The Mississippi State University leaderSTATE STEM program provides a variety of experiences for Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC) high school cadets across three states: Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, the majority from underrepresented demographic populations. LeaderSTATE STEM offers 5-day residential summer camps (N=6) for over 300 students annually. The camps utilize a variety of geosciences STEM activities to increase students' awareness of science and opportunities in geoscience careers. To evaluate the effectiveness of student attitudes towards science, the Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA) instrument was used to ascertain changes in attitudes about science and society. Paired pre-post TOSRA survey results from 2014-2017 camp cycles (N= 1141 students) were analyzed for race, gender, and school correlations. Chi square analysis revealed only a scattered statistical improvement throughout the data (p = 0.05). More research is needed to determine whether the 5-day experience is too limited to result in high school students' attitudinal changes towards science, or whether the TOSRA instrument provides an appropriate assessment for the leaderSTATE STEM camps. A secondary assessment instrument was employed pre- and post-camp to ascertain the abilities of the students in their interpretation of graphically displayed data. That instrument assessed changes in the students' abilities in understanding basic data terminology and interpretation of data shown on graphs. Assessment was performed with a pre-camp - post-camp survey and analysis of change determined with a paired t-test with Cohen's d to determine effect size. A significant p value below 0.05 was determined for only one of six camps in 2016, and for three of six camps in 2017. In both years, Cohen's d effect size was small for two of six camps annually, and medium for all other camps. A follow-on weather data project was developed for, and implemented with, the students in the JROTC programs in the seven schools in the Jackson, Mississippi school district. That month-long project was an extension of topics introduced in the leaderSTATE summer camp program. Two schools performed well in both years of the project, two schools performed in the mid-range, and three schools underperformed in both years of the project.

<p>This study investigated high-achieving and non-high-achieving students’ persistence in STEM fields using nationally representative data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 for the years 2009, 2012, 2013, 2013-2014, and 2016. The results indicated that approximately 70% of high-achieving and non-high-achieving students continued their initial STEM degrees within 3 years of college enrollment. The study revealed that the most important predictors of STEM persistence were: math proficiency level, school belonging, school engagement, school motivation, school problems, science self-efficacy, credits earned in computer sciences, GPA in STEM courses, credits earned in STEM courses, and credits earned in Advanced Placement/International Baccalaureate (AP/IB) courses. Based on the results, math proficiency was the most important variable in the study for both high-achieving and non-high-achieving students. Even though credits earned in AP/IB combined were among the most important variables, they were two times more important for high-achieving students (6.86% vs. 3.37%). Regarding demographic information related variables, socioeconomic status was the most important variable among gender, ethnicity, and urbanicity in models predicting STEM persistence and had higher importance for non-high-achieving students. Furthermore, Hispanic students' proportion of persistence differed from other underrepresented populations’ persistence. Non-high-achieving Hispanic students had the highest persistence rate, similar to well-represented populations (i.e., White, Asian). Machine learning methods used in the study including random forest and artificial neural network provided good accuracy for both achievement groups. Random forest accuracy was over 82% with the Synthetic Minority Over-Sampling Technique (SMOTE) dataset, while artificial neural network accuracy was over 92%.</p>

Across the United States, Human Anatomy and Physiology (HA&P) courses typically have some of the highest withdrawal and failure rates on college campuses. These high enrollment course typically serve as gate-keepers for those individuals with aspirations of entering the medical field. In light of the growing national shortage of healthcare professionals, there is a pressing need to improve the state of HA&P education at a national scale. The goal of this dissertation is to understand why undergraduate students struggle to succeed in HA&P courses. I leveraged multiple frameworks from biology education research, physics education research, and cognitive psychology to understand the source of student difficulty in HA&P. I used a mixed-methods approach to unpack how students reason about the complex phenomena covered in HA&P classes. The data presented here suggest student difficulties in HA&P are not the product of a culmination of individual conceptual difficulties. Rather, this work suggests students have difficulty reasoning with the many complex systems that are at the heart of HA&P curriculum. Students appear to frame these complex systems in a manner that activates reasoning strategies that are often in conflict with course goals. The findings from this work advocate for a dynamic view of student cognition that recognizes the implications of context features on student reasoning of complex systems.

<p>This thesis investigates an online STEM camp called Techie Times and observes its ability to engage rural and urban students in Indiana after the initial COVID-19 outbreak. Students from both locales are found to engage with the camp but only from a few counties across Indiana. Techie Times observed high skills and performance engagement and moderate participation and emotional engagement. The guardians of students appreciated the online camp’s structure, ease of access, and hands-on activities, but thought that the students needed more opportunities to interact with each other and present ideas.</p>

No description available.

The proposed project, sCool, is an adaptive game-based learning experience designed for STEM education. In this work, we present a new iteration of sCool in efforts to further examine contributing factors of engagement, usability, and comprehension. The newly developed game experience for acquiring object-oriented programming skills is divided into two parts: concept learning and practical challenge. The concept learning part teaches students theoretical lessons of programming through fun gameplay. The practical challenge part allows students to practice programming by completing tasks. This project presents several new game types for both the concept learning and practical challenge parts. The development of these game types spreads across two phases. The first phase introduces two new game types and focuses on extending sCool to support learning object-oriented programming and improve student’s learning comprehension. The second phase builds off of the first phase, introducing another new game type to improve the object-oriented programming learning experience and the game’s overall usability and engagement. During the first phase, three experiments were conducted in a classroom setting with a computer science teacher. Conducting a study involving a total of 39 school students and three teachers, we are able to successfully display an enhanced understanding of different programming concepts. During the second phase, a single experiment was held remotely among a wide group of people, and the participants were self-guided by an instruction document and the sCool application. Conducting a study with 25 participants, we are able to show a significant improvement in the game’s usability and engagement. For future works, further evaluations in-classroom and over a longer course will be useful in assessing the new game type’s effectiveness in teaching object oriented programming. Furthermore, the game should be expanded to support learning more complex concepts in object oriented programming.

In order for the United States to regain its global standing in science and engineering, educational and governmental organizations have started to re-emphasize science, technology, engineering, and math content in k-12 classrooms.While some preliminary research has been conducted on student and teacher perceptions related to engineering, there has been little research conducted related to teachers beliefs about the importance of engineering content in their classrooms and relatively few studies have investigated elementary teachers teaching engineering self-efficacy. Current studies have investigated the impact of professional development on teachers teaching engineering self-efficacy but these studies were conducted with limited sample sizes, for relatively short professional development timeframes, with a restricted sample and these studies did not include the implementation component of professional development. Research is needed to not only determine elementary teachers beliefs about the importance of engineering content in their classrooms, but to also investigate if these teachers levels of confidence (teaching engineering self-efficacy) can be increased by exposure to STEM-related professional development and the implementation of engineering activities in their classrooms. The research question in this study was to determine if scored responses from a pre-survey taken by teachers participating in an engineering-related professional development would differ from scored responses on two subsequent post-surveys following the professional development and following implementation on the teachers beliefs about the importance of teaching engineering content at the elementary level and the teachers confidence in the ability to teach engineering concepts at the elementary school level.While the teachers in this study generally had positive beliefs about the importance of teaching engineering at the elementary level, an investigation of the individual nine beliefs items from the survey indicated that they are less likely to consider engineering part of the basics and that it should be taught more frequently. One of the major conclusions from this study was that teachers teaching engineering self-efficacy can be significantly strengthened through participation in a week-long professional development series. Furthermore, while not statistically significant, the implementation of these activities into their classroom can also help improve teachers confidence in their ability to teach engineering-related activities.

No description available.

The Technological Immersion Learning Theory (TILT) was developed through a classic grounded theory study in the seminal tradition of Glaser and Strauss (1967) and Glaser (1978, 1992, 1998, 2001, 2007). The purpose of the study was to investigate an exemplary case of self-determined technology enthusiasts in the hopes of generating a substantive grounded theory that conceptualizes their experiences and concerns. Twelve unstructured interviews of amateur radio enthusiasts from the eastern United States provided the initial / primary data for this study. Experimenting and self-teaching in technological activities was highlighted as the main concern of the participants. The basic social process (BSP) of technological immersion learning (TIL) emerged as a theoretical construct and core variable that illuminates the experiences of individuals immersed in a community of practice, where hands-on engagement with technology is a primary activity. Adventuring, Affirmation, Doing Technology, Experimenting, Overcoming Challenge, Self-teaching, and Social Networking were properties of technological immersion learning that interact dialectically in an amplifying causal loop, with Problem solving and Designing as active sub processes in response to unmet challenges. TIL occurs cyclically in three stages, beginning with Induction, a credentialing stage wherein the neophyte is prepared with the necessary knowledge and skill to become a novice participant in an activity. The transition from Induction into the Immersion phase is a status passage whereby the novice is absorbed into the technical culture of the group and commences autonomous active participation in hands-on experimenting. Hands-on experiences with experimenting, problem solving and social interactions provide diverse learning and affirmation for the doer and multiple sources of feedback that promote sustained engagement. The transition into the Maturation phase proceeds gradually over time, with prolonged engagement and cumulative gains in knowledge, skill, and experience. Maturation is a quasi-stable state that remains responsive to new contexts as a random-walk process, wherein trigger events can initiate new cycles of technological immersion learning in a perpetually evolving process of personal development. Engagement, Empowerment, and Self-Actualization are underlying dimensions of the TIL basic social process that provide the impetus for continued persistence and personal development. / Ph. D.

Experiential opportunities at the secondary level give students the 'intimate and necessary relation between the processes of actual experience and education' (Dewey, 1938, p. 19-20). Career and Technical Education classes (CTE) and co-curricular experiences, one type of experiential learning, underpin and cultivate student curiosity and often channel interests into STEM-related post-secondary disciplines and career choices. There is little existent research on the characteristics of exemplary experiential learning opportunities and the impact on stakeholders. This study is intended to identify the qualities and characteristics of an exemplary secondary experience through the lived experiences of the stakeholders; students, STEM-related teachers, and CTE/STEM Administrators. A qualitative research design was used to examine characteristics and implications for students of four STEM-related programs throughout Virginia. Conclusions from the study include fundamental principles for providing exemplary experiential STEM-related learning opportunities. These principles include: providing hands-on, real world learning opportunities for students, providing learning opportunities that will enhance student ownership in their learning, providing unique and comprehensive career exploration opportunities for students, providing a schedule for teachers that will give them time to plan, deliver, and manage exemplary experiential learning opportunities, providing continual teacher and administrator in-service training relative to planning and implementing exemplary experiential learning opportunities, investing appropriate funds for providing exemplary experiential learning opportunities. Establishing and maintaining active partnerships with business/industry and colleges/universities, and maintaining active advisory communities, providing appropriate staff to support the provision of exemplary experiential learning opportunities is needed. The need for adequate funding, improving perception of CTE and STEM programs, and small class sizes was also recommended. / Ph. D.