North Carolina State University (NCSU), in partnership with North Carolina Community Colleges has successfully launched a program in renewable energy technologies, Green Research for Incorporating Data in the Classroom (GRIDc). This continuing project, GRIDcII, establishes a cyber-learning environment in which STEM students with varied learning styles access real-time data for use in classroom instruction. GRIDcII, builds upon the project team's past success to develop the higher order thinking skills of undergraduate students in the context of a data-rich learning environment. Real-time data on renewable energy technologies from multiple systems (e.g., solar, wind, electric, alternative fuels) is collected and stored in a central location. The Solar House at NCSU, one of the most visible and visited solar buildings in the United States, provides the location for many of the renewable energy technologies with additional technologies in North Carolina being added to the data grid system. Data is available for uploading into an Internet-based data acquisition system where the data may be accessed by faculty and undergraduate students for use in classroom instruction. Faculty teaching STEM courses are developing an understanding for the effectiveness of an integrated, data-rich curriculum to teach STEM concepts and support students' cognitive skills. Assessment instrumentation measures the students' common core of knowledge associated with renewable energy technologies and validates this knowledge for use in different undergraduate courses at multiple 4-year and 2-year institutions. Partnerships with community colleges create new avenues for post-secondary collaboration. Middle and high school students are impacted through the participation of their pre-service and in-service STEM teachers. This project creates an infrastructure for continuing research on cyber-learning education across the nation.
The Green Research for Incorporating Data in the Classroom (GRIDC) project developed curriculum to teach science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) concepts using data collected from renewable energy technologies at the NC Solar Center located on the campus of North Carolina State University (NCSU). A unique feature of this project is that data from multiple systems at a single location, the NCSU Solar Center, was collected and stored enabling faculty and students to analyze, synthesize and evaluate data in a variety of instructional contexts. A monitoring system provided students with energy and power readings from renewable energy technologies to reference against meteorological data such as wind speed, sun's irradiance, ambient temperature, and module temperature, all of which can affect the performance of the renewable energy system. Numerous renewable technology systems throughout the site were integrated into the monitoring system to allow students to compare performances of different technologies and products. These systems include: energy and power from three photovoltaic systems; energy, power, and wind speed from a 1 kW wind turbine; BTU production from two solar thermal hot water systems; and temperature obtained from passive solar design house features. Data from all systems were collected, averaged over 15 minutes, and uploaded to a data acquisition system. An internet interface allows daily, monthly, and yearly information to be viewed graphically, or downloaded in a spreadsheet for classroom use. Curriculum, using this data, was developed and research was conducted to determine the effectiveness of using a data-rich learning environment to develop student's higher-order thinking skills. This project provides the nation with a living laboratory for teaching and learning integrated STEM concepts. The data collected from the renewable energy systems at the Solar Center will be available to researchers, curriculum developers, teachers, and students across the United States. The research conducted during this project will provide a base for continued research and development on using data-rich learning environments to develop thinking skills.
