Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Nine out of ten of the fastest-growing occupations require skills in mathematics and science. Yet in 2016 the U.S. had 3 million more STEM jobs available than skilled workers to fill them. This STEM workforce gap is longstanding and projected to increase. At the same time, 66% of incoming high schoolers scored below the proficient level in mathematics on the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Many challenges and barriers exist for quality STEM at the high school level, including access to curricular content, mentors, and hands-on experiences--especially in rural areas. Research has shown that Project Based Learning (PBL) greatly improves the quality of STEM education and addresses key factors in STEM recruitment, retention, and STEM workforce participation. Known issues with implementing integrated STEM, the Next Generation Science Standards, and PBL (i.e., budgets, professional development, resources, lack of STEM career mentorship) are magnified in rural communities. New approaches are needed to address engineering and integrate STEM at the secondary level and for connecting engineering projects, 21st-century workforce skills, and team-based activities into high school STEM classrooms.Parametric Studio Inc proposes to develop and commercialize MARCONI a game-based engineering, advanced manufacturing, and PBL environment for rural high schools and distance-learning STEM education. Using MARCONI, students could use real engineering and simulation tools to design, analyze, and solve design project problems relevant to their communities. They will design and then physically construct their designs, work in teams, and learn to use skills and tools that are commonplace in today's STEM innovation economy (CAD, programming, CNC machining, 3D Printing, data collection, and entrepreneurship). In developing MARCONI, we seek to address issues of rural access to high-quality STEM programming, difficulties with professional development for rural teachers, costs associated with STEM opportunities, and challenges associated with rural STEM "brain drain" and workforce development. Project objectives are to: 1) Build a gamified STEM software/curricula solution focused on the needs of rural school districts; 2) Integrate STEM workforce development and advanced manufacturing tools and skills for the innovation economy; 3) Demonstrate the early-stage usability, feasibility, and educational outcomes for the project by testing the MARCONI solution in rural high school classrooms; and 4) Determine the potential impacts of the MARCONI on the socio-economic development of rural areas.High school students who participate in design and STEM workforce oriented PBL experiences are likely to have increased STEM knowledge, understanding, and test scores. These experiences also significantly increase the likelihood of pursuing a STEM degree and career, and high paying STEM jobs and industries represent a key opportunity for rural economic development. MARCONI is designed to foster high school student engagement and inquiry in PBL STEM in rural communities by leveraging gamification, team collaboration, and advanced manufacturing tools for tomorrow's STEM workforce. MARCONI supports enriching engineering product design projects that are connected to math and science standards and connected to real-world STEM applications in rural areas like renewable energy, manufacturing, and agricultural sciences. If successful the proposed features of MARCONI should promote more widespread integration of engineering PBL in rural high schools, improve student outcomes, and interest and prepare more students for STEM careers.
Animal Health Component
20%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
10%
Applied
20%
Developmental
70%
Goals / Objectives
Our major project goals are as follows:Goal 1: Build a combined STEM software/curricula solution focused on rural school districts. We expect this solution to enable remote/distance learning, to better support project-based STEM learning with gamification and resources for educator training, and to expose students to and reinforce critical STEM workforce development and advanced manufacturing skill for the innovation economy, programming, low-volume production, and entrepreneurship.Goal 2: Create a complete STEM product solution targeted at the experiences students and needs student rural communities in the US. This will include curricular materials, prototyping/testing kits, and project challenges specifically tailored to improving STEM experiences, future career opportunities, training, and outcomes for rural learners.Goal 3: Demonstrate the early-stage usability, feasibility, and educational outcomes for the project by testing the MARCONI solution in rural high school classrooms.Goal 4: Assess the potential impacts of the proposed solution on the socio-economic development of rural areas--and specifically, its ability to encourage post-secondary STEM education and training, its ability to hone skills that relate to STEM workforce development and entrepreneurship in the fourth industrial revolution, and its perceived value to rural communities.Our project objectives are as follows:Technical Objective 1: Demonstrate the early-stage usability, feasibility, and improved STEM outcomes for a combined software and curricula solution. Researchers, engineers, and the product development team at Parametric Studio, in collaboration with the Research Institute for Studies in Education (RISE) at Iowa State University, our informal STEM partners (Iowa Workforce Development, Iowa 4-H, NWICC, Boy Scouts of America), and our rural school testing sites (Boone CSD, Central Lyon CSD) will prototype, refine, create, and then evaluate the Phase I proof of concept (MARCONI) STEM environment. The Phase I development of MARCONI environment will consist of the following functional features:Renewable energy, biosystems engineering, or advanced manufacturing themed challengesA collaborative project-based learning gameA gamified virtual environment,Supporting curricula and PD,Engaging game-based design simulation,Real-world prototyping/testing capabilities for the Phase I challengesTechnical Objective 2: After developing the prototype software, project, and curricular components, we will conduct a classroom beta test of the Phase I prototype utilizing our two Phase I-developed projects at two rural sites with 4 HS classrooms (~100 students). In the testing classrooms we will conduct observations, give the system usability survey to beta testers, collect usage data and advanced analytics from the software environment, and utilize pre-and post-testing with several surveys and questionnaires. These include a 20-question STEM skills and content knowledge test; a 50-question STEM efficacy survey; a scored engineering and problem-solving proficiency essay; and a Likert scale-based STEM education and career interest survey. The questions we seek to answer include: Does the game-based environment effectively engage students for the majority of activities and provide them a positive experience with the STEM project? Can students and teachers use MARCONI to complete renewable energy and biosystems inspired design projects (usability)? Does MARCONI effectively support remote learning, and collaborative design in teams at the HS level (distance learning and teamwork functionality)? Can we measure improvement in 21st Century workforce skills, STEM knowledge, and STEM efficacy & career interest after using MARCONI? Specifically, improvements in a) STEM knowledge, b) design thinking, c) problem solving, & d) changes in STEM identity. With these tools, our target metrics will be as follows:90% of students complete the complete virtual design, simulation, and prototyping and construction activities in the four to five 45-min class periods allotted.The Phase I MARCONI prototype exhibits System Usability Scale (SUS) Scores of ≥75;When collaboratively designing (distance and in person), 75% of students have at least 3 peer interactions, and share 2 digital artifacts from and with other students per session;Students will show a statistically significant 10% improvement in results from pre-test to post-test for: renewable energy, biosystems, and advanced manufacturing focused STEM content knowledge (20 question test); problem-solving proficiency (scored essay), and show a 10% increase on STEM interest and efficacy on a 5-point self-reported Likert scale.Technical Objective 3: Demonstrate the feasibility of integrating commercial grade CAD, CAM, and rapid prototyping tools for CNC, laser cutting, instrumentation, programming, and 3D printing into the game-based MARCONI environment and prove HS level students are capable of utilizing them effectively with minimal learning curve. To expand the design and prototyping capabilities supported in MARCONI, Parametric Studio will add support for these industry-standard capabilities and will integrate them in the design challenge projects in the game. Beyond enhancing realism, exposure to these tools provide workforce-development training, maker skills, and build confidence and STEM identity. The usability of these features will be evaluated through SUS survey and by examining embedded metrics and assessment data out of the software platform. Transference of skills will be gaged through a digital design and maker prototype project using commercial tools outside of the MARCONI environment which will be scored against a skills performance rubric. Our target metric will be that at least 80% of students game-based prototype using the game-based tools in less than two class periods.Technical Objective 4: Assess the preliminary economic and human capital impacts of the proposed MARCONI solution from the standpoint of individual impacts related to students' future STEM education and employment opportunities and from the perspective of the broader socio-economic development of rural areas. We will examine the intervention's ability to encourage post-secondary STEM education and training, its ability to foster STEM workforce development and entrepreneurship. We propose in Phase I to gage the impact that the MARCONI intervention has on students' interest in post-secondary education, their attitudes regarding STEM opportunities in rural areas, and the perceived economic development value from community stakeholders. In addition to the skills measurement of students using MARCONI pre-post mentioned above we will develop and deploy two Likert scored surveys. One will evaluate the pre-post impact on students' interest in post-secondary STEM, the other will evaluate the perceptions of community stake holder of the MARCONI environment and the skills it hopes to teach. The success metrics for the survey will be a pre- to post-test increase of 10% on a 5-point Likert scale for the student attitudes and interest in post-secondary STEM.
Project Methods
Methods for R&D of software and challenges: The first aspect of this project is the research and development of the game-based software, and the development of the bioengineering and advanced manufacturing-related design challenges. The research team at Parametric Studio will engage in an iterative software design development and testing methodology (based on Agile). At several points in the R&D process artists, engineers, interface designers, and the curricular expert will create successfully more functional wireframes and prototypes of the foundational features of MARCONI. Initially, this will consist of a user story, concept art, and storyboards but with each iteration will transition to mockups, wireframe layouts, actual UI's, flowcharts, game prototypes, and template data structures. Typically, we use Adobe XD, Adobe Creative Cloud, Unity3D, and Bootstrap to build these early features for user focus testing before gradually implementing these as fully functional code and interfaces. Development builds will be deployed to Parametric's staging and testing site and users will be asked to utilize both the web app and design game features to collaborate with others to achieve tasks during testing. Interviews and analytics form inside the software and website will be utilized to identify bugs, issues, and inform refinements of this key feature.In Phase I, we will add new design capabilities and core engineering design modules to the game based environment for advanced manufacturing, biosystems, and renewable energy Key activities of this task include: 1) Developing specialized quick calculators (analysis UIs) that directly link to key math and science standards and to important design metrics in the renewables, biosystems, and manufacturing projects; 2) Creating new geometry models and game art for the environments and components; and 3) Create novel game-based simulations for specific design projects. A key part of this effort willbe identifying and focus testing fun gamemechanics, scoring, or visualizations for the simulation for wind power/biosystems/mechanical system design. A secondary effort will involve linking the existing physics calculators to this game challenge environment, and then building UI controls and data displays that allow students to interact with the design in the simulator and collect virtual data. Finally, we will develop capabilities to export user design files in a variety of formats and configurations for manufacture by 3D printing, CNC machining, and laser cutting. We will create tools to assist students in exporting their creations as CAD readable geometries and performing more advanced modifications.Methods for Creation of Curricula and Professional Development (PD): The R&D team will creating a project mission arc using MARCONI that is composed of small steps in the overall design project. Each of these small missions in the challenge arc tie into one or two aspects or subsystems of the design and link to 1 or two math or science standards. This approach will build student skills, confidence, and competence to enable students to take on a larger, richer, and more complex capstone design project. As part of this, we will be creating mission and design geometry templates. These templates simplify the user and virtual design experience, provide early examples, and present more tools and capabilities to the students as they are needed. Subsequent missions in the challenge arc will build off of earlier ones and unfold greater complexity and design freedom to the user and culminate in a capstone engineering challenge problem for wind power generation, or automated greenhouse design. After the creation of the challenge, curricula tie-ins, and missions, we will create a physical prototyping kit that will allow students to build early incarnations of their creations before fabricating their own unique designs. Finally, we will develop a set of teacher resources, lesson plans, guides, tutorial videos, and a short PD training course for implementing the Phase I challenges. This will be deployed to each site over the course of 2 weekends before the pilot testing with students.Methods for Evaluation Efforts for STEM learning, usability, feasibility: Engineering challenges for this project will be created using the Evidence Centered Design (ECD) approach to ensure data that is gathered from the student work serves as valid evidence to assess research questions. Subsequent to the completion of the Phase I prototype for MARCONI our team in collaboration with our consultant RISE will conduct testing in four grade 9-12 classrooms with 100 total rural high school students. Students will work in groups over 7-8 class periods to use MARCONI for designing, analyzing, simulating (in the game) the design project(s). In these tests, we first seek to establish if students & teachers can virtually design, collaborate, and then create and test functional real-world prototypes with MARCONI within class time (usability). Next, we seek to establish if MARCONI effectively supports remote learning and collaborative design in teams at the HS level (distance learning and teamwork functionality). A third effort seeks to show the tools effectively engage students in activities, keeps their attention, excites them about STEM, and that they view MARCONI based PBL experiences positively. Finally, because these challenges should expose students to new STEM concepts, and skills, we will examine preliminary content knowledge and efficacy outcomes. The planned educational assessment instruments include:Embedded (stealth) assessment will be used to detect whether a student's actions within a gameplay session are related to skills and mastery.Observations and interviews and the SUS to establish feasibility and usability.STEM Interest and Efficacy Questionnaire (a 50-items on a 4-point Likert scale)The Content Knowledge Questionnaire (20-item multiple-choice), andThe Engineering Design and Problem-Solving instrument (scored essay).Testing will be conducted frequently with a focus and beta testing group (~10 students/teachers) every 2-4 weeks users. During the sessions, we will interview students and teachers and administer surveys about the usability and feasibility of usage. We will use the common System Usability Scale customized for the particular tasks we want users to accomplish within MARCONI, as well as questions specific to our user interface. Finally, the finished phase I prototype game, curricula, and the challenge will be evaluated at 2-3 rural high school pilot sites. This will be delivered as a project-based learning experience to formal classroom environments and the instruments mentioned above will be deployed pre-post.Methods for Evaluation of Socioeconomic Impact: We will assess the preliminary economic and human capital impacts of the MARCONI solution. We seek to understand the impact that the intervention has both on the individual student's STEM workforce outlook and the wider socio-economic impact of rural areas. We intend to do this by developing three Likert scored surveys. The first of these surveys will evaluate the pre-post impact on students' interest in post-secondary STEM, and interest in future entrepreneurship. The success metrics for the survey will be a pre- to post-test increase of 10% on a 5-point Likert scale. The second survey will only be postand will be administered with a similar set of questions but from a parental perspective. The final survey will only be administered post intervention and will be directed at rural community stakeholders and will ask them to rate their perceived value of the concepts and skills presented and reinforced by MARCONI for rural economic development. Due to our modest sample size for these surveys will conduct both simple t-tests and potentially a multivariate regression analysis.