Stevens Institute of Technology and the New Jersey Department of Education are addressing the DR-K12 challenge of assuring that all students have appropriate opportunities to learn significant STEM content. The project is developing high school biology and chemistry instructional materials that incorporate engineering design and inquiry activities closely linked to the content, while simultaneously introducing students to cutting-edge research in STEM fields.
The goal of this project is to strengthen the technology and engineering components in high school STEM courses taken by a majority of students. The hypothesis is that increasing the presence of engineering and technological design at the high school level, specifically by integrating activities in bioengineering and chemical engineering into high school biology and chemistry classes, improves student understanding of science concepts and strengthens students? 21st Century skills more than traditional instructional methods.
The study employs an experimental design with matched pairs of classrooms randomly assigned to treatment or control conditions. Instruction in the treatment group includes an engineering design activity in addition to the existing curriculum, while instruction in the control group consists of the existing curriculum and an additional activity presented via traditional methods. Changes in performance on achievement and skills tests for the matched pairs are then compared.
Intellectual Merit: The study is intended to contribute to the body of research on the effectiveness of engineering design activities in improving student understanding of science concepts as compared to other teaching methods. An experienced, multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional research team and project advisors utilize rigorous methodologies to investigate the impact of engineering design activities on the learning of science content and 21st Century skills.
Broader Impacts: This study contributes new knowledge to both state and national efforts to improve the effectiveness of STEM education at all levels for all students. By incorporating engineering design in high school science, students are exposed to engineering concepts and the interdisciplinary connections among science, technology, and engineering. Introducing engineering design concepts in courses with larger and more diverse enrollments helps to align public perceptions with reality, increases student enrollments in STEM courses, and enhances the diversity of students considering post-secondary engineering programs.
Understanding the natural world and the ways in which it works has most often been the focus of K-12 science education. As technology and the products of engineering have played a larger role in our lives both directly and indirectly, an understanding of the relationship between science and the designed world is of increasing importance. And the designed world can also be a motivating factor for students to learn science. Creating more effective ways to administer pharmaceuticals and possible solutions to address global climate change are scenarios that allow students to learn and apply science concepts by engaging in an iterative problem solving process that is modeled on an engineering design process. We developed high school curriculum modules for chemistry and biology that incorporate these scenarios as driving factors for learning fundamental science concepts and engineering design. Our goals were to increase students’ awareness and understanding of engineering design as well as to explore the impact of the engineering design activities, particularly with respect to students’ understanding of the related science concepts and their communication and collaboration skills. Teachers reported that students were engaged in the design activities and interested in seeing the applications of the science concepts. Students in classes where the engineering-infused curriculum materials were used learned the science concepts as well as students in comparison classrooms while also increasing their understanding of engineering design. The impact of the engineering design activities on students’ communication and collaboration skills was inconclusive. An unintended outcome of the project was an increased understanding of the challenges to prepare teachers for implementing engineering design activities and observers for interpreting classroom activities and discourse. Our experiences and the lessons we have learned from this project have served to inform and benefit subsequent projects that have professional development for implementing engineering design-infused science curriculum materials.
