PictureSTEM: Integrating STEM, Literacy, and Computational Thinking in Meaningful Ways

Elizabeth Gajdzik

INSPIRE Research Institute for Pre-College Engineering at Purdue University will share their work and findings from their NSF funded STEM+C grant. To illustrate and bring meaning to the discussion, we will use hands-on examples from PictureSTEM, a free Kindergarten - 2nd Grade curriculum that uses picture books and an engineering design challenge to provide students with authentic, contextual activities that engage learners in specific STEM content as well as integrates concepts across disciplinary boundaries. Participants will gain a better understanding of what computational thinking is and what it looks like for K-2 students as well as receive electronic access to copies of all three grades level PictureSTEM units.

Toys, Games, Books & Apps: Using Play to Teach Computational Thinking 

Tony Lowe and Elizabeth Gajdzik

This session will feature toys, games, books, and apps from Purdue University’s Engineering Gift Guide that teach computational thinking through play as well as other devices and apps INPSIRE Research Institute for Pre-College Engineering has explored through its research on integrating STEM, literacy, and computational thinking. Participants will get a chance to engage with the products and walk away with a better understanding of what computational thinking is and a list of products that they could use in their classroom.

Engineering Notebooks in the Loon Nesting Platforms STEM Integration Unit

Tamara Moore

Examining Teacher Talk in an Engineering Design-based Science Curricular Unit

Maurina L. Aranda, Richard Lie, S. Selcen Guzey, Murat Makarsu, Amanda Johnston, Tamara Moore

Recent science education reforms highlight the importance for teachers to implement effective instructional practices that promote student learning of science and engineering content and their practices. Effective classroom discussion has been shown to support the learning of science, but work is needed to examine teachers’ enactment of engineering design-based science curricula by focusing on the content, complexity, structure, and orchestration of classroom discussions. In the present study, we explored teacher-student talk with respect to science in a middle school curriculum focused on genetics and genetic engineering. Our study was guided by the following major research question: What are the similarities and differences in teacher talk moves that occurred within an engineering design-based science unit enacted by two teachers?

Pushing the Limits with Engineering

Kayla Maxey, Jessica Rush Leeker, Morgan M. Hynes, Monica E. Cardella 

Participants in this workshop will be educators interested in introducing the engineering design process in their elementary, middle, or high school classrooms. Participants will engage in hands-on activities and videos to explore the five fundamental principles of the engineering design process used to solve real-world problems: setting goals, building knowledge, designing, testing, and finalizing a solution. Using hands-on activities and interactive discussions of videos where students are engaging in the engineering design process, participants will be introduced to each principle, its purpose, and how to teach any engineering design curriculum. For each engineering design principle, participants will face common challenges encountered by students and educators during design. The teaching strategies will be introduced throughout this interactive workshop to address how the participants can overcome these obstacles in their classroom and best support the learning of 21st-century skills.  By walking through each principle of the engineering design process, participants will increase their confidence in their ability to teach engineering in their classes by learning teaching strategies that best engage, encourage, and empower students toward design completion. Participants will leave this workshop with an enhanced proficiency in teaching engineering design within their classrooms and an excitement to introduce their students to fun, engaging, and authentic engineering design activities. 

Systematic Review of Educational Robots in K-12 Education

Saira Anwar and Muhsin Menekse

Educational Robots are used in K-12 education to enhance students’ interest and learning in various fields of STEM education. Besides the general benefits of being effective in giving profound learning experience, there appears to be a need to determine the specific benefits which have been achieved with the robotics implementation in K-12 formal and informal learning settings. In this study we present a systematic review of literature on educational robotics in K- 12 space. Based on our systematic review, we found 120 studies that were classified under two broad themes 1) general effectiveness of robotics in education, and 2) methods used to optimize benefits of robots in education. The results revealed four categories of optimized benefits with educational robots as: 1) enhance students’ abilities to construct and apply conceptual knowledge; 2) increase in creativity and motivation; 3) increasing diversity in engineering education; and 4) professional, curricular and pedagogical development. The study outlines the research questions, present the synthesis of literature, and discuss findings across themes and categories.