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

该项目将推动学生和教师创新技术体验(ITEST)计划的努力，以更好地了解和促进实践，通过参与现场实践、实验室/基于项目的创业任务和指导经验，提高学生在科学、技术、工程或数学(STEM)领域追求职业生涯的动机和能力。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财团合作，开发一个带有集成孵化器课程的在线开源平台，让高中生、教师和导师协同合作，通过设计和推出与STEM相关的产品和服务来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个课后环境中进行测试、重复和实施，以评估其有效性。该项目将作为高中的顶石课程实施，并吸引1100多名主要代表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市场上坚持下去。项目的指导性研究问题是：(1)什么连贯的经验集有效和高效地支持学生在今天或未来与STEM相关的劳动力中进行生产性参与的能力、动机和毅力？(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、并为从事与STEM相关的工作做好准备？以及(4)通过让代表性不足的人群参与STEM项目和职业，有什么有效和富有成效的方式来确保更广泛的参与？使用准实验设计，EDC研究团队将比较参加STEM Starter Capstone课程的12年级学生和参加传统Capstone课程的同龄人。参与的学校将作为场地或街区，每个学校提供两个STEM入门Capstone课程和两个传统Capstone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.