STEM Education Through Sophomore Innovation (SETSI)

研究表明，当学生的经验是真实和有意义的，例如，当学生看到他们所学的东西与他们自己的生活经历和周围社区之间的直接联系时。在过去的十年里，创客空间，黑客空间和Fab实验室的大量增长，这些实验室可以让学生访问，并提供一个环境，向学生介绍他们可以使用的方法和技术，以获得与社会和生活相关的解决方案。该项目旨在通过创建一个大学“创客空间”实验室和相关的二年级经验（SYE）课程，提高STEM学科专业大学生的保留率。 STEM-SYE课程旨在培养特定技能，包括技术技能，小组协作，项目设计，规划和执行，以及展示和捍卫结果的能力。 该项目将通过三个主要计划要素影响大二STEM专业：1）设计，创建和实施多学科STEM硕士年体验课程; 2）创建校园创客空间，以支持拟议的课程，并通过提供学习和服务机会来促进包容性社区; 3）改善知识基础，以定义有效的本科STEM教育。教育目标将由两个研究问题指导：开发的创新教学法如何影响学生在STEM领域的动机和保留？通过低成本校园创客空间引入的技能组合是否会提高学生未来的表现和职业准备？项目小组进行的教育研究将衡量新课程的影响，并将为课程开发过程、可复制性和可扩展性提供形成性投入。为了记录该计划的学习和保留收益，外部评估人员将量化实现特定学习成果和提高STEM学生的保留率和毕业率的进展。

Research has shown that STEM learning is enhanced when students' experiences are authentic and meaningful, e.g., when students see direct connections between what they learn and their own lived experiences and the surrounding community. During the last ten years there has been prolific growth of Makerspaces, hackerspaces, and Fab labs that are accessible to students and provide an environment that introduces students to methods and technologies that they can use to arrive at solutions relevant to society and their lives. This project aims to increase retention rates for college students majoring in STEM disciplines by creating a university "Makerspace" laboratory and an associated Sophomore Year Experience (SYE) course. The STEM-SYE course aims to develop specific skills, including technical skills, group collaboration, project design, planning and execution, and the ability to present and defend results. The project will impact sophomore STEM majors through three major program elements: 1) The design, creation, and implementation of a multi-disciplinary STEM sophomore-year experience course; 2) the creation of a campus Makerspace to support the proposed curriculum and to foster an inclusive community by providing learning and service opportunities; and 3) the improvement of the knowledge base for defining effective undergraduate STEM education. The education goal will be guided by two research questions: How does the developed innovative pedagogy impact students' motivation and retention in STEM fields? Do the skill sets introduced through low-cost campus Makerspaces lead to gains in students' future performance and career readiness? Education research conducted by the project team will measure the influence of the new course, and will provide formative input on the course development process, replicability and scalability. To document learning and retention gains from the program, external evaluators will quantify progress toward achieving specific learning outcomes and improving the retention and graduation rate of STEM students.