MORNING PLENARY PRESENTATION
The Role of Engineering in Successful K–12 STEM Education
Darryl Williams, Associate Dean of Recruitment, Retention, and Community Engagement, and Director of the Center for STEM Diversity, Tufts University; Greg Pearson, Senior Program Officer, National Academy of Engineering; Cary Sneider, Associate Research Professor, Portland State University; Marion Usselman, Principal Research Scientist and Associate Director, CEISMC, Georgia Institute of Technology
Engineering education is gaining a foothold in our nation’s K–12 schools. Many states now include engineering concepts and practices in their standards, and the recently released Next Generation Science Standards elevate engineering to a core area of study. However, schools will face implementation challenges as they begin preparation and support of teachers who will be responsible for engineering education. This panel explores the current and future status of engineering education and opens the discussion to the audience.
MORNING BREAKOUT SESSIONS
Design Squad: Inspiring a New Generation of Engineers
David Peth, WGBH
Design Squad is a PBS TV series, online community, and grassroots outreach campaign designed to inspire tweens and teens to explore engineering. In this session, the presenter explores lessons learned as Design Squad evolved from a linear TV series to its current formation as a digital project featuring short video and hands-on activities. The presenter also discusses approaches to engaging educators and parents through trainings, educational resources, and social media.
Engineering High School Biology into the 21st Century
Christian Schunn, University of Pittsburgh
This session introduces an approach to teaching core high school biology concepts (inheritance and evolution) involving engineering design challenges. Students solve the challenges using inexpensive hands-on materials that integrate modern biotechnologies and simple computational simulations. Research stemming from the Biology Levers Out of Mathematics (BLOOM) project has shown that high school students taught through engineering challenges see a doubling in interest in engineering careers as well as large gains in science learning, particularly for students traditionally underrepresented in science.
Engineer Your World: Engineering Design and Problem Solving for High Schools
Cheryl Farmer, University of Texas at Austin
UTeachEngineering has developed a high school engineering design and problem-solving course. Engineer Your World introduces students to what engineering is, what engineers do, and the impact that engineers have on our world. During this session, the presenter provides an overview of the curriculum and teacher support programs, describes how these are evolving in response to student and teacher needs, and describes implementation grants that are available for high schools seeking to establish this innovative course.
Integrating Engineering and Literacy
David Hammer and Jessica Watkins, Tufts University
Much of the challenge in teaching engineering is in recognizing, understanding, and responding constructively to its productive beginnings in students’ work. During this session, participants engage in a collaborative examination of student thinking using video data from Integrating Engineering and Literacy (IEL). They will then focus on how students scope the problem, consider clients, and develop and evaluate solutions. The session will include a discussion of how to get started with IEL.
Making a Difference in the World: Engineering in Middle School Math and Science Classrooms
Amy Wendt, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Amy Schiebel, Edgewood College
STEM careers are a means to making a difference in the world. This is the message to middle school students in a new set of curriculum modules inspired by the National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges for Engineering. During this session, presenters give examples of modules that, through a realistic fictional scenario, emphasize engineering solutions to a distinct societal need. Intended for math and science classrooms, students participate through role play as engineers, experiencing the engineering design process while learning underlying math and science concepts.
What Does It Mean to "Engineer” in Engineering is Elementary?
Erin Fitzgerald, Museum of Science, Boston
In this session, participants engage in a hands-on engineering design challenge that empowers them to take on the role of engineers as they design a technology to solve a problem. Participants then reflect on the actions that were taken to solve the challenge and collaboratively construct an understanding of the engineering design process. Presenters also lead a discussion on how participant-driven activities can address effective K–12 STEM instruction, as defined by the recent NRC reports.
LUNCHTIME PLENARY PRESENTATION
The Joy of STEM: Engineering Is at the Heart of It
Pramod Khargonekar, Assistant Director, National Science Foundation
Building on the recent Successful K–12 STEM Education and Monitoring Progress Toward Successful K–12 STEM Education reports, Dr. Khargonekar’s plenary focuses on concrete examples of successful NSF-funded engineering programs in formal and informal K–12 contexts. This session provides translatable best practices for adoption and demonstrates how engineering principles can be used to enliven the classroom and extracurricular experiences while meeting core STEM competency goals. Finally, options for leveraging existing NSF-funded programs at the university level to enhance K–12 outcomes are discussed.
AFTERNOON BREAKOUT SESSIONS
CAPSULE: How to Use Engineering-Based Learning (EBL) in High School STEM Teaching:
Jessica Chin, Northeastern University
Engineering-based learning (EBL) is a teaching and learning model for high school STEM courses based on systematic structure, organized tools, proper resources, and hands-on real-world experiences. In this session, participants learn and experience EBL through hands-on activities. At the end of this workshop, participants are provided with a series of resources, tutorials, templates, and sample implementation plans.
Elementary Engineering Teacher Professional Development: Initiation to Integration
Heidi Diefes-Dux, Purdue University
Elementary teacher professional development with engineering education needs to support teachers’ progress through three stages: initial fear, first implementation, and integration with fidelity. The Institute for P-12 Engineering Research and Learning (INSPIRE) at Purdue University has developed professional development materials and practices to facilitate teachers’ growth through these stages. This session highlights how these stages manifest themselves and how professional development has been designed by INSPIRE to address each stage.
Engaging Youth Through Engineering (EYE) Modules: Integrating and Bringing Relevance to Core Middle Grades Mathematics and Science Content
Susan Pruet, Melissa Dean, and Judy Duke, Mobile Area Education Foundation
In this interactive session, participants learn about an instructional model that uses engineering to support an integrated and engaging approach for teaching standards-based, middle-grades mathematics and science content. Participants are introduced to one EYE module, “Matter of Importance,” as an example of how integrated STEM curricula can help students to bridge the content as taught in the typical mathematics and science silos versus the complex understanding of content required for application in industry.
Implementing K-12 Engineering Standards through STEM Integration
Tamara Moore, Aran Glancy, Forster Ntow, and Kristina Tank, University of Minnesota,Twin Cities
In this session, the Framework for a Quality K–12 Engineering Education is discussed as a means to evaluate standards and curricula. Curricula based on this framework are also presented. This session provides a more complete picture of the current status of K–12 engineering education and a better understanding of the ways in which teachers and schools implement engineering and engineering design in their classrooms.
Learning Science Through Engineering Design: An Effective Approach to STEM Integration at the Elementary School Level
Brenda Capobianco and Chell Nyquist, Purdue University
The vision of the Science Learning through Engineering Design (SLED) Partnership is to increase student learning of science in grades 3–6 by developing Indiana’s first integrated engineering design-based approach to elementary/intermediate school science education. In this interactive session, participants learn about the SLED model for engineering design by engaging in a standards-based task, explore how STEM faculty construct a SLED task, and hear how teachers implement design-based pedagogies and what students learn from them.
Mathematics Instruction Using Decision Science and Engineering Tools
Robert Young and Karen Keene, North Carolina State University
Mathematics Instruction using Decision Science and Engineering Tools (MINDSET) created and implemented engineering modeling-based instructional materials to teach mathematics concepts for a non-calculus fourth-year high school course. MINDSET has two student-focused goals: (1) enhance students’ ability to formulate, solve, and interpret multi-step contextual problems; and (2) improve students’ attitude toward mathematics, especially students from underrepresented groups. In this session, presenters share implementation and evaluation results, as well as plans for scale up.
AFTERNOON PLENARY PRESENTATION
K–12 and Higher Education: Why Collaboration Is Vital
Joseph Cocozza, Co-Director of Education and Outreach Programs, Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems, Engineering Research Center; Assistant Professor of Research, Ophthalmology, University of Southern California; Adah Leshem, Program Director of Pre-College Education, NSF Engineering Research Center for Biorenewable Chemicals
This session focuses on the value of strong partnerships between K–12 and higher education, specifically in the STEM disciplines. The NSF-sponsored Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) are a group of interdisciplinary centers located at universities across the United States. They are required to implement effective partnerships with local school districts. Session leaders share results and outcomes of their ERC partnerships with local school districts and provide recommendations on how to create similar collaborations.