The purpose of this project is to increase students' achievement and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) or information and communication technology (ICT) careers. The project is working with four rural school districts to provide teacher professional development and implement research-based curriculum modules for two mathematics educational software packages in geometry (Geometer's Sketchpad) and statistics and probability (Fathom). The project uses a computing laboratory so that the software packages are hosted centrally by the university and accessible on-demand for teachers and students--reducing schools' expenses for technology staff and software licenses. The project takes advantage of a North Carolina initiative to provide 1:1 computers. Approximately 50 teachers and up to 5,000 students in rural North Carolina will be impacted by this project. Additionally, the project has identified and will continue to recruit STEM/ICT professionals from local businesses to visit and mentor participating students and teachers. The study's research and evaluation uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods in a delayed-treatment design. Qualitative data sources include teacher interviews and classroom observations. Quantitative data sources include measures of teachers' content knowledge and students' content knowledge, classroom engagement, and career interest. External evaluation is provided by the SERVE Center at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Scaling up STEM Learning with the VCL received a $1.76 million project award in 2009. It was awarded to the project’s faculty members from NC State University’s Department of Communication, Department of Mathematics Education, Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, and the Office of Information Technology. The project website can be found at http://scaleupstem.ncsu.edu and is free and open to the public. The project aimed to motivate high school students’ interest in and preparation for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) professions by improving their mathematics learning outcomes. The project utilized sustained, relevant, professional development to support teachers' use of advanced software tools in their algebra and geometry classrooms, in combination with cyber-infrastructure in the form of 1:1 Laptop classroom implementation, broadband Internet connectivity in the schools and community, and Cloud Computing. The project addressed students’ and teachers’ awareness of real world applications of math through the creation and web-based distribution of video interviews of Role Models in STEM careers. These components have been integrated to form a promising approach to addressing STEM workforce shortfalls among under-represented populations. This project focused on four rural districts’ high schools in North Carolina. It included high schools from Chatham, Edgecombe, Iredell (Morrisville Graded School District), and Wake counties. These high school students were given opportunities to engage in problem-solving and inquiry approaches to learning mathematics using visual-simulation mathematics software. Professional development (PD) of teachers was provided to two cohorts of 44 teachers from the high schools involved. The first cohort attended two week-long summer institutes and completed two online PD courses focused on teaching Geometry with The Geometer’s Sketchpad (GSP). The second cohort attended two week-long summer institutes and completed two online PD courses focused on teaching Algebra with GSP and Fathom. For the duration of the grant, teachers worked with approximately 80,000 students. Teachers were videotaped in the classroom teaching technology-based mathematics lessons. Analysis indicated changes to teachers’ pedagogical approaches included questions and tasks of higher cognitive demand and activities that were more inquiry-oriented. In addition, assessments of teachers' content knowledge indicated significant gains in teachers' knowledge of algebra and geometry for teaching. The TPACK (Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge) framework was used to guide the design of teacher PD. This framework helped inform how technology (laptops with GSP and Fathom software) used by teachers and students could best be leveraged to enhance teaching and learning outcomes for students. The Cloud Computing utilized by this project was the Virtual Computer-Lab (VCL) software originated at NC State University to meet student needs in higher education (http://vcl.ncsu.edu). Scaling Up STEM Learning with the VCL project showed that the VCL was able to meet student needs in high school math learning for student use both in and out of the school building environment. By delivering advanced mathematics learning software over the Internet (Cloud Computing), the project demonstrated that students of all income levels could use such learning tools while saving costs in public education (including technical support costs) and be easily provided with advanced software to all levels of computers available to students. Teachers connected the STEM professionals (Role Models) they met in person in their summer PD to the classroom through videos showcasing their work. These Role Models provided direct motivation for STEM and ICT careers to students through 3-5 minute videos of STEM professionals and academics in their workplaces. Ultimately, we produced 18 Role Model videos, paying particular attention to filming STEM career professionals who would be of interest to 9th and 10th graders, including a video game designer and an iBionics engineer working with bugs and bots. The teachers were very positive about using the videos instead of in-person classroom visits from the Role Models. We also found that the Role Models themselves were spreading the word and we received requests from STEM professionals to become Role Models and have videos of their work produced. The website <http://scaleupstem.ncsu.edu/video> serves now as a publicly accessible repository for anyone’s use of the Role Model videos and the math lesson plans developed by the teachers that integrate the Role Model videos into the classroom activities. It will continue to be hosted and serve as a public repository for the dissemination of the videos and lesson plans. An important element of the project goal to produce a scalable model for adaptation by other school districts was met in the public dissemination through the website of the Role Model videos and teachers’ lesson plans related to the professional application of math being demonstrated.
