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Item Creating the STEM Education Research Institute: SERI(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2013-04-05) Feldhaus, Charlie; Gavrin, Andy; Mutegi, JomoSERI, The STEM Education Research Institute, is a new initiative of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, based on collaboration among the Schools of Science, Education, and Engineering and Technology. This presentation will provide an overview of the mission, vision, and goals of SERI. It will also detail the organizational structure and leadership of SERI, and describe some of the initial projects SERI has undertaken. SERI offers a range of support to all IUPUI faculty interested in STEM Education research, including project development, evaluation, and dissemination. We are particularly interested in meeting researchers who wish to create educational components associated with new or ongoing research projects.Item Developing an understanding of the implementation and impacts of high school pre-engineering programs: Making the case for a benefit-cost analysis(IEEE, 2017-10) Sorge, Brandon; Hess, Justin L.; Technology and Leadership Communication, School of Engineering and TechnologyWith the ongoing demand for improved K-12 STEM education, a push for dual-credit courses, and the goal of college and career-ready high school graduates, schools have implemented numerous STEM programs including those focused on engineering. Curricular programs, such Engineering by Design, Project Lead the Way (PLTW), and EPICS High are being executed by schools across the country with varied amounts of success as measured by student-level outcomes. Exploring costs of these program implementations and their associated outcomes is vital in deciding the best means for preparing our future engineering workforce. This paper utilizes cost analysis to provide initial insights into the relative impact of one of the most common high school engineering program, PLTW. Specifically, by relying on data reported in select literature, we investigate the impacts versus the costs of implementing PLTW in high schools. Cost data includes select variables such as student section size, school size, and school type. These findings will provide a baseline for understanding cost variations of the PLTW curriculum across contexts, as well as what impact cost variations may have on student outcomes.Item The Efficacy of Project Lead the Way: A Systematic Literature Review(American Society for Engineering Education, 2016-06) Hess, Justin L.; Sorge, Brandon; Feldhaus, Charles; Department of Technology and Leadership Communication, School of Engineering and TechnologyProject Lead the Way (PLTW) is a non-profit organization offering project-based STEM education curricula for K-12 students. As of 2015, PLTW was by far the largest pre-engineering program implemented throughout the United States with a presence in over 6500 schools. Since its conception in 1997, PLTW rapidly expanded and today covers all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The PLTW Engineering curriculum offers a sequence of courses that students may take over the course of high school, and many university programs allow students who complete this sequence the opportunity to earn college credit. The PLTW Gateway curriculum targets students in Grades 6-8 and the PLTW Launch curriculum targets K-5 students. See the PLTW website for current program titles. They now simply use PLTW Engineering, PLTW Gateway and PLTW Launch. This study investigates the efficacy of PLTW efforts through a systematic literature review process. Specifically, we explored the following research questions: • To what extent has PLTW been an area of scholarly investigation and what has been the nature of these investigations? • What primary strengths and weaknesses of PLTW have these investigations identified? • What gaps in PLTW literature exist and what future research is needed? After an initial data collection and literature reduction processes, we synthesized 31 articles that collected and analyzed empirical data related to PLTW. Our gathered literature included 16 journal articles, 11 dissertations, and 4 theses. Using an emergent coding process, we found that primary strengths of PLTW curricula include motivating students to pursue STEM degrees, providing teachers with professional development opportunities and support, and facilitating student interest in STEM subjects. However, weaknesses of PLTW include minimal evidence supporting PLTW in improving students’ mathematics and science abilities, scheduling and space issues, and moderate financial costs for schools to participate in PLTW. Altogether, the literature collected varied widely and, as a result, each of these strengths and weaknesses requires further investigation. This study concludes with an identification of gaps in PLTW literature that can focus future PLTW-related investigations and, if investigated, help improve future PLTW-related interventions.Item Frameworks to Develop Integrated STEM Curricula(Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology (IPST), 2018-04-02) Walker, William S.; Moore, Tamara J.; Guzey, S. Selcen; Sorge, Brandon H.; Technology Leadership and Communication, School of Engineering and TechnologyResearch-based frameworks can help K-12 schools develop integrated STEM curricula. Two frameworks are presented that describe the characteristics of effective integrated STEM lessons and effective engineering education. The second framework is a modification of the first. Modifications were made to align the framework to a school that was new to integrated STEM. The frameworks have promise for K-12 schools who wish to develop and implement an integrated STEM curriculum that may have different levels of experience and different types of support.Item Identifying Connections and Potential Synergies among IUPUI STEM Education Initiatives(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2013-04-05) Gavrin, Andy; Fore, Grant; Sorge, BrandonSERI is the new STEM Education Research Institute at IUPUI. One of its initial projects is a search for potential synergies among the many STEM education initiatives ongoing at IUPUI. The ultimate goal of this project is to establish best practices for identifying and implementing such synergistic connections among STEM education initiatives within a single large campus or consortium of geographically connected smaller campuses. The project will be implemented in three phases. During Phase 1, which is currently underway, SERI researchers will non-intrusively identify and categorize campus STEM education initiatives through IUPUI websites, institutional reports, and funding reports from foundations such as NSF and NIH. In Phase 2, researchers will both conduct fact-checking interviews with IUPUI faculty/staff and develop a comprehensive and accessible database of current STEM education initiatives across campus. With Phase 3, researchers will conduct an analysis of IUPUI’s initiatives using the database and, when needed, additional faculty/staff interviews both to assess internal synergy and cost-saving and to identify the potential for additional synergistic development at IUPUI. Following the completion of this tripartite process, results will be gathered and assembled into an NIH or NSF proposal requesting funding to formalize the process and expand it to a sample of other campuses.Item Integrating Civic Learning into the STEM Classroom: An orientation and selected resources.(2017-11-02) Price, Mary F.Resource Guide to accompany the CIRTL Network Series entitled "Integrating Civic Learning into STEM" offered as a two part series on November 2nd and 9th, 2017. The guide provides starter resources for instructors seeking to enhance STEM curricula through the integration of civic rich learning experiences, including but not limited to service-learning.Item Project Lead the Way: Analysis of Statewide Student Outcomes(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2014-04-11) Robbins, Kirsten; Sorge, Brandon; Helfenbein, Robert J.; Feldhaus, CharlieProject Lead the Way (PLTW) is a STEM education programming provider implementing hands-on, project-based engineering or biomedical science curricula in U.S. secondary schools. The goal of PLTW is to increase student interest and knowledge in these and other STEM majors/careers. A large, longitudinal dataset of students who graduated from an Indiana high school in 2010 was created. Preliminary analysis of the dataset found that students who took PLTW engineering courses were significantly more likely to select a STEM major, select an engineering major in college, and persist from the first to the second year of college. Additionally, taking three or more PLTW classes increased the likelihood of selecting a STEM major, selecting an engineering major in college, and persisting from the first to the second year of college. We also examined factors of PLTW students that made them more likely to major in a STEM field, enroll in a 4-year institution, and persist from their first to their second year of college. We found that being male, having a higher math ISTEP+ score, and receiving an honors diploma increased a PLTW students’ likelihood of majoring in STEM. PLTW students who were not eligible for free and reduced lunch, who were part of an underrepresented minority, who received an honors diploma, and who had higher ELA ISTEP+ scores were more likely to attend a 4-year institution. PLTW students who received an honors diploma and were not eligible for free and reduced lunch are more likely to persist from freshman to sophomore year. These findings elucidate interesting and important patterns in the data, highlighting a need for “scale-up research” to further determine the potential factors influencing student access and success. As such, the broad objective of our future research is to produce a multi-scalar representation of PLTW outcomes in Indiana, which can then be used as a modality for understanding the outcomes, impacts, and factors influencing PLTW success nationwide. More specifically, the project will identify PLTW outcomes in rural, suburban, and urban schools and their effects on the everyday experience of students in STEM programs at IUPUI. This multi-scalar approach will explore the broader sociocultural configuration of Indiana high schools, the extent to which those schools evidence PLTW implementation fidelity, and the longitudinal impact of PLTW curriculum on current STEM majors at IUPUI.Item Understanding STEM from Students’ Perspectives: Exploring Students’ Lived Communities and the Learning Communities They Wish to Create(IUPUI Office of Community Engagement, 2023) Price, Jeremy; School of EducationCommunity engagement in STEM learning and teaching largely focuses on citizen science projects, serving the needs and goals of the largely white and male dominated STEM fields with only cursory attention to the lived experiences and narratives of the learners who engage in these experiences (Mahmoudi et al., 2022; Rautio et al., 2022). This article explores the ways in which researchers can work with students to uncover the ways in which they experience learning environments, and pathways for change according to their community memberships, aspirations, and goals. Participants in this research are high school biology students in a diverse mid-suburban city. To understand their perspectives, students participated in activity structures grounded in anthropological methods including ethnographic interviews (Emerson et al., 1995; Spradley, 1979), illustrations (Haney et al., 2004), pile sorts (Boster, 1994; Ryan & Bernard, 2003), and ranking (Smith & Borgatti, 1997; Thompson & Juan, 2006). Moving between consensus and individuals, this research demonstrates the ways in which students’ critical and meaningful experiences and aspirations can be understood and heard.