A New Approach to Evaluate Student Learning Outcomes Resulting From Participation in Remotely Operated Vehicle Competitions

全国对具有进入大学水平技术人员教育计划所需的内容知识和技能的学生以及熟练的技术劳动力的需求不断增长。机器人竞赛是吸引学生参与STEM学科的热门场所。这样的竞赛可以将学生、导师和机构与各种成功的、引人入胜的基于技术的项目联系起来。自2001年以来，海洋先进技术教育中心（MATE）一直支持远程操作车辆（ROV）比赛。ROV竞赛的目标包括激发学生对STEM的兴趣，帮助他们培养21世纪的职场技能，并使他们能够设想自己的STEM职业道路。这个项目将帮助参与的学生识别他们需要通过这个活动获得的知识和技能，清楚地看到他们需要改进的领域，并在他们继续接受教育和/或准备进入劳动力市场时利用这些知识。项目重点包括参加国内或国际ROV比赛的高中，社区学院和学院/大学学生。该项目建立并扩展了通过全面的赛后调查获得的结果，这些调查支持ROV比赛对参赛学生的价值，并与NSF ATE计划的目标保持一致。除了蒙特利半岛学院的MATE中心外，该项目还汇集了布法罗纽约州立大学学院以及卡尔顿学院科学教育资源中心提供的技术资源。该项目建立在纽约州立大学布法罗分校开发的本科生研究评估成功方法的基础上。这种方法，评估本科研究（EvaluateUR），评估理想的学生成果，包括内容知识和工作技能，如沟通技巧，创造力，自主性，克服障碍的能力，批判性思维和解决问题的能力。EvaluateUR还帮助学生发展元认知技能，从而促进学生了解自己的学术优势和劣势。该项目将调整EvaluateUR，为参加MATE区域和国际ROV竞赛的学生提供服务，支持教师顾问指导正在设计和建造ROV的学生，并向MATE提供有关竞赛学术价值的可靠反馈。以下目标将得到支持：1)确保所有参加比赛的学生在参加比赛之初就知道他们应该掌握哪些特定的知识和技能，以便为进一步的教育和/或工作做好准备；2)更精确地衡量每个参与的学生在实现这种精通方面表现出的成长程度；3)以加强学生元认知能力的方式实现这些目标；4)使用所有参与竞赛的机构的数据来创建一个可靠的、经过统计验证的发现数据库，显示学生在特定知识和技能方面的增长。预计其他机器人竞赛，如FIRST、VEX、Botball，以及国际无人驾驶车辆系统协会的陆地、空中和海上项目套件，也将代表这种方法的潜在用户。项目结果的传播将包括这些机器人社区以及其他国家协会和NSF ATE社区。该项目由美国国家科学基金会先进技术教育计划资助，该计划侧重于为推动国家经济的先进技术领域培养技术人员。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

There is a growing national demand for students with the content knowledge and skills needed to enter college level technician education programs and the skilled technical workforce. Robotics competitions are popular venues for engaging students in STEM disciplines. Such competitions can connect students, mentors, and institutions to a variety of successful and engaging technology-based programs. The Marine Advanced Technology Education Center (MATE) has supported the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Competition since 2001. The goals of the ROV competition include sparking student interest in STEM, helping them develop 21st Century workplace skills, and enabling them to envision themselves on STEM career pathways. This project will support the ability of participating students to identify the knowledge and skills they need to gain through this activity, to see clearly the areas where they need to improve, and to use this knowledge to their advantage as they continue their education and/or prepare to enter the workforce. The project focus includes high school, community college, and college/university students who participate in national or international ROV competitions. This project builds upon and extends findings obtained using comprehensive post-competition surveys that support the value of the ROV competitions for participating students, and is aligned with the goals of the NSF ATE program. In addition to the MATE Center at Monterey Peninsula College, the project brings together the State University of New York College at Buffalo, and the technical resources available through the Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College. This project builds on a successful approach for evaluating of undergraduate research developed at SUNY Buffalo State. This approach, Evaluate Undergraduate Research (EvaluateUR), assesses desirable student outcomes, including both content knowledge and workplace skills, such as communication skills, creativity, autonomy, an ability to overcome obstacles, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. EvaluateUR also helps students develop metacognition skills, which in turn promote student understanding of their academic strengths and weaknesses. The project will adapt EvaluateUR to serve students participating in MATE's regional and international ROV competitions, support faculty advisors as they mentor students who are designing and building ROVs, and provide reliable feedback to MATE about the academic value of the competitions. The following objectives will be supported: 1) Ensure that all students involved in the competitions know at the outset of their participation what specific knowledge and skills they should be mastering to prepare for additional education and/or the workplace; 2) Measure more precisely how much growth each student participate has demonstrated toward achieving such mastery; 3) Accomplish these goals in a way that strengthens student metacognitive abilities; and 4) Use data from all institutions involved in the competition to create a database of reliable, statistically validated findings showing student growth on specific knowledge and skills. It is also anticipated that other robotics competitions, such as FIRST, VEX, Botball, and the Association of Unmanned Vehicle System International's suite of land, air, and sea programs, represent potential users of this methodology. Dissemination of project results will include these robotics communities as well as other national associations and the NSF ATE community. This project is funded by the NSF Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the nation's economy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.