DIMEs: Immersing Teachers and Students in Virtual Engineering Internships

下一代科学标准（NGSS）概述了学生应该通过K-12年展示的科学能力，并代表了将工程设计融入科学教育结构的承诺。 然而，要实现这种新的教学理念，就需要为教师提供新的课程和教学支持，以及新的、具有时效性的评估方法。 该项目将通过开发和评估教师准备课程工程数字实习模块（DIMEs）来提供课程和教学支持。DIMES将旨在支持中学科学教师为学生提供经验，要求学生使用工程设计实践和科学理解来解决现实世界的问题，从而促进对科学和工程的深入理解，并激发学生对科学和工程的兴趣。 这些模块还将评估学生应用科学知识解决工程问题的能力，从而为教师提供有关学生科学和工程理解深度的可操作数据。 DIME将是学生在模拟工程公司实习的环境。 工程数字实习模块将提供身临其境的体验，同时作为学习和评估的机会。DIME不仅评估学生是否理解NGSS科学和工程概念，还评估他们是否能在现实世界的问题解决中使用它们。教师将使用定制设计的教师界面来编排DIME，该界面将显示学生的工作，自动生成的评估以及每个学生学习进度的报告。该项目将建立在NSF资助的基于计算机的STEM学习环境（称为认知游戏）的基础上。认知游戏是一种计算机角色扮演游戏，已成功用于本科工程课程和K-12人群的非正式环境，教学生像STEM专业人员一样思考，从而为他们解决21世纪世纪问题做好准备。 该项目将创建六个为期十天的活动，其中两个分别在物理科学，生命科学和地球科学单元，通常在中学教授。 一个迭代的研究和设计过程是用来进行试点测试的六个DIME在当地的教室，现场测试每个DIME的测试版与15名教师和多达1500名学生在国家教室，然后实施每个DIME的最终版本在研究试验与30名教师和多达3000名学生在国家教室。通过将学习科学和本科工程教育的前沿发展引入中学STEM教育，该项目旨在改善教育实践，并加强对中学科学课堂环境中学习成果的评估。

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) outline the science competencies students should demonstrate through their K-12 years and represent a commitment to integrate engineering design into the structure of science education. However, achieving this new ideal of teaching and learning will require new curricular and pedagogical supports for teachers as well as new and time-efficient assessment methods. This project will provide such curricular and pedagogical support by developing and evaluating teacher-ready curricular Digital Internship Modules for Engineering (DIMEs). DIMES will be designed to support middle school science teachers in providing students with experiences that require students to use engineering design practices and science understanding to solve a real-world problem, thereby promoting a robust understanding of science and engineering, and motivating students to increased interest in science and engineering. The modules will also assess students' ability to apply their science knowledge in solving the engineering problem, thereby providing teachers with actionable data about the depth of their students' science and engineering understanding. The DIMEs will be environments where students work as interns at a simulated engineering firm. The Digital Internship Modules for Engineering will provide immersive experiences that simultaneously serve as learning and assessment opportunities. DIMEs will assess not only whether students understand NGSS science and engineering concepts, but also whether they can use them in the context of real-world problem solving. Teachers will orchestrate DIMEs using a custom-designed teacher interface that will show student work, auto-generated assessments, and reports on each student's learning progress. This project will build on prior work on NSF-funded computer-based STEM learning environments called epistemic games. Epistemic games are computer role-playing games that have been successfully used in both undergraduate engineering courses and informal settings for K-12 populations to teach students to think like STEM professionals, thereby preparing them to solve 21st century problems. The project will create six ten-day activities, two each in Physical Science, Life Science and Earth Science units that are typically taught in middle school. An iterative research and design process is used to conduct pilot tests of the six DIMEs in local classrooms, field test a beta version of each DIME with 15 teachers and up to 1500 students in national classrooms, and then implement final versions of each DIME in research trials with 30 teachers and up to 3000 students in national classrooms. By bringing cutting-edge developments in learning science and undergraduate engineering education to middle school STEM education, the project aims to improve educational practice, and enhance assessment of learning outcomes in middle school science classroom settings.