Projects

Using design-based research, with teachers as design partners, the project will create and refine project-based, hands-on robotics curricula such that science and math content inherent in robotics and related engineering design practices are learned. To provide teachers with effective models to capitalize on robotics for elucidating science and math concepts, a design-based Professional Development program will be built using principles of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK).

This project is developing, testing, and evaluating a diversity-enhanced, STEM-based, professional development workshop for high school teachers and career guidance counselors. The project team is developing educational materials and running workshops that focus on pedagogical methods for incorporating hands-on activities into STEM classrooms in order to expose all students to technology and engineering. The long-term goal is to broaden and increase the diversity of students entering engineering-based college degree programs.

This project continues research and development work on high school instructional materials that integrate biology, computing, and mathematics. The project goal is to develop and test a one-semester high school course. The course consists of some modules developed under a previous NSF grant as well as some new material. Intended deliverables include up to five new instructional modules and a coherent one-semester course suitable for the increasing state requirements for a fourth year of mathematics.

In this project, investigators are laying the foundation for a rigorous quasi-experiment to test the effects of attending such a school using longitudinal student records, surveys, and interviews. By documenting survey response rates, student location rates, and rates for successful matching of student administrative and survey data, this project is demonstrating that it is possible to collect data that would enable a large-scale study to be launched with the necessary instruments and experience in hand.

This synthesis study includes a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis of research published since 2001 evaluating the impact of family engagement interventions on student STEM outcomes. The goal of this project is to (a) determine the effectiveness of family engagement interventions on STEM outcomes, (b) identify practices/components within interventions that are most effective for promoting STEM outcomes, and (c) reveal the extent to which the effects of family engagement interventions vary as a function of study quality and/or certain child, family, and community characteristics.

This project is developing and testing a website, software application, and supplemental instructional materials that use publicly accessible genomics data to foster scientific inquiry among high schools students. Outcomes for students and teachers include developing knowledge, skills, and understandings related to genetic inheritance; data investigation and analysis; the process of scientific inquiry; and collaboration.

Building on the team's prior research from early in the pandemic, this project team will continue to collect data from families and aims to understand parents’ perspectives on the educational impacts of COVID-19 by leveraging a nationally representative, longitudinal study, the Understanding America Study (UAS). The study will track educational experiences during the spring and summer of 2022 and into the 2022-23 school year. The team will analyze student and family overall and for key demographic groups of interest as schooling during the pandemic continues. This RAPID project allows critically important data to continue to be collected and contribute to continued understanding of the impacts of and responses to the pandemic by American families.

This project is designing, developing, and testing a model that delivers effective teacher PD to in-service and preservice teachers to enable the successful implementation of engineering curricula. Research is performed to evaluate the impacts of the curricular materials and the teacher PD framework on classroom instructional practices and student learning, interests, and attitudes and to evaluate which curriculum components are most effective in promoting student learning and interest as a function of gender and ethnicity.

This project aims to create and test an innovative educational approach for bringing STEM learning experiences to underserved youth. It will co-create and study an outdoor robotic-augmented playground called the “Smart Playground” and a corresponding series of classroom lessons. The Smart Playground will be co-designed with Latinx families and educators to engage children in developing computational thinking skills and learning about robotics in a physical environment using a culturally sustaining approach. Research and evaluation will examine whether exposure to the Smart Playground and corresponding classroom activities have an impact on the development of computational thinking in young children.

This project aims to create and test an innovative educational approach for bringing STEM learning experiences to underserved youth. It will co-create and study an outdoor robotic-augmented playground called the “Smart Playground” and a corresponding series of classroom lessons. The Smart Playground will be co-designed with Latinx families and educators to engage children in developing computational thinking skills and learning about robotics in a physical environment using a culturally sustaining approach. Research and evaluation will examine whether exposure to the Smart Playground and corresponding classroom activities have an impact on the development of computational thinking in young children.

This project aims to create and test an innovative educational approach for bringing STEM learning experiences to underserved youth. It will co-create and study an outdoor robotic-augmented playground called the “Smart Playground” and a corresponding series of classroom lessons. The Smart Playground will be co-designed with Latinx families and educators to engage children in developing computational thinking skills and learning about robotics in a physical environment using a culturally sustaining approach. Research and evaluation will examine whether exposure to the Smart Playground and corresponding classroom activities have an impact on the development of computational thinking in young children.

This project contributes to the small research base by exploring the validity of Technology-Enhanced Items (TEIs) in the context of elementary geometry. The project addresses three research questions: 1) To what extent are TEIs a valid measurement of geometry standards in the elementary grades?; 2) To what extent do TEIs provide an improved measurement compared to SR items?; and 3) What are the general characteristics of mathematics standards that might be better measured through TEIs?

This project will develop and study three week-long middle school lab units designed to teach spatial abilities using a blend of physical and virtual (computer-based) models. "ThinkSpace" labs will help students explore 3-dimensional astronomical phenomena in ways that will support both understanding of these topics and a more general spatial ability. Students will learn both through direct work with the lab unit interface and through succeeding discussions with their peers.

The goal of the study is to craft a research agenda that will examine the value of an integrated STEM education to students (K-12) in terms of learning achievement, motivation, and career aspirations. The final report summarizes the findings from the data gathering and analysis and the committee's conclusions and recommendations for a research agenda. This report is disseminated through presentations, publication of print and online articles and editorials and briefings to relevant stakeholders.

This project aims to build elementary age students' content knowledge in robotics and computer science more broadly by fostering their disciplinary engagement and participation within a humanoid robots-programming environment. Fourth and fifth grade students will participate in a semester long course with a final project that involves bringing the robot to classrooms of first and second grade students to demonstrate the robot's capabilities and promote their disciplinary engagement with robotics and computer science.

This project supports the development of technological fluency and understanding of STEM concepts through the implementation of design collaboratives that use eCrafting Collabs as the medium within which to work with middle and high school students, parents and the community. The examine how youth at ages 10-16 and families in schools, clubs, museums and community groups learn together how to create e-textile artifacts that incorporate embedded computers, sensors and actuators.

This project explores the use of cyberinfrastructure to significantly enhance the delivery and quality of professional development for grades 8-12 engineering, technology, and design educators. The goal of the project is to study whether the use of highly interactive cyberinfrastructure increases the educator's teaching competencies and how to effectively teach. Student achievement is measured by comparing state assessments in: the curriculum's technology, engineering, and design assessment, end-of-grade mathematics assessment, and end-of-grade science assessment.

This project focuses on critical needs in the preparation and long-term development of pre-service, undergraduate, K-6 teachers of science. The project investigates the impact on these students of undergraduate, standards-based, reform entry level science courses developed by faculty based on their participation in the NASA Opportunities for Visionary Academics processional development program to identify: short-term impacts on undergraduate students and long-term effects on graduated teachers; characteristics of reform courses and characteristics of effective development efforts.

This project will develop and implement a working conference for scholars and practitioners to articulate current use cases and theories of action regarding the use of simulations in PreK-12 science and mathematics teacher education. The conference will be structured to provide opportunities for attendees to share their current research, theoretical models, conceptual views, and use cases focused on the design and use of digital and non-digital simulations for building and assessing K-12 science and mathematics teacher competencies.

This 3-year project seeks to develop and test curricular resources built around handheld mobile technology to study how these materials foster urban middle school student engagement with and learning of local biodiversity and the patterns of evolution.

This project takes advantage of language to help students form their own ideas and pursue deeper understanding in the science classroom. The project will conduct a comprehensive research program to develop and test technology that will empower students to use their ideas as a starting point for deepening science understanding. Researchers will use a technology that detects student ideas that go beyond a student's general knowledge level to adapt to a student's cultural and linguistic understandings of a science topic.

This project takes advantage of language to help students form their own ideas and pursue deeper understanding in the science classroom. The project will conduct a comprehensive research program to develop and test technology that will empower students to use their ideas as a starting point for deepening science understanding. Researchers will use a technology that detects student ideas that go beyond a student's general knowledge level to adapt to a student's cultural and linguistic understandings of a science topic.

This project is exploring how curricula and assessment using dynamic, interactive scientific visualizations of complex phenomena can ensure that all students learn significant science content. Dynamic visualizations provide an alternative pathway for students to understand science concepts, which can be exploited to increase the accessibility of a range of important science concepts. Computer technologies offer unprecedented opportunities to design curricula and assessments using visual technologies and to explore them in research, teaching, and learning.

This project focuses on supporting emerging scholars who have new ideas and approaches for approaching racial equity in their scholarship and work. The workshop, implemented as a series of sessions over the course of a year, will support early career scholars in STEM education and the learning sciences in preparing proposals to submit to the National Science Foundation.

This grant explores the timely issue of how to conduct a feasibility study on the question of whether youths who participate in after-school IT-oriented science-engagement programs are more likely to eventually choose a STEM-related career. This project examines programs such as Information Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) along with other similar programs to determine innovative approaches to conducting such a long-term study so that it is methodologically sound and as economical as possible.