• How do teachers use them in classrooms to raise student aspirations?


• What measurements of impact might you suggest for us to employ?

Please, also raise any questions you might have about these resources.  We continue to learn with every workshop and interaction, and we appreciate your questions, clarifications, and ideas!

Hi Barbara. Great project! I love the range of topics you cover and the fact that this is Open Source and freely available to use and mix into curriculum at different grade levels. One of my wildest dreams for education is to break walls down between our classrooms and I see this kind of content as material that could be used simultaneously by different classrooms that can then interact with each other through virtual discussions, projects, etc. This allows teachers to be mentors rather than experts and everyone can learn together. Great job!

Thanks so much Lisa!  We are definitely on the same team for breaking the artificial barriers with traditional fields of study! At our BioFab Conferences, I have heard time and time again about the "silos" in these cutting-edge areas and how they inhibit innovation, growth, and economic progress. We need a workforce that moves beyond categories and sees the potential in every student. PK-2 is not too early, because they are already dreaming about what they want to become!

YOU ARE SO RIGHT! Thank you for all of your efforts. We will get there together.

This is great, I love the phenomena-based approach! I have always found that to be such a strong draw, not just for students. And the teacher feedback is so critical for creating a strong product. Thanks for your work!

I volunteer for a rising 7th grade girls week long residential STEAM camp. Our goal is to expose the 50 girls to career opportunities in STEAM. I look forward to exploring your resources to see how we might incorporate into our camp or share with our teachers.

Thank you for submitting this video and sharing information about the wonderful set of resources that you have developed and are making freely available to educators through open-source distribution channels! I find it particularly impressive that you developed these resources with input from so many sources, including New Hampshire Public Television and that they are tied to science standards.

My primary question is the extent to which your project’s resources stimulate greater curiosity by students to learn more about the biological structures or processes behind what they seeing in the videos in addition to appreciating the relevance of science to address what used to be intractable human challenges and the kinds of careers that they could pursue to address these challenges?  A video on your website (“BioFabUSA/ARMI Educational Workforce Development”) features a teacher who mentions that these activities stimulate her students to delve more deeply in to the basic and applied science behind what they are viewing. Have you tracked this kind and level of interest in basic science concepts among students? Does the interest in a particular topic generalize to their asking more questions about other areas of science, for example?

This is such a timely project—bioengineering and, more broadly, biotechnologies were instrumental during the ongoing pandemic and so it is encouraging to see a project doing work at the intersection of biofabrication and medicine. Synthetic biology is a relevant context with bioengineering roots as you are probably closely aware. 

I want to point out that I have seen a growing corpus of research and education work around other uses of biofabrication—including in such areas as parts manufacturing, textiles, and agriculture to name a few. 

I wondered if you would share a bit more about the research design you use and the specific approaches you took to design curriculum?

I've worked on tangential spaces (e.g., biomaking for middle and high school students) and recognize that implementing some of these projects can be difficult because of expertise thresholds needed to practice bioengineering, time scales related to produce a usable product, and the costs associated with accessing the right tools to accomplish an endeavor. 

And so, I hoped you could share lesson learned on some of the challenges, opportunities and successes you've experiences in carrying out this increasing relevant but difficult work at the intersection of design, biology, and learning?

Wow, Justice! Great questions! The initial focus was to fill the half-empty toolboxes for teachers who try to do so much for students!  As facilitators for the NGSX workshops in our state, our work used that research in our storylines design and the OpenSciEd Instructional Model in our workshops. We saw the BioFab need to advance the skilled workforce as a win-win opportunity to:

• Assist those who did not have formal training in phenomenon-inspired instructional strategies with grade-area storylines (we are working on some short, supportive videos for each).
• Provide an extra, video-supported lesson for early elementary teachers and caregivers to advance student-centered science learning.
• Inspire secondary students and teachers with Scientist Profiles that offer varied academic pathways, workplace cultures, and using the Science and Engineering Practices to solve cutting-edge problems in the Life Sciences!
• Bring relevant and important contemporary science into classrooms! BioFabrication & BioEngineering!

Our schools do not have the equipment to cultivate cell lines or print body parts; however, our teachers and students are creative and eager to scaffold experiences that can help. The elementary units are foundational and encourage students to wonder and make sense of what they experience. The secondary Storylines go deeper into regeneration and organ loss. I would love to learn more about your work in BioFab.

In the NH BioMade projects I discussed above, we knew many of our schools had 3D printers, but very few were using them to attend to biological problems. Our video resources inspired middle school students to explore 3D designs with human purposes. High school students wanted to delve deeper into the growth of organisms and cells. Our timing was short with these projects, but we found that students were inspired to learn, enjoyed learning with experts in the fields, and were willing to dig deeper when they needed to figure things out. We found that 6th graders were interested in the scientists and their tools; team projects required a lot of oversite by the teachers. Some of the 7th and 8th-grade students were ready to work on team projects and needed some initial coaching by the teachers to make mentor meetings more productive. The high school students were eager to earn high school credits but did need coaching in the design of their projects. Here is a link to the google site with some of the students' projects. It was a start. We all learned a lot about that finite resource called TIME!

Your project is awesome! I love the thoughtfulness about inclusion and equity when thinking about video profiles . I also like the fact that the program is open source and available for all to access. I also like the thinking about coherence as you have begun this work in preschool, continued to elementary grades and middle grades and then onto high school. I am curious about how elementary NH educators you think actually used this program in the classroom. 

Kathy, thank you for your feedback. We have had thousands of visitors to the PBS and STEM from the Start Ultra Awesome Animals sites but received little voluntary feedback. Our field tests of that production and the Discovery Break activities resulted in additional tweaks but received thumbs-up from teachers and after-school leaders. They appreciated the video Discovery Breaks which allowed implementation over several days. HeadStart users agreed with the format as well.

About 60 teachers reviewed the other storylines and gave suggestions. We know a few tried entire units, but funding was not available for independent impact studies, which should be done. We appreciate the ideas given and your feedback. We embarked on this project for students and teachers and value the advice of the many experts here. This Showcase has already resulted in some great connections!

I love that you are engaging with teachers and getting their input in your process. What have been the biggest barriers or challenges to your project in terms of adoption or implementation?

 

Thanks, Lelli!  The biggest challenge is that the teachers are just plain out straight!  We began an online network (BaseCamp) that allowed “NH Teachers Only” to chat and share their trials with Storyline development, which is most problematic when done alone! The changed pedagogy was challenging for our fully NGSX-trained teachers, who seemed shy about putting ideas into a more public setting. I wondered if others find that in their projects?

Our tagline was “We always get better together!” Our consultants tried numerous strategies for greater participation, offering incentives for posting Driving Question Boards with any of the project's or other storylines. We did receive input and had discussions around each project storyline, especially with face-to-face workshops, before COVID shut things down.

The mad rush to be online with their students due to COVID dampened the additional online networking efforts. Our in-person workshops filled, and it became increasingly difficult to get online workshop participants. Teachers told us they were just in survival mode.

Now things are picking up! We are seeing more workshops and summer camps opening up. We hope to have more impact data to share and appreciate input from more users across the country!

I love the focus on pre-k and elementary students, as well as middle and high school students. It has been well documented that student interest/engagement wanes after elementary school. Your program’s ability to bring specialized STEM content/topics a large age range of students. While, you have solicited teachers for feedback on the curriculum and activities, have you been able to solicit feedback and reflection from the students, in particular p-k and elementary students? Additionally, have you been able to track youth participants and observe any repeater patterns?

 Hi Barbara! Great project spanning PK-12. Have you been able to track the influence of this project on students' choice of majors in college?

Not with all students, Ravanasamudram. We appreciate the need to learn more about the impact. Two students in one of our high schools pursued an independent, mentored project their senior year (through NH BioMade) and have decided to pursue BioEngineering at the university level. We certainly hope to document more positive results in the future. Please share with us any impact studies you think might be helpful.  

Thank you for all your questions and comments. I am Lisa Janosik, the lead middle school curriculum developer for this Biofabrication Project. I want to give a shout out to not only Barbara, who is the backbone of this project, but also all the teachers who collaborated and gave feedback to the unit storylines. We could not have done this without them. Writing science storylines is not an individual effort. I am much richer from this experience and being given the opportunity to work with so many amazing educators. I hope many others have the opportunity to further investigate our grade level units and the scientist videos.

Such a fascinating project. I am curious about your next steps. How are you planning to move from exposure to biofabrication to deepening student experiences to prepare them to biofabricate? Basing the storyline on phenomena is evidence-based-so excited about this work. Thank you!

Thanks so much for sharing this project! I especially appreciate the career perspectives. On another project I am working on we are trying to do something similar with people working in quantum information science. Were the videos about careers integrated into the other learning materials? Have you collected student feedback on the videos?

I love the relevance that this work brings to teaching and learning of key science concepts for students, so they can see the application and context for how concepts are applied in the world. I would hope that you would see (and could measure) several impacts: student identity with or affiliation for science, student motivation to learn as related to relevance and application, and student learning of concepts and their ability to apply those. I would think that your resources would have some interest here in the Boston area given the prevalence of biotech. Thanks for sharing this great work!

 Working with contemporary science was a catalyst for this project. It is so exciting bringing the videos and the storylines to students. Jake, thank you for identifying insightful areas for impact studies. It is really appreciated.

 

Great project Barbara and team! I really appreciate your use of video profiles to inspire young people. The scientist profiles really bring to life the diverse experiences of these individuals and their journey to becoming a scientist. Too often these kinds of stories are untold.

 

I wonder if the connection to one of the NGSS Science & Engineering Practices per video may even bridge the featured scientists' story to K-12 learners' classroom experience?

Also, I am curious about how NH teachers are using these science profiles within their classrooms. What are some examples of how secondary teachers have incorporated science profiles into their instruction?

Thank you, Lara, for your spirited comments!  We planned for the videos to raise the importance of the Science and Engineering Practices in scientific work and for students to see themselves in the scientists' roles. The varied academic pathways added another human side to "figuring out" a career. Teachers shared their ideas in several of our meetings and workshops. They suggested the use of videos to emphasize the nature of scientific work, to give relevancy and purpose to the students' work, and for students to learn about the camaraderie and culture present in the BioFab industry!

Thanks for this effort, I also love the open-source nature and think there are newer forms of NSF funding (like POSE) that might be open to your efforts.

Kevin...thank you for suggesting POSE as a possible funding source! I would love to grow this effort to support our teachers and give greater access to students! We have done a lot with very little funding and hope to include impact studies in our next effort! This Showcase has been wonderful in spawning networks and great ideas!