K-12 Pedagogical Tunable Modules

K-12 students are rarely engaged in out of the classroom scientific activities. These activities however, tend to emphasize the learning of the fundamental science, i.e. mathematics and physics, rather than practical and core engineering skills such as design, system integration and troubleshooting. This is also apparent in current K-12 curricula which lack hands-on engineering concepts due to time and resource constraints imposed on science educators by administrators and state standards. The cumulative effect of these approaches to education over a student’s precollege academic lifetime results in: 1) a shortage in career-ready high school graduates; and 2) a limited number of college bound students pursuing STEM education and careers. Moreover, those graduates who seek STEM education may have strong analytical skills, but lack the critical thinking, hands-on and practical skills needed for scientific applications, i.e. engineering or experimentation. This serious problem is further elevated by the sporadic availability of financial support to develop and disseminate engineering-based outreach activities. This combined effect severely hinders the quality and number of domestic scientists and engineers produced by the U.S., thus inhibiting the country’s competitiveness in the global economy’s technology sector. In order to address this issue, the concept and a functional prototype of a tunable educational module has been developed. The uniqueness of this approach follows from the module’s capability of modifying a single engineering activity to meet time and student skill-level restraints as well as the mentors’ or teachers’ time and effort constraints; i.e., tunability. A module was developed in order to implement and test the concept of tunability. In particular, the module focuses on an electric bell, which was chosen due to its simplicity and its broad as well as fundamental underlying physics and engineering skills. It can be taught on several levels; e.g. basic principles such as polarity (elementary school students) up to using the Biot-Savart law (high school or community college students). The module provides a lesson plan for instructors or mentors, clearly defined objectives and outcomes, and methods for evaluating its effectiveness (e.g. surveys and worksheets). It consists of a “core” set of topics (e.g., electromagnets, polarity and magnetic fields) and a set of “blocks” (e.g., EM assembly and Ampere’s law), which can be added to the core to tune the intricacy. These blocks increase the level of details, and thus difficulty, of each lesson by incorporating deeper levels of physics, mathematics, and assembly/experimentation (e.g., deriving the flux of a solenoid or taking voltage measurements of the battery for field calculations). A functional prototype and complete lesson plan were presented to two groups of high school students from different schools as an outreach activity, which was limited to 30 minutes due to the time constraints set by the school administrators. The majority of the participants were reported to be from underrepresented minority groups. The impact of the developed module on the students’ interest as well as the effect of their prior knowledge on the completion of module activities are presented. Introduction and background It is known that engineers need to possess strong visualization and problem solving skills, yet the K-12 education system fails to implement visualization and practical problem solving lessons P ge 24835.2 into the curriculum thereby decreasing interest in engineering and science. This problem is further compounded by the lack of hands-on extra-curricular activities that spark interest in science and engineering while improving the troubleshooting and practical skills of the students. In fact, our young generations are mastering the usage of keyboards, mice, and touchscreens more than their predecessors with disregard to machine shops skills, drafting or even home fixing projects. It is important to note that K-12 science educators are capable and well-trained to deliver all the desired skill sets listed above, however they are asked to prepare students for exams rather than ensure the development life-long learning skills. Often they are required to do so with very limited resources. The results are shortcomings evident in college students who either lack an overall interest in engineering and science or simply do not have the required skills to compete and become successful in today’s global and technologically-advanced marketplace. In turn, this can be considered as a threat to national growth and competitiveness in both the economic and defense sectors, which eventually will impact the quality of life of all Americans. By further observation of the K-12 education system, one can note a continuous focus on: 1) abstract knowledge that disinterests students in STEM due to the lack of practicality and/or relevance to their daily lives; 2) theoretical knowledge rather than design, hands-on, and engaging activities; and 3) supplementing continuously shrinking budgets which negatively impact encounter time and development of in-class and extra-curricular activities. The latter is especially true in low socioeconomic schools and school districts. In this paper, we present a methodology of creating and implementing education modules that can be adopted in-class or as extra-curricular activities. The developed modules attempt to limit the abstraction of knowledge by relating fundamental science concepts to objects, devices or equipment that students encounter on a daily basis. Additionally, the modules relay the theoretical knowledge in a fun and engaging way, where the students must assemble and, in some cases, troubleshoot the modules to achieve proper functionality. Finally, the modules can be used in different grade levels, academic settings, and with varying difficulty and time commitment as deemed suitable by the educator. In general, these educational modules are tunable in knowledge level, time commitment, and student’s involvement, which make them suitable for addressing the visualization and problem solving issues of the K-12 curricula at relatively low cost. The reported module is divided into three sections: the lesson plan, the hands-on activity, and finally assessment and evaluation. In what follows, a literature review of similar work and the impact of such activities on the quality of education is first presented. A detailed description of a model educational module is discussed and finally results from a case study as well as discussion of these results are reported. The module reported herein is independent of any specific state science standards to prompt greater adoptability and avoid setting any constrains on the applicability of the developed concepts. That is the module can be used to complement and prompt formal (i.e., in class discussion) or informal education (i.e., outreach activities), respectively. Brophy et al. discussed the shortage of students interested in STEM education and careers focusing on the shortage of minorities and women in such disciplines. They attributed this shortage to the lack of emphasis on the Engineering aspects in STEM (i.e., “E” in STEM) in the K-12 educational system, which causes the students (especially women) to lose interest because they do not find the learning contexts inviting. They advocated for more hands-on design activities and praised existing programs such as Engineering is Elementary (EiE), LEGO P ge 24835.3 Engineering, Project Lead the Way, and the Infinity Project, which focus on introducing K-12 students to engineering early in their education. Prior to Brophy et al., Felder et al. and Feisel et al. outlined deficiencies in current engineering curricula in general stating that much of modern courses focus on abstraction lacking emphasis on application. In other words, a continuation of the same unsuccessful approach to science similar to that in K-12 curricula will continue to discourage and disinterest students in STEM. They proposed more hands-on, engaging, and active learning methodologies to increase students’ interest and ability. One methodology of creating hands-on, engaging and fun lessons is educational modules to be integrated in the curriculum. The idea of implementing engineering and science modules into outreach activities has been previously reported by Almaguer et al.. They presented a management structure and mission statement for enlisting undergraduate and graduate students in outreach activities for K12 after school programs with specific focus on elementary school students. The Almaguer et al. paper was the seed for the Building Engineers And Mentors (BEAM) student organization and club at the University of California Berkeley, which since then has been duplicated at the University of California Los Angeles and other universities around California in collaboration with local schools and school districts. The approach of using fun and engaging learning activities in after school outreach programs as outlined by Almaguer et al. was confirmed by Dawson et al. to be very effective in helping students to gain greater depth and long term memory of the concepts learned . Thus, the educational modules approach was adopted by the current research team to engage and motivate K-12 students in STEM. The modules presented herein are unique compared to approaches discussed by Almaguer et al. and others because of their tunability. A tunable educational module is an educational activity that focuses on a single scientific concept or a platform whereby the lesson and accompanying activity can be adjusted to meet student skill-level constraints as well as time requirements. In other words, tunability allows for the adaptation of an activity to fit the skill level of students at different academic levels from elementary school up to undergraduates. Focusing the activity on a product, c