STEM Education Through Sophomore Innovation (SETSI)

研究表明，当学生的经历真实而有意义时，例如，当学生看到他们所学的知识与自己的生活经历和周围社区之间的直接联系时，STEM学习就会得到加强。在过去的十年里，创客空间、黑客空间和Fab实验室的蓬勃发展为学生提供了一个环境，向学生介绍他们可以使用的方法和技术，以达到与社会和他们的生活相关的解决方案。该项目旨在通过创建大学“创客空间”实验室和相关的大二体验（SYE）课程，提高STEM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、团队协作、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项目元素影响STEM专业大二学生：1)设计、创建和实施一门多学科的STEM二年级体验课程；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)完善定义有效本科STEM教育的知识库。教育目标将以两个研究问题为指导：发达的创新教学法如何影响学生在STEM领域的动机和记忆力？通过低成本校园创客空间引入的技能组合是否能提高学生的未来表现和职业准备？项目团队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的输入。为了记录该计划的学习和保留收益，外部评估人员将量化取得特定学习成果的进展，并提高STEM学生的保留和毕业率。

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.