Projects

The SAVE Science project is creating an innovative system using immersive virtual environments for evaluating learning in science, consistent with research- and policy-based recommendations for science learning focused around the big ideas of science content and inquiry for middle school years. Motivation for this comes not only from best practices as outlined in the National Science Education Standards and AAAS' Project 2061, but also from the declining interest and confidence of today's student in science.

This exploratory project seeks to understand the role that a network of tablet computers may play in elementary and middle school math and science classrooms. The project uses classroom observations, student interviews, teacher interviews, and student artifacts to identify the advantages and disadvantages of these resources, to understand what challenges and benefits they offer to teachers, and to offer recommendations for future hardware, software, and curriculum development.

This project supports up to eight fellows per year to participate in the Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellows Program. This program provides opportunities for teachers to work on educational issues and/or programs in a federal agency or congressional office. It promotes professional growth; fosters the exchange of ideas that are relevant to STEM education at the national and state levels through conferences, workshops, and presentations; provides opportunities for teachers' input; and awards outstanding teachers.

This project is evaluating existing knowledge about STEM teachers in professional learning communities (PLCs), both prospective teachers and classroom teachers across grades K-12. It will comprehensively synthesize peer-reviewed research but will also examine additional types of knowledge that influence the field. The project methods adapt those of Knowledge Management and Dissemination project, funded by NSF MSP and seeks to further advance the scope and rigor of knowledge synthesis.

This project conducts a systematic and empirical (both quantitative and qualitative) longitudinal study of the factors that influence students' decisions at critical junctures in the educational pipeline. The goals are too (a) broaden participation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields and (b) improve the recruitment, retention, and success of minority undergraduate men in STEM and STEM-related fields across colleges and universities in the United States.

This project is NSF's contribution to an interagency effort with NASA and NOAA to focus three symposia at the National Science Teachers Association annual meeting, not on particular agency efforts, but specifically on International Polar Year science through three themes: ice, life, and water and air. NSTA focuses on promoting innovation and excellence in science teaching and learning as well as the professional development of teachers to teach science.

This project develops and researches the academic potential of a hybrid instructional model that infuses computer simulations, modeling, and educational gaming into middle school technology education programs. These prototypical materials use 3-D simulations and educational gaming to support students’ learning of STEM content and skills through developing solutions to design challenges.

This project studies teaching practices in a year-long high school algebra course that integrates hand-held and other electronic devices. Of particular interest is how these technologies can support learners' capacity to efficiently and effectively draw on the distributed intelligences that technical and social networks make available. The investigation focuses on collaborative learning tasks centered on collective mathematical objects, such as functions, expressions, and coordinates that participants in a group must jointly manipulate through networked computers.

The purposes of this conference include bringing together 150 participants from all aspects of STEM education to exchange ideas about research, curriculum, and assessment; to help teachers integrate research-based instructional strategies in their teaching; and to build sustainable collaborations between participants. It includes three days of parallel presentations and discussion followed by a two-day summer academy. A focus on research-based strategies that advance the successful participation of underrepresented groups is embedded in all activities.

The mayor of Birmingham is making a two year loan of XO laptops to middle school students in the Birmingham City Schools in Alabama. The educational and social changes that will occur in classrooms and the effects on several student outcomes are studied in this Small Grant for Exploratory Research. It is expected that access to technology will change the educational and social environment in classrooms and affect student outcomes.

This conference uses Student Evaluation Standards, published by the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation, to engage a broad array of educational organizations in improving student achievement in STEM education through better evaluation practices that assess for learning. Participants learn more about the Student Evaluation Standards and use them together with a benchmarking process - distributed to them in the form of a toolkit - to enhance student evaluation processes.

This exploratory project aims to develop a community of individuals and organizations working together to address critical issues in K-12 computer science education by broadening the awareness of the need for curriculum computer science standards, providing multiple levels of professional development, conducting and disseminating research in computer science education, and promoting this subject as a unique field of study in schools.

This project creates materials for grades 5-8 that address and assess STEM concepts through a robotics curriculum. The curriculum addresses STEM standards through such documents as the NCTM Focal Points and the Atlas of Science Literacy. Students can use the TekBot robotics platform in three problem-based ways: building, moving, and programming. The intent is to scale up to a cyber-infrastructure that supports the national distribution and implementation of the curriculum.

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.

This project has pioneered simulation-based assessments of model-based science learning and inquiry practices for middle school physical and life science systems. The assessment suites include curriculum-embedded, formative assessments that provide  immediate, individualized feedback and graduated coaching with supporting reflection activities as well as summative end-of-unit benchmark assessments. The project has documented the instructional benefits, feasibility, utility, and technical quality of the assessments with over 7,000 students and 80 teachers in four states.

This project implemented a facets-of-thinking perspective to design tools and practices to improve high school chemistry teachers' formative assessment practices. Goals are to identify and develop clusters of facets related to key chemistry concepts; develop assessment items; enhance the assessment system for administering items, reporting results, and providing teacher resource materials; develop teacher professional development and resource materials; and examine whether student learning in chemistry improves in classes that incorporate a facet-based assessment system.

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.

This project employs sensing technologies to help transform students' physical actions during play into a set of symbolic (computer) representations in a physics simulation and to engage the children in a developmentally appropriate and powerful form of scientific modeling. The students are in grades K–1 at UCLA's elementary school, and the intervention is based on the existing content unit on Force and Motion.

This project is designed to enhance an existing interdisciplinary high school science curriculum—Astrobiology in the Secondary Classroom (ASC)—in an innovative way and conduct research to determine the effectiveness of these materials in three different underrepresented student populations—African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americas—experiencing an achievement gap in STEM areas at five sites. Improvements will focus on program alignment and increased use of data sets made available by research scientists.

This project seeks to advance knowledge in K-12 STEM education and assessment practices by building capacity for Assessment for Learning, improving assessments and teacher preparation courses, and providing models for pre-service teacher preparation through enhanced teaching modules. Three goals are: (1) faculty from three centers form a learning community, (2) recruit 5 STEM research scholars to conduct research on measurement and evaluation, and (3) expose pre-service teachers to assessment models in their coursework.

This project addresses middle school students’ learning of science through the improvement of their inquiry science skills. The main goal is to develop a rigorous, technology-based assessment system for standards-aligned assessment of inquiry skills in six physical science content areas (i.e., Properties of Matter; Elements, Compounds, and Mixtures; Motion of Objects; Forms of Energy; and Heat Energy). Assessments are aligned with the Massachusetts Curricular Framework and National Science Education Standards.

This project revises and tests integrated STEM modules and an accompanying professional development component that promote differentiated instruction in order to facilitate high school teachers' instruction of 21st century skills and integrated STEM content. STEM Fusion is a multi-tiered project focusing on the refinement of draft professional resources and the development of teacher skills related to differentiated instruction within integrated STEM instruction.

This project uses new psychometric techniques to create a technological tool that could evaluate how well students in the 4th-8th mathematics and science classrooms respond to complex performance tasks. The purpose of this tool is to improve the instruction of teachers in mathematics and science. It will produce real-time individualized diagnoses of instructional needs to help teachers plan instruction that specifically addresses the learning needs of each student in that class.

This project develops, implements, and evaluates new multimedia laboratory activities designed to engage students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The project specifically targets artistically gifted students who are often steered towards more traditionally creative areas (e.g., arts and humanities) and away from STEM. The goals to help students understand that scientific principles permeate the creative and performing arts and that creativity and expression are also embraced by STEM.

This project is developing technology-rich science curriculum exemplars for grades 3-6 based on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. The project is testing the effectiveness of the approach and providing an exemplar that can inspire additional content and further development. A set of professional development materials to support teacher implementation of UDL science curriculum in the classroom is planned. Probes are used for lab investigations and computational models are used for experimentation in virtual environments.