Projects

Rapid changes in computing, especially with advances in artificial intelligence, are reshaping the future needs of society and the demands on the STEM workforce. More than ever, computer science (CS) education is critical for all children. Many schools are looking for ways to introduce CS skills and thinking in the elementary grades. Whereas some initiatives have focused on coding as its own endeavor, not integrated with subjects like mathematics, science, or literacy, developers and researchers are increasingly exploring ways that programming and computational thinking (CT) can be integrated into core content. This project will design and study resources that build teacher capacity to integrate CS/CT into mathematics by building on the investigators' prior work developing integrated Math+CS modules in grades 2-5.

This project explores how immersive field science experiences and carefully designed digital resources can help secondary teachers make science more engaging and relatable for students. The research team will study how teachers incorporate what they learn from real-world science experiences into their classroom teaching and whether online materials can replicate some of the same benefits. By improving both immersive and digital professional learning experiences, the project aims to increase access to and decrease the cost of high-quality instructional supports, especially for teachers who cannot attend traditional field-based learning.

Scientific sensemaking is core to learning and doing science. Oral and written language, visual and numerical representations, physical models, and other forms of communication are vital to scientific sensemaking, yet research has not yet fully explored how science curricula can be customized to account for the unique communicative repertoires of individual learners within elementary science classes. This project will address this important gap in practice by developing a suite of tools that elementary teachers can use to customize existing open-source, standards-aligned science curricula, such that these curricula are better able to support students with a range of communicative strengths, including multilingualism.

Scientific sensemaking is core to learning and doing science. Oral and written language, visual and numerical representations, physical models, and other forms of communication are vital to scientific sensemaking, yet research has not yet fully explored how science curricula can be customized to account for the unique communicative repertoires of individual learners within elementary science classes. This project will address this important gap in practice by developing a suite of tools that elementary teachers can use to customize existing open-source, standards-aligned science curricula, such that these curricula are better able to support students with a range of communicative strengths, including multilingualism.

While simulations are powerful tools for scientific inquiry, most students need scaffolding to engage productively in simulation-based inquiry. This project will develop and study an automated feedback system designed to support middle school students' simulation-based inquiry into wildfires, floods, and hurricanes. The system, called Hazbot, will leverage advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies—including machine learning and large language models (LLMs)—to provide timely, personalized feedback as students investigate the three different natural hazards.

This project addresses a crucial need in K-12 science teacher education to respond to local school district needs for high-quality science teaching and the role of teacher education programs to develop programs that provide prospective teachers the best opportunity for success as science teachers. Specifically, the project aims to advance science teacher education by applying a pragmatic, iterative approach to developing teacher education program resources and tools that will support the implementation of evidence-based STEM teaching and learning practices in K-12 science classrooms. The project will identify evidence-based STEM teaching and learning practices through a systematic review of K-12 STEM education research and resources. Rather than generate new evidence, the project leverages the evidence that already exists to support educators in adapting and sustaining existing high-quality practices that have already demonstrated positive impacts on students' STEM learning.

This project will investigate how recent advances in artificial intelligence can support computational thinking development within an innovative biology curriculum in which students design and program a robotic arm controlled by their own muscle activity. Specifically, the project will focus on how AI tools can assist students in designing algorithms and translating them into computer programs.

This project will investigate how to design an after-school mathematics space within a school setting that can challenge and expand both students' and teachers' conceptions of what doing mathematics means and teach them to see participation in the discipline in increasingly nuanced and expansive ways. The study focuses on designing an after-school program to support recreational mathematics activities for elementary students. At the same time, teachers who are supporting the after-school program with students will have the opportunity to learn to notice different forms of mathematical participation and learning.

Elementary school students' prolonged experiences with positive numbers and operations often lead to their overgeneralizations of rules (e.g., adding always makes larger numbers, subtracting always makes smaller numbers). These overgeneralizations can make learning algebra more difficult later, particularly when students must simultaneously learn algebra, negative numbers, and operations with negative numbers. The purpose of this project is to design and develop educational games centered on negative number concepts that target students before they learn algebra in middle school. Earlier exposure to and learning about negative numbers could increase students' motivation, understanding of connections between positive and negative numbers, and preparation for algebra.

The growing importance of data, data science and artificial intelligence (AI) in education, work, and personal and civic life has increased the need for all U.S. students to develop data literacy, statistical reasoning, and computational thinking skills. However, most middle school students—especially those with learning disabilities (SLD)—receive limited or no instruction in these areas. Data science and AI instruction is often limited to high school settings, narrowly framed within mathematics or science, and rarely designed with the flexibility to support learner variability. The purpose of this project is to develop and refine Data Adventures, a series of open-access, modular, and instructional experiences units designed to introduce middle school students to data literacy, computational thinking, and digital storytelling, while also promoting critical understanding of AI and its role in education, work technology, and everyday life.

Coding is a key part of computer science, and promoting opportunities that engage learners in coding is vital to the U.S. workforce development. This project builds upon prior research that created a free coding app, OctoStudio, which is widely available for use in elementary and secondary schools. The goals of the project are twofold: First, the team will develop and design features that broaden the technology so that it is more accessible for more users. Second, the team will explore the usability of these new features across potential users. The new features will have potential to allow blind and low vision users to meaningfully engage in coding, which ultimately benefits society by broadening the STEM workforce and bringing coding to a greater population of students.

Elementary school students' prolonged experiences with positive numbers and operations often lead to their overgeneralizations of rules (e.g., adding always makes larger numbers, subtracting always makes smaller numbers). These overgeneralizations can make learning algebra more difficult later, particularly when students must simultaneously learn algebra, negative numbers, and operations with negative numbers. The purpose of this project is to design and develop educational games centered on negative number concepts that target students before they learn algebra in middle school. Earlier exposure to and learning about negative numbers could increase students' motivation, understanding of connections between positive and negative numbers, and preparation for algebra.

Tomorrow's domestic STEM workforce demands that students bring the ability to explain real-world phenomena and solve problems collaboratively. In many school districts, a significant gap persists between this ambitious vision and the realities of current instruction. One promising approach to bridge this gap is the use of high-quality instructional materials (HQIM), which have been shown to improve science teaching and learning. However, school systems often face serious challenges in selecting, adopting, and implementing these materials in ways that lead to consistent implementation across classrooms and lasting change. This project will establish a research-practice partnership between the University of Colorado Boulder and the Weld RE-4 School District in Colorado to better understand and address these challenges. The project will generate new understandings that support the translation of research on how curriculum can improve teaching and learning into practice for a whole school district, and yield insights into how school districts navigate organizational dynamics and competing priorities during curriculum adoption.

Elementary school students' prolonged experiences with positive numbers and operations often lead to their overgeneralizations of rules (e.g., adding always makes larger numbers, subtracting always makes smaller numbers). These overgeneralizations can make learning algebra more difficult later, particularly when students must simultaneously learn algebra, negative numbers, and operations with negative numbers. The purpose of this project is to design and develop educational games centered on negative number concepts that target students before they learn algebra in middle school. Earlier exposure to and learning about negative numbers could increase students' motivation, understanding of connections between positive and negative numbers, and preparation for algebra.

The rapid onset of AI, and generative AI tools such as LLMs, amplify the need for AI literacies, including concepts, practices and ethics, for K-12 schools. Some AI literacy resources, such as AI4K12 and AI4ALL, have emerged, but it may be challenging for schools, particularly those in small districts, to navigate these resources. Furthermore, researchers need further guidance on how to support schools for AI literacy. These challenges for schools and researchers include how to coordinate planning across teachers, school leaders and researchers, how to implement across grade levels, classrooms, and content areas; how to provide training and preparation time to support lesson design and implementation; and how to support teachers in their own AI literacy. To address these needs, district leaders and teachers from Forest Park School District and researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago will engage in a one-year research practice partnership development to build a long-term RPP, co-design an AI literacy curriculum, and support professional development to implement the curriculum.

To successfully understand and address complex and important questions in the field of environmental science, many kinds of communities’ knowledge about their local environment need to be engaged. This one-year partnership development project involves a collaboration to design an approach that would yield opportunities for K-12 students to learn about environmental science in ways that honor both traditional STEM knowledge and Native ways of knowing among the Pomo community in California.

Transdisciplinary science integrates knowledge across STEM disciplines to research complex challenges such as climate science, genetic engineering, or ecology. In this project, teachers and students will design smart greenhouses by connecting electronic sensors that can detect light or other environmental data to microcontrollers that can activate devices that water plants and regulate other environmental factors such as temperature or light. This activity brings together engineering, computer science, and horticulture. Working across urban and rural contexts, the project will engage teachers in professional development as they adopt and adapt instructional materials to support their students in learning across disciplines as they build smart greenhouses.

With recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), the United States needs to develop a diverse workforce with strong computational skills and the knowledge and capability to work with AI. Recent studies have raised questions about the extent to which youth are aware of AI and its application in industries of the future that may limit their interest in pursuing learning that lead toward careers in these industries. To address this challenge, learning trajectories (LTs) will be developed and researched for AI concepts that are challenging for middle and high school students. The project will design and pilot test learning activities and assessments targeting these concepts based on the LTs, offer teacher professional development on the LTs and related activities, and research the effectiveness of the LT-based activities when implemented by teachers during the regular school day.

Transdisciplinary science integrates knowledge across STEM disciplines to research complex challenges such as climate science, genetic engineering, or ecology. In this project, teachers and students will design smart greenhouses by connecting electronic sensors that can detect light or other environmental data to microcontrollers that can activate devices that water plants and regulate other environmental factors such as temperature or light. This activity brings together engineering, computer science, and horticulture. Working across urban and rural contexts, the project will engage teachers in professional development as they adopt and adapt instructional materials to support their students in learning across disciplines as they build smart greenhouses.

As the nation tackles the challenges of energy transition, K-12 education must prepare a future STEM workforce that can not only apply STEM skills but also address reasoning through complex sociotechnical problems involving social justice. Aligned with the principles of socially transformative engineering and focused on students of color, this project involves the design and implementation of a novel STEM education curriculum that will support the development of secondary students’ abilities to reason through ambiguous and ethical challenges through design projects and to transfer these competencies to everyday life and future workplaces.

Transdisciplinary science integrates knowledge across STEM disciplines to research complex challenges such as climate science, genetic engineering, or ecology. In this project, teachers and students will design smart greenhouses by connecting electronic sensors that can detect light or other environmental data to microcontrollers that can activate devices that water plants and regulate other environmental factors such as temperature or light. This activity brings together engineering, computer science, and horticulture. Working across urban and rural contexts, the project will engage teachers in professional development as they adopt and adapt instructional materials to support their students in learning across disciplines as they build smart greenhouses.

Data literacy is the ability to ask questions, analyze, interpret, and draw conclusions from data. As the world and the workplace become more data-driven, students need to have stronger data literacy across multiple disciplines, including science. This project uses an instructional framework, Data Puzzles, to investigate how to support middle grades teachers learning to include data literacy in their science teaching. Data Puzzles integrate mathematical and computational thinking with ambitious science teaching instructional practices and contemporary science topics. Students engaging with Data Puzzles resources can analyze real-world climate science data using web-based data analysis tools to make sense of science phenomena and develop data literacy.

The United States faces the critical need to prepare students and the future workforce for advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI). This project will develop curriculum that will engage middle-school students in learning science and basic AI concepts and in developing related career interests.

This project will support a conference series, including an in-person gathering and virtual follow-up meetings, that will bring together teachers, researchers, education leaders, and instructional material designers to build a shared understanding of how to integrate the use of high-quality instructional materials with the benefits of localizing these materials to better address students’ contexts and backgrounds. By fostering dialogue, sharing models, and setting priorities for future research and design, the project seeks to build knowledge about inclusive, effective, and culturally responsive approaches to science instruction that will advance equitable science education in K–12 classrooms.

This project will examine middle school students’ learning of earth and physical sciences and their functional understanding of engineering design as they engage in newly developed environmental justice-oriented curriculum units in community-based service projects. In collaboration with middle school teachers and their students, two STEM units that integrate science inquiry, engineering design, and community-based service projects will be co-designed, implemented, and refined while examining students’ science and engineering learning and their development of science/STEM interest and agency.