2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 125: Exploring the Impact of University Engineering Role Models on Elementary Students (NSF ITEST Project)

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

[BLINDED] university founded an outreach program in 2001 in response to Massachusetts’ inclusion of engineering in the required K-12 science curricular framework. The 17-year-old [BLINDED] program places over 60 undergraduate engineering students as engineering ambassadors into 30 local elementary classrooms each year to help teachers integrate hands-on engineering design projects into their classroom weekly during the academic year. Inspired by NSF’s GK-12 model, [BLINDED] program was created to provide role models and support engineering activities in local schools. A unique characteristic of the [BLINDED] program is that of the 60 undergraduate participants each semester, 50-65% are female, providing participating elementary students with opportunities to interact with role models of all genders. [BLINDED] program is representative of efforts that are happening at over 100 university-based engineering outreach efforts across the United States. As this type of outreach continues to proliferate, thinking about ways to improve and leverage this vast resource is essential to improving its impact.

[BLINDED] is an NSF ITEST project working with the existing [BLINDED] program to develop intervention elements that optimize how role models in engineering are prepared and integrated into elementary school classrooms to maximize their impact on students’ engineering identity and career awareness. With a particular focus on girls, [BLINDED] project is studying the traits and mechanisms that elementary students utilize to identify and select or reject potential role models in engineering.

This paper/poster will share the intervention elements developed and research results to date. Intervention elements include engineering trading cards for engineering ambassadors, news articles on engineering, and in-class for building relationships between ambassadors and elementary students. Research for [BLINDED} projects has focused on analysis of survey data on elementary students’ identity, qualitative analysis of interview with elementary students on engineering interest, and close analysis of classroom video to examine productive interactions between engineering ambassadors and elementary students. The results and products of the [BLINDED] project will inform and enable engineering outreach providers in multiple settings to enhance their programs and impact.

Authors

Dr. Merredith D. Portsmore Tufts University [biography]

Dr. Merredith Portsmore is the Director for Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach as well as a Research Assistant Professor at the Center. Merredith received all four of her degrees from Tufts (B.A. English, B.S. Mechanical Engineering, M.A. Education, PhD in Engineering Education) and has been a member of the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach for 18 years, previously serving as the Director of Outreach and a program manager. Her research interests focus on how children engage in designing and constructing solutions to engineering design problems and evaluating students’ design artifacts. Her outreach work focuses on creating resources for K-12 educators to support engineering education in the classroom. She is also the founder of STOMP (stompnetwork.org), LEGOengineering.com (legoengineering.com), and the new Teacher Engineering Education Program (teep.tufts.edu).
Dr. Adam V. Maltese http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8422-9395 Indiana University [biography]

Professor of Science Education
Ms. Karen Miel http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8460-4332 University at Buffalo, The State University of New York [biography]

Karen Miel's research focuses on elementary students’ reasoning and decision-making in collaborative engineering design and the ways educators facilitate engineering sense-making. Previously, she served as Director of Research and Innovation and Education Director at science centers and as an elementary and middle school teacher.
Dr. Kelli Paul http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2322-7542 Indiana University [biography]

Dr. Kelli Paul is a postdoctoral researcher in science education at Indiana University. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology specializing in Inquiry Methodology from Indiana University in 2006. She managed a consulting business for 10 years working on evaluations that focused primarily in the areas of education and STEM of middle and high school students, especially women and minority students. Her research interests include student engagement and interest in STEM and STEM careers as well as the development of instruments and evaluation tools to assess these constructs.

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