Skills21STEMStarter: An Incubator and Launch Pad to STEM Entrepreneurship and Careers

该项目将推进“面向学生和教师的创新技术体验”（ITEST）计划的工作，通过参与实地实践、实验室/项目创业任务和指导经验，更好地理解和促进提高学生在科学、技术、工程或数学（STEM）领域追求职业的动机和能力的实践。Education Connection的21世纪技能中心将与一个由教育和行业合作伙伴组成的联盟合作，开发一个在线开源平台，其中包含一个综合孵化器课程，让高中生、教师和导师通过协同合作，通过设计和推出stem相关产品和服务，提高学生的能力和技能。该项目将在25个不同的校内环境和2个校外环境中进行测试、迭代和实施，以评估其有效性。该项目将作为一门高中顶点课程实施，并吸引1100多名代表性不足的学生参与挑战项目解决方案的开发、迭代和启动。该项目的重点是培养高中生的创业技能，并教他们如何在STEM市场中坚持下去。该项目的指导性研究问题是：(1)哪些连贯的经验能有效和高效地支持学生的能力、动机和毅力，以便在今天或未来参与与stem相关的劳动力？(2)什么样的教学和课程模式可以有效地吸引教师利用和整合技术来提高学生对stem相关职业的理解？(3)企业和行业员工在激励学生意识到、感兴趣并为stem相关劳动力的职业生涯做好准备方面可能发挥什么作用？(4)通过让代表性不足的人群参与STEM项目和职业，确保扩大参与度的有效和富有成效的方法是什么？采用准实验设计，EDC研究团队将比较参加STEM入门顶点课程的12年级学生和参加传统顶点课程的同龄人。参与的学校将作为站点或街区，每所学校提供两门STEM入门课程和两门传统课程。

This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by engaging in hands-on field experience, laboratory/project-based entrepreneurship tasks and mentorship experiences. Education Connection's Center for 21st Century Skills, in collaboration with a consortium of education and industry partners, will develop an online open source platform with an integrated incubator curriculum that engages high school students, teachers, and mentors in synergistic collaborations to advance students' competencies and skills via the design and launching of STEM-related products and services. The project will be tested, iterated, and implemented in 25 diverse in-school settings and 2 afterschool settings to assess its effectiveness. The project will be implemented as a high school Capstone course and engage over 1,100 predominantly underrepresented students in the development, iteration, and launching of challenge project solutions. The focus of the project is on development of entrepreneurship skills in high school students and teaching them how to persist in the STEM marketplace.The guiding research questions of the project are: (1) What coherent sets of experiences effectively and efficiently support student competency, motivation, and persistence for productive participation in the STEM-related workforce of today or in the future? (2) What instructional and curricular models can effectively engage teachers to utilize and integrate technologies to enhance student understanding of STEM-related occupations? (3) What roles might business and industry workforce members play in motivating students to become aware of, interested in, and prepared for careers in the STEM-related workforce? and (4) What are effective and productive ways to ensure broadening participation by engaging underrepresented populations in STEM programs and careers? Using a quasi-experimental design, the EDC research team will compare 12th grade students enrolled in STEM Starter Capstone courses with their peers enrolled in traditional Capstone courses. Participating schools will serve as sites or blocks, each offering two STEM Starter Capstone courses and two traditional Capstone courses.