ABSTRACT

Improving the teaching and learning of STEM concepts at the elementary level is an important priority for STEM education. This Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE), Development and Implementation project aims to develop service learning projects that involve teams that include undergraduate engineering and education majors. These undergraduates will collaborate to develop and deliver one-hour engineering lessons to elementary school students. This project addresses three needs: 1) to increase the academic and professional persistence of engineering students; 2) to prepare engineers and elementary pre-service educators for workplace demands of collaborating and communicating in multi-disciplinary contexts; and 3) to prepare elementary teachers to gain confidence and competence to integrate engineering into instruction. These cross-disciplinary, service-learning projects will be embedded into three core classes for education and three core classes for engineering students. Collaboration 1 will pair first year engineering students studying engineering design and pre-service teachers in Education Foundations. Collaboration 2 will pair upper level engineering students in Computation Methods and pre-service teachers in Educational Technology. Collaboration 3 will pair upper division engineering students in Fluid Mechanics with pre-service teachers in Science Methods. The research conducted in this study seeks to examine the ways in which this intervention affects: 1) the engineering students' understanding of engineering concepts; 2) the education students' knowledge of engineering and science; 3) the collaboration skills of both groups of students; 4) the first year engineering students' academic persistence in engineering; and 5) the upper level students' professional persistence in engineering and teaching. Data will be disaggregated by student participant demographics (e.g., race, gender, ethnicity, and military status).

The goals of this project are to: 1) increase academic persistence in first year engineering students; 2) increase professional persistence in upper level engineering students; 3) enhance collaboration skills for engineering and education students; 4) enhance engineering knowledge of engineering students; and 5) enhance engineering knowledge of pre-service teachers. Engineering students and pre-service teachers will be guided by the Next Generation Science Standards and Virginia Standards of Learning as they develop lessons to enhance elementary students' understanding of engineering and computational thinking. Engineering students will help devise the engineering challenges that will drive the inquiry-based lessons, while education students will be primarily responsible for developing the lesson plans. Both student groups will be involved in lesson delivery to elementary school students. This project intends to: examine standardized exam results appropriate for each group of students (e.g., fundamentals of engineering and Praxis exam questions suitable to the topic being studied); use standardized assessment rubrics to assess student technical work (engineering only) and collaboration skills (engineering and education); qualitatively assess student reflections about the process of lesson development; and track persistence in the engineering students. This project aims to determine if this approach to teaching can significantly change engineering content knowledge, communication and collaboration skills, and persistence. The proposed research is expected to contribute to the body of knowledge in teaching and learning by determining whether significant changes in engineering/science content knowledge can be achieved through collaborative partnerships between engineering and elementary education students. It is anticipated that a replicable instructional model that can be adopted by engineering and teacher preparation programs across the country will result.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Please report errors in award information by writing to: awardsearch@nsf.gov.