This ATE professional development project is a collaboration between STEM faculty teams from Butler County Community College (Butler, PA), Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN), Sinclair Community College (Dayton, OH), Ventura College (Ventura, CA), College of the Redwoods (Eureka, Ca.), as well as high school STEM faculty in each of the states involved. Faculty teams at the respective locations are working together to design, build, and analyze solid body electric guitars as a means of learning applied concepts of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and as a means of understanding product lifecycle management. This experience is providing teachers and students an accurate simulation of the collaborative design and rapid manufacturing processes routinely used in business and industry. Over 150 STEM faculty members from high schools and community colleges are participating in an intense five-day Summer Professional Development Program and are having extensive academic year follow-up activities. The teacher participants are using these processes and simulations in their classrooms to enhance the STEM laboratory learning experience. Nearly 5000 students are learning about cross-disciplinary STEM problem solving that is becoming increasingly important for new design technicians to experience.
An external evaluator is examining the professional development activities for their effectiveness. The results and lessons learned from the project are being disseminated through presentations at local, regional, or national conferences of professional associations. All lessons and laboratory activities are being made available through self-contained portable curriculum kits. Selling the guitars for more than the guitar kits cost is providing the means for sustaining this activity. Project information is being made available through the website www.guitarbuilding.org/, which is being hosted by the Manufacturing Education Resource Center (MERC) at Sinclair Community College.
The NSF ATE 0903336 grant was a professional development project focused on using the design, construction, assembly and analysis of the solid body electric guitar to teach unified applied STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) concepts. The project became known as the "STEM Guitar Project". Butler County Community College (Butler, PA) was the PI and managed a project faculty team involving Butler High School (Butler Pa.), Ventura College (Ventura CA), Sinclair Community College (Dayton OH), Purdue University (W. Lafayette IN), College of the Redwoods (Eureka Ca.),Eureka High School (Eureka CA), Adolfo Camarillo High School (Camarillo CA), Southern Wells High School (Poneto IN), and New Philadelphia High School, (New Philadelphia OH) that implemented the project. Overall, the project fully met, and in many cases, exceeded, the intended goals for five of its six objectives: (1) the objective of assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of STEM faculty development activities, (2) recruiting 156 STEM faculty from high school and community college, (3) providing multiple simultaneous faculty PDs for collaborative production and analysis of solid-body electric guitars, (4) providing participants with a kit that included all the needed parts and learning tasks to facilitate the implementation of the guitar building process was met, and (5) creating a faculty web site to connect participants with one another and disseminate project results. The sixth objective of offering follow-up activities to engage participants in learning communities was only partly met. The project faculty team conducted a total of 16 collaborative STEM Guitar five-day professional development workshops and served a total of 220 community college and high school teachers. This was 64 more faculty than its targeted 156 faculty, made possible through continuous project quality improvements on workshops and project processes. Participants came from suburban (46%), rural (29%), and urban (25%) settings within 17 different states across the United States. About 30% of the participants were female; the non-traditional participants of projects with this nature. Each participant left the five-day STEM Guitar workshop with a playable custom electric guitar they made that they in turn used in teaching the students. 449 additional guitar kits had been distributed to participants integrating the actual building of solid body guitar into their STEM subject content areas. The 220 educators shared with their more than 7,000 students across the United States the excitement and positive energy they experienced during workshops. The project has a mantra: Inspire one teacher and you will inspire hundreds of students. Eighty-nine percent (89%) of the targeted faculty participants (139/156) reported integrating into their curriculum their knowledge garnered from the STEM Guitar Project workshops. About 90% of the faculty reported being excited with their lessons and able to explain their subject matter better. As a result of project implementation, more than 80% of the faculty reported that students were enthusiastic in class; about 70% of the faculty reported improved student performance as evidenced by the student classroom assessments. Project activities and curricular materials were archived and shared through the project website (www.guitarbuilding.org). The website published the STEM Guitar Workbook developed by the project team along with examples of curricular integration into STEM subject content areas, other teacher resources, hands-on activities, including training videos of the different guitar building processes and operations. Guitar kits were made accessible on line. The kits were products of the project-created sustainable supply chain out of Sinclair Community College through the collaborative efforts of the supply chain partners and the NSF- ATE National Center for Manufacturing Excellence (NCME).The website also generated several thousand hits from different places, not only in the United States but across the world, indicating growing interest in this project idea. The guitar is iconic and crosses gender, race, age and socio-economic barriers. It was proving to be a valuable teaching tool. All guitars have components in common and are subject to the same type of loads thus, providing a myriad of opportunities to teach applied concepts of STEM in a project-based learning environment. There were valuable lessons learned from the project. It was clear that successful project implementation would not be easily seen within the first two years of the project. The project team provided after-workshop advice and technical support to faculty who were actively seeking support in their project implementation but these follow-up supports had not been systemic. The media noticed the overall success of the STEM Guitar Project. Project disseminations in various conferences were conducted by the PIs. Additionally, NSF ATE funded a follow –up grant, the LEAD with GUITARS in STEM (DUE 1304405). This project will improve on the lessons learned from STEM Guitar Project. It will also ensure stronger connections with the state/district curriculum and will include student performance in classrooms. Stay tuned to www.guitarbuilding.org , where innovative and relevant STEM education is explored, proven, and implemented.
