An Integrated, Blended Online Engineering Program of College-level Courses for High School Students Offered by a State-wide Public STEM Magnet School

A program has been developed to offer motivated high school students throughout the state of South Carolina an integrated set of courses in mathematics, engineering, English, and science. The curriculum was created with input from leading technology companies who want creative, articulate engineers. Most of these courses are dual-enrollment or Honors, taught by instructors who hold a terminal degree in their field and have experience in college or university classrooms. Upon completion of this program and graduation from high school, students will earn 32+ college credit hours from colleges and universities within South Carolina. Introduction: The South Carolina Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics (SCGSSM) is a state-wide public STEM magnet school that has educated students since 1988 in a residential setting. In 2013, Accelerate, South Carolina’s Engineering Launchpad, began in a pilot phase, offering blended online coursework with instruction delivered using live videoconferencing technology to exceptional students from across the state. Conceived as a means to draw future engineering talent from across the state, Accelerate was created to attract and prepare the next generation of creative, articulate, and agile engineers. An integrated set of college and honors courses that delivers superior science, engineering, and mathematics instruction along with valuable communication skills through dedicated English courses distinguishes Accelerate from other engineering courses offered in high schools. Providing students with enhanced opportunities for collaboration, social engagement, and research, the program’s model of integration requires networking across disciplines and physical space. Students participate in real-time, in-person and virtual lectures, as well as week-long summer camps and Saturday experiences for hands-on activities, team-building, interaction and discussion, and problem-solving. Science courses meet two Saturdays a semester to complete hands-on laboratories. These are complemented by in-class laboratory demonstrations and online, virtual laboratory activities. Presently, instructors are developing an integrated set of desired outcomes and assessment tools informed by ABET accreditation standards. Areas of emphasis include project-based learning, design and process thinking, professionalism and ethics, and leadership and public speaking skills. As the program expands to sites across the state, attention will be paid to shortand long-term growth, largely focusing on the program’s abilities to cultivate and maintain in-state engineering talent in South Carolina’s colleges and universities and in industry. This paper introduces the program and preliminary research, which uniquely and specifically builds upon the notion that participation in engineering programs in high school translates into pursuit of an engineering degree on the college level and to engineering as a career. The South Carolina Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics and Accelerate: The SCGSSM began in 1988 as an economic proposition—an incubator for technological and business development in South Carolina. SCGSSM offers college-level STEM courses to the state’s highest achieving students in its two-year residential program in the students’ junior and senior years. Around half of SCGSSM graduates leave the state to attend college, and they subsequently find jobs outside the state. The Accelerate program was created in part to counter this exodus. Based on conversations with leading technology companies in the state who seek creative, articulate engineers, SCGSSM developed the Accelerate program to offer high school students throughout South Carolina an integrated set of courses in in mathematics, engineering, English, and science. The course sequence for Accelerate students is given in Table 1. Each course is either dual enrollment or Honors. TABLE 1. Curriculum Overview (for a student qualifying for Honors Pre-Calculus in 10th grade). Honors Courses (blue); Dual Enrollment Courses (tan) 10 FALL 10 SPRING 11 FALL 11 SPRING 12 FALL 12 SPRING MATH Honors PreCalculus for Engineers Honors PreCalculus for Engineers Calculus for Engineers 1 Calculus for Engineers 2 Calculus for Engineers 3 Calculus for Engineers 4 (Multivar. Calculus) SCIENCE Chemistry I* Chemistry I* Chemistry for Engrs 1 Chemistry for Engrs 2 Physics for Engineers I Physics for Engineers II ENGINEERING Honors PreEngineering Honors PreEngineering Engineering 101 Engineering 102 Engineering Design and Modeling Honors Senior Project Honors Literature of ProblemSolving ENGLISH/ LANG ARTS English II* English II* English Composition 1 English Composition 2 Introduction to Literature Applicants must project successful completion of Algebra II Honors by the end of 9th grade. *Prior to the beginning of 11th grade, students should complete: · Biology I · Chemistry I · Geometry · English II Accelerate students take blended courses that are taught through video conferencing technology and are archived. Instructors can use a flipped classroom model and a mix of facilitated and self-paced learning. Students participate in real-time, in-person classes with face-to-face interaction and discussion, laboratory activities, and problem-solving. SCGSSM provides students with support from designated Accelerate adult facilitators working in their home high schools who serve as mentors, proctors, and conduits between the students and the Accelerate program. Chemistry and Physics students meet an additional two times a semester for laboratory work. These activities take place on SCGSSM’s campus and fulfill the requirements for college level laboratory courses. In addition, project-based workshops and hands-on experiences supplement courses at least once a semester and for a week in the summer. On these occasions, engineering challenges, field trips, and guest engineering speakers provide frequent exposure to the different fields of engineering. One of Accelerate’s ultimate goals with these experiences is to allow students to explore different engineering fields. The rising sophomores' Base Camp, which occurs in the summer prior to incoming sophomores’ coursework, has been designed to establish a beginning understanding of the Accelerate community, engineering design challenges, and teamwork, while directly assessing math skills. Integration: As a comprehensive, college-level program, Accelerate stands on the foundation of its constituent disciplines, requiring their seamless integration. While integration from subject to subject is certainly not unique to Accelerate, the program’s design as a live, online platform of blended instruction with multiple sites makes the overall task of integration much more crucial. The physical space that normally separates students from teachers and their peers is unavoidably magnified, yet the exigencies of collaborative learning and community-building remain at the core of the processes of design and professionalization central to the prospective engineers who comprise Accelerate’s student body. The program’s linked curriculum necessarily creates intersections from course to course and opens pathways for integration that minimize any perceived or actual spatial constraints. In fact, the virtual platform and multi-site instructional landscape foster possibilities for connection and collaboration that the traditional classroom precludes, as a wider network exists beyond the brick and mortar classroom. The Accelerate curriculum enhances these possibilities by relying on a broad-based philosophy of course integration that obfuscates abiding distinctions between “hard” and “soft” skills, blends liberal and technical subjects, and—perhaps, most importantly—combines a range of populations, talents, and experiences to produce the next generation of engineers. At the heart of the program lie six conceptual strands, or “grand themes.” Developed in the fall semester of 2014 by Accelerate faculty and administrators, these themes reflect and inform the overall mission of integration: societal issues, ethics, engineering as a profession, communications, continuous improvement, and leadership/teamwork. Instructors across all disciplines strive to address the six themes in their individual courses, while looking for connections from class to class. Students: The student population of Accelerate depends on numerous logistical and programspecific criteria. Most central to the Accelerate program are students who demonstrate beginning with their sophomore year in high school an interest in engineering as a future profession or career. Students selected for Accelerate must exhibit the levels of talent, drive, and capacity that typify their SCGSSM residential program counterparts. Accelerate students must also evidence strong levels of motivation and commitment to join a program that operates according to a distance-learning format with a student body that reaches beyond the physical space of the home school—an atmosphere that differs from SCGSSM’s residential program. As such, candidates for the Accelerate program are both self-selected and actively identified by district partners. Benefits to Students: Students who are selected and enroll in the Accelerate program are in the position to reap a suite of benefits not typically available to high school students at traditional institutions. With no upfront costs or tuition except for limited travel, students have the ability to earn around 40 college credits in relevant courses, depending on major, while maintaining their status as students at their home high schools. The prospect of earning college credit appeals to Accelerate students (and their parents) who naturally gain familiarity with the format, pace, and expectations of a university education as many as three years before the majority of their peers. In addition to priming students for a university education through various means of support, Accelerate st