Evaluation of an Energy and Engineering Outreach Program for High School and Middle School Students

The education and influence of students in the STEM fields has great importance in modern society, especially with our ever-increasing reliance on new technologies. Research collaboration between two universities engaged over 700 students and teachers. The authors designed engineering-based curriculum, hands-on lessons, and demonstrations that were focused on energy. The curriculum exposed students and teachers to fundamental science and engineering concepts. Many of the activities for these outreach activities engaged participants in a 3-tiered energy challenge by designing and fabricating prototypes that demonstrate: (1) Energy generation and conversion, (2) Increased energy efficiency, and (3) Energy use monitoring and control. The design and physical modeling that was employed in the outreach events using energy technologies requires students and teachers to practice high-level thinking (e.g. analysis, synthesis, evaluation) in teams while building a culture geared toward energy technology innovation. The participants were introduced to concepts from traditional engineering curricula such as thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and dynamics, while working with principles of renewable and nonrenewable energy technologies used in industry, such as the photovoltaic effect. The student participants were given pre-tests and post-tests to evaluate the success of the outreach events in developing their awareness and understanding of energy and engineering, measure their level of engagement with the activities, and evaluate their attitudes towards teamwork. This paper will present the energy curriculum, hands-on energy laboratories, design and fabrication challenge and the results from the preand post-tests. Introduction Times are changing. This is commonly referenced when speaking about technology and the younger generations. The attention span of students is shorter now than they were just 15 years ago [1]. As the world around us changes, it is essential that education techniques stay ahead of the curve. As a result this study set out to implement project based learning (PBL) techniques in order to grab students’ attention and teach critical issues within engineering energy and sustainability. As sustainability becomes an increasingly vital component in all fields of engineering, it has become increasingly important to implement it into engineering curricula. Furthermore, current research shows that education methods that address the affective domain of students proves to be more effective than methods that otherwise do not [2]. With this knowledge, the research team planned to implement and assess a curriculum that consists of engineering design projects to teach sustainability and energy all while positively engaging key areas of the affective domain. More specifically, a goal of this study was to evaluate changes in participant motivation, attitude, enthusiasm, interest, creativity and selfefficacy. The research team implemented various aspects of the Energy Labs in 4 settings: 1) Manchester Academic Charter School (MACS) – an inner city school where we worked with students between 6 th and 8 th grade. 2) a two-day training program called Teach the Teacher that was developed and conducted by the University of Pittsburgh 3) a five-week summer course hosted by the University of Pittsburgh precollegiate diversity in engineering program called Investing Now and 4) a week long program at Robert Morris University called Energy Week that focused on energy and sustainability. Investing Now consisted of 30 eleventh grade students from underrepresented groups in STEM while Energy week served both a middle and high school student population that were predominantly white. This paper will focus on the results obtained from the surveys that were administered to the Investing Now students and the Energy Week students. In developing our approach alongside the outreach events, seven key areas were identified to monitor. They are as follows: 1) Attitude: This focus area is included in an attempt to measure the effectiveness of the approach to change students’ attitude to be more open to participation and engaging in engineering, energy and sustainability. The goal was to measure self-reported willingness to engage and examining resulting changes. 2) Motivation: This focus area requires tapping into both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations during implementation. While the overarching objective is to have the students leave the program with greater motivation to pursue engineering and focus on energy and sustainability we recognize that the individual motivation levels and motivators will vary, but the overall level of motivation should increase with teacher rapport. 3) Interest: The effectiveness of the program to develop and increase the overall interest for students to learn more about sustainability and energy within engineering. By the end of the program, students ideally should have a greater interest in the topics covered. 4) Enthusiasm: Enthusiasm is often positively correlated to attitude and motivation however; the former is often better defined as enjoyment while the latter reflects more on their reasoning and behaviors. 5) Creativity: This item is more abstract and its assessment will be discussed in another section. However, the intended gains in this area include develop a greater sense to design something unique and original. 6) Self-Efficacy: Self-efficacy has many of the above focus areas wrapped into it, but with a stronger connection to the students’ confidence and anxiety to take on and complete specific objectives in the field of sustainability, energy and the engineering design process. 7) Competency: to increase knowledge and understanding on specific subject matters. The goals for this study include increasing competency in the areas of energy, sustainability and engineering design. Methodology In constructing the curriculum, a backwards design approach was utilized to allow alignment with the focus areas outlined in the introduction and determine the necessary assessments to produce results that can be used to measure the effectiveness in achieving the goals [3]. The backwards design approach/logic is depicted in Figure 1. Figure 1: Backwards Design The desired outcomes were listed as the seven key areas from the introduction section of this paper and thus determined the evidence needed to support those outcomes. The key areas to be evaluated were assessed using student surveys. Implementation would take place in the form of weekly assessments, pre-surveys and post-surveys. The pre-survey would ask questions in each of the key areas and would be used as a benchmark to determine the students initial attitude, motivation, interest etc. The weekly surveys and post-survey would be used to measure gains throughout the course. This paper will include results from surveys conducted on the Investing Now students and the Energy Week students. Investing Now hosts their five-week summer course every year. Our program was built into their curriculum framework and restructured to meet learning objectives in the areas of energy, sustainability and engineering design with focuses on energy efficiency, renewable energy technologies and mechatronics. The final curriculum is outlined below, in Table 1. The curriculum was designed to provide a gradual increase in design responsibility and creative autonomy. That progression is known to enhance students’ self-efficacy [4] Desired Outcomes Evidence Needed to Support Develop Curriculum Week