The Student and Teacher Technology Transformation Teams (ST4) project is increasing the ability of secondary STEM teachers and students to collaboratively learn and apply STEM skills using information and communications technology (ICT). The performing unit is the National Center for Teacher Education (NCTE), a permanent part of the Maricopa County Community Colleges District in Arizona. NCTE is partnering with the Maricopa Advanced Technology Education Center (MATEC), Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (MCLI), and International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). ST4 is providing workshops and blended, online training for secondary STEM teachers and students in four Arizona Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs: bioscience, engineering, information technologies, and agriscience. Teachers and "student leaders" from these programs are receiving direct training, then implementing the ICT tools and collaborative learning methods in their courses. The innovative and transformative elements of this project lie in the incorporation of ICT training, design-based learning, and student participation in teacher professional development.
Intellectual Merit: Secondary students are prepared for college and the workforce only if they can use the technologies that are critical to learning, collaboration, and professional work. Yet, schools have failed to harness the full power of ICT and pre-existing motivation and skills many young adults possess relative to ICT. Students tend to be less apprehensive about adopting new ICT tools than their teachers, and many have become highly skilled in using ICT to enhance their communications, expand their entertainment options, and increase their ability to interact socially. In this project, these conditions are being leveraged by (1) training students to use ICT to collaboratively learn and apply STEM knowledge and skills, and (2) enabling students to help their teachers become more confident and competent ICT users. The ST4 project is designed to tap these two potentials. A research component is embedded in the project to identify pre-existing student motivation, ICT abilities, and behaviors that can be further leveraged to improve STEM learning.
Broader Impacts: ST4 aims to train 40 STEM teachers and 200 "student leaders" in an extensive series of face-to-face and online training events. The ICT tools and design-based, collaborative learning methods are being implemented in CTE courses as an integral part of the training, thus ultimately providing ICT training and collaborative, team-based learning for 1,800 STEM students. ST4 impacts are being expanded further by the delivery of training webinars to STEM teachers and students nationwide.
is an NSF funded project for increasing the ability of secondary Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) teachers and students to collaboratively learn and apply STEM skills using Information and Communications Technology (ICT). The goals of the grant are to: (1) Improve learning effectiveness and collaborative skills of teachers and students in STEM programs via ICT training and design-based learning and (2) Expand, disseminate, and sustain the ST4 Training Model, curriculum, and positive impacts in CTE programs in Arizona and nationwide. The project, a collaboration between Maricopa County Community Colleges District and Arizona Department of Education, include teachers and students in the statewide Career and Technical Education (CTE) and STEM programs. The performing unit is the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (MCLI), a permanent part of the Academic and Student Affairs Division of the Maricopa County Community Colleges District in Tempe, Arizona. The ST4 Project provides teachers and students the opportunity to work in teams and use web-accessible tools to produce design-based learning activities that consist of technical solutions to current, real-world problems. The training offers an eight-week online course where participants go through modules that introduce ICT tools and cover important resources applicable to various subject areas. Teachers also use social media, primarily Google+ and Google+ Communities, to collaborate, share ideas with each other, and have meaningful conversations about current issues in their respective disciplines. ICT training will have two focal points. (1) Teachers will focus on how to utilize ICT and Design-Based Learning Labs (DBLL) methods to improve student learning. (2) Students will learn how to use ICT to gather and apply knowledge specific to their chosen STEM discipline and how to collaborate effectively with peers, teachers, and mentors on team projects. Findings from the project indicate that: (1) teachers fully embrace web-based ICT tools, such as Prezi, Popplet, and Goodle Docs, for instructional purposes and for the purposes of student research, collaboration, and presentations and significantly increased the amount of time students spent working together in groups, (2) the large majority of teachers comment that their students found DBLLs to be more engaging than traditional instruction and that they are planning to integrate DBLLs into their instruction in the future, (3) online training of high school teachers is most effective when the instructional design of the training is similar to a more traditional 8-week college course, and (4) teacher participants want immediate feedback and the project determined a 12-hour response time was most effective. ST4 Project outcomes include: (1) 134 DBLLs created by STEM and CTE high school teachers, (2) a template and process established for guiding teachers in creating design-based learning labs for the classroom, (3) a fully online professional development model designed for teachers focused on increasing the ability of STEM teachers and their students to collaboratively learn and apply STEM skills using design-based learning and technology tools, (4) a DBLL booklet produced using labs designed by grant participants and connected to career pathway programs at Maricopa Community Colleges, and (5) a workshop created for TechShop on 3D Printing Terrains. The ST4 online training course and resources continue to be used by multiple institutions and is available for anyone to adopt or adapt by contacting MCLI at http://mcli.maricopa.edu.
