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2014 Georgia Scholarship Of Stem Teaching & Learning Conference Program, Georgia Scholarship Of Stem Teaching & Learning Conference

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

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2012 Georgia Scholarship Of Stem Teaching And Learning Conference Program, Georgia Scholarship Of Stem Teaching And Learning Conference

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

Conference Program

Free Stem Apps For Common Core, Daniel E. Rivera Mr.

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

We will highlight FREE apps for Computers, Chrome browser and mobile devices (Android and iOS) that align to Common Core standards. A website will be provided with a full list for participants to peruse after the conference. Science will be the primary focus but there will also be apps for Math & Engineering as well as apps that are generally useful for teachers as well. Audience are any K-16 teachers. Participants are welcome to bring mobile devices and to suggest their own favorite apps.

E-Commerce Teaching Via Project-Based Learning At Open Access College Advances Usg Stem Goals, Kamal M. Kakish, Yaquan Xu

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) is a 4-year USG public institution with an “open access” undergraduate program. There is a need to help GGC students learn academic content and develop critical skills that include thinking and reasoning, information analysis, and proficient collaboration. This presentation proposes a STEM incubator project by using Project-Based Learning (PBL) to teach Mobile and e-Commerce at GGC. The objective of this presentation is to demonstrate to college professors and other scholarly audiences how this hands-on methodology advances the goals of the USG STEM Initiative. Our preliminary survey results showed that 90% of respondents strongly agreed that project-based …

Making Science Count In Your Schools-Increasing Academic Performance Through Integration Across The Curriculum, Dr. Bertina M. Banks

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

Principals, do you want to see your academic achievement soar in science? Teachers, do you want your enthusiasm for science to be reinforced in every class? During our interactive workshop, school leaders will be empowered to support all teachers in cross-curricular strategies that increase student achievement. Teachers will be armed with strategies to design, implement and assess teaching approaches that impact student learners. Participants will also be provided with strategies for integrating science on a school-wide level by collaborating with all subject areas teachers including Mathematics, Language Arts, Social Studies, Art, Music, Health, Physical Education and more. The strategies provided …

Peer-Led Team Learning At The University Of West Georgia, Lucille Garmon, Dusty D. Otwell, Casey M. Brown, Brandon M. Rittgers, Dylan R. Downes, Zach B. Robinson, Rebecca Geisler

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) has been a part of general chemistry at the University of West Georgia (UWG) for over fifteen years. PLTL is a collaborative and innovative learning model that supplements the classroom lecture, typically in STEM courses. In PLTL at UWG, approximately fifteen students meet weekly for ninety minutes to actively work together to solve chemistry problems under the guidance of a peer leader. Results at UWG have shown that students who consistently attend and participate in PLTL attain higher grades and better student learning outcomes such as student engagement, motivation and performance than students who fail to …

Moving Full Steam Ahead, Debra D. Collins Dr.

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

How do you move a traditional elementary school to a hands-on, interactive, STEAM focused school? At Hampton Elementary Charter, we offer our students a variety of STEAM Stations each day to build career awareness in the areas of science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. This presentation will cover the successes, scheduling, surveys, decisions, and challenges of moving a school and doing what's right for students. The primary audience is elementary and middle school teachers and administrators. Participants will be given the opportunity to share ideas, plans, questions, struggles, and opportunities for STEM and STEAM programs.

Usg Math 1113 Emporium: Insights From An Online Precalculus Course, Nathan W. Moon Dr., Kris Biesinger Dr., Chuck Kutal Dr.

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

The USG MATH 1113 Precalculus Emporium is a project to develop and implement an online, rigorous learning experience to improve student success with the additional goal of greater affordability.

Based on initial experiences from Spring 2014, the MATH 1113 Precalculus Emporium was revised and continued in Fall 2014. This second pilot of the course involved a number of key revisions:

- Online course orientation materials (overview of instructional technologies, academic honesty policies, time management plan, and orientation quiz),

- Revised instructional model based involving a team of graduate teaching assistants,

- Module balancing with a shift from four to five …

Luncheon Keynote Address #1: An Engineer's Education And It's Use In Aerospace, Vu Nguyen

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

A self-professed nerd always imagined that he would work in the computer or information technology industries, but by luck ended up with a career as an aerospace engineer. Despite a lack of formal training in aerospace, the fundamentals of an engineering education laid the path for a successful career. Vu will describe the products that are designed and built at Gulfstream and explain part of the engineering organization. He will then go through an example of the types of problems that he encountered in his work and what aspects of his education were necessary for the workplace. He will discuss …

Purposeful Professional Development For Stem, Sandi Adams

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

Our transition from a traditional K-6 school to a STEM Academy did not happen overnight! Technology professional development has played a key role in our progress.
This session will share our 3 year plan and journey for STEM 21, project based classroom training and certifying our entire school as Microsoft Innovative Educators. Participants will gain a “real world” perspective of introducing STEM technology training to a variety of staff learning styles and levels.

Finding The Connection Between Game-Design And Problem-Solving: Game-Design And Learning Programs, Mete Akcaoglu Ph.D.

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

In today‟s complex and fast-evolving world problem solving is an important skill to possess. For young children to be successful at their future careers they need to have the skill and the will to solve complex problems that are beyond the well-defined problems that they learn to solve at schools. One promising approach to teach complex problem solving skills is using visual programming and game design software. Theoretically and anecdotally, extant research enlightened us about the cognitive and motivational potential of these software. Due to lack of empirical evidence, however, we are far from knowing if these claims are warranted. …

Using Mathematics Literature With Prospective Secondary Mathematics Teachers, Christopher Charlie Jett

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

Literature in mathematics has been found to foster positive dispositions about mathematics teaching and learning. With this caveat in mind, the following research question guided this work: How might the incorporation of literature through literature circles influence prospective secondary mathematics teachers’ pedagogical paradigms? The author used survey and reflection data to ascertain how literature influenced prospective secondary mathematics teachers’ ideas. Literature texts, students’ narratives, and survey data are shared to answer the research question, discuss implications, and offer recommendations for future work.

This research project was completed during spring 2014 and is designed for secondary STEM K–12 practitioners and university …

Can Computational Thinking Predict Academic Performance?, Rami Haddad, Youakim Kalaani

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

This research introduces the notion of predicting academic performance using Computational Thinking. The integral role that Computational Thinking modalities play in engineering disciplines can serve as an accurate indicator of the student future academic success. Therefore, this study investigated the students’ performance in a Computational Thinking course offered at the freshman-level to predict the student future academic success. To achieve this goal, a two-year study of the correlation between accumulative grade point averages and Computational Thinking course grades was conducted. The performance of 982 students was assessed over the two-year period. It was concluded that the students’ academic performance is …

Transformation From Standards To Stem, Pamela G. Jenkins-Sanford, Layla Cantlebary

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

As elementary schools in our area struggle to make the transformation from teaching the state mandated standards to STEM, we've transformed not only what happens during the school day, but during after school activities as well. We'd like to share the steps in this transformation with you through hands on tasks, building School-wide Science Olympiad Days, and starting a Sea Perch Robotics after school program. We will be sharing the steps we took to build these programs from the Genesis of an idea, to full implementation, including how we funded these initiatives. Our presentation includes examples of hands on tasks, …

Visual Modeling Of Fractions And Ratio, Arsalan Wares

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

The purpose of this talk is to illustrate how concepts of fractions and ratio can be explained visually to young students. A significant part of the talk will involve watching videos of preservice teachers at Valdosta State University solve challenging mathematical problems visually.

The primary audience of this session are mathematics teachers, university professors who teach preservice teachers. The participants will be asked to solve some the problems on their own before and after they watch the student videos. The participants will get a chance to see how mathematical problems can be explained in multiple ways. They will also get …

Teaching 21st Century Reasoning Skills Through An Authentic Interdisciplinary Stem Research Experience, Deborah Walker, Robert Mayes Dr.

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

This session will highlight the work of the Real STEM grant awarded to Dr. Robert Mayes, COE Research Professor and Director of Georgia Southern University’s Institute for Interdisciplinary STEM Education. Real STEM is an Innovation Fund grant supported by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA). Real STEM is developing partnerships between middle and high schools throughout southeast Georgia, Research Institutes, business/industry, experts in STEM fields, and university STEM faculty in order to develop interdisciplinary STEM scientific research experiences for students. This session will discuss how teachers are using Place-based Education, Problem Based Learning and Understanding by Design pedagogy to …

Cross Disciplinary Perceptions Of The Computational Thinking Among Freshmen Engineering Students, Rami Haddad, Youakim Kalaani

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

In this study, we analyzed the perception of Computational Thinking among engineering students from three engineering disciplines (Electrical, Mechanical, and Civil) and correlated their performance with their discipline. The goal of this analysis is to determine whether structuring discipline-specific Computational Thinking courses can improve the retention or having a diverse group of students is more beneficial by allowing multidisciplinary interaction. This analysis was quantitatively verified by assessing the students' performance in over 40 different sections of Computing for Engineers course taught from Fall 2012 to Spring 2014. Our sample consisted of 861 students (142 Civil, 484 Mechanical, and 235 Electrical). …

Implementing Cutting-Edge Devices To Make Programming Course “Fun” For Stem Students, Evelyn R. Brannock, Mai Yin Tsoi, Robert J. Lutz

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

Although the field of computing is growing at a rapid rate, the number of students who successfully complete coursework and enter the field is not keeping pace. In fact, research has indicated that students find programming courses so difficult, many change their majors to avoid these courses. The purpose of this study in progress was to integrate cutting-edge devices in an intermediate programming course to impact students’ perceptions of programming and to increase motivation. Our preliminary findings indicate that the students ascribed an element of “fun” to these devices and that their beliefs on how “fun” plays a role in …

How To Conduct Cloud-Based Student Labs In Your Classroom, Russell Thackston, Ryan C. Fortenberry

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

This workshop uses hands-on exercises to show participants how "the cloud" can be an effective and cost-saving platform for student laboratory exercises. Participants will learn how to create their own virtual computer on Amazon's cloud platform, then use the server to 1) publish their own web site and 2) run a short molecular modeling simulation using the PSI4 software, all in just a few minutes. We will also show participants how to find and decipher cloud platform pricing models, for a better idea of how much cloud computing will cost instructors and/or their students.

Note: An Amazon's AWS free tier …

Building An Interdisciplinary Partnership To Improve Math Skills In The Science Classroom, Greta A. Giles, Paula H. Krone

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

This presentation is intended for University STEM faculty interested in developing interdisciplinary collaborations to improve the ability of students to do math in their science courses. The development of a partnership between faculty in chemistry and mathematics will be discussed. The presenters’ partnership explored ways to improve rates of chemistry student success by identifying key mathematical stumbling blocks encountered by chemistry students. This collaboration resulted in the formation of a student learning community comprised of a General Chemistry course and Precalculus course. Modifications were made to both courses including the addition of material to the mathematics course and changes in …

High-Performance Empirical Learning Platform With Inexpensive Off-The-Shelf Systems (Helios), Seung Yang, Hongsik Choi

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

We provided empirical undergraduate research experience to students on a High-Performance Computing (HPC) cluster named High-performance Empirical Learning platform with Inexpensive Off-the-shelf Systems (HELIOS). Students had hands-on experience on the HELIOS cluster to conduct empirical research on HPC by applying their knowledge and skills to enhance the performance of the cluster. Students conducted their research through real hands-on experiments, and promoted their understanding in operating systems, computer networking, hardware configuration, system administration and management, and parallel/distributed computing. In this presentation, we will share how the HELIOS research project promoted students’ logical thinking, scientific inquiries, and systems skills.

Teaching 21st Century Reasoning Skills Through An Authentic Interdisciplinary Stem Research Experience, Deborah Walker, Robert Mayes Dr.

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

This poster will highlight the work of the Real STEM grant awarded to Dr. Robert Mayes, COE Research Professor and Director of Georgia Southern University’s Institute for Interdisciplinary STEM Education. Real STEM is an Innovation Fund grant supported by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA). Real STEM is developing partnerships between middle and high schools throughout southeast Georgia, Research Institutes, business/industry, experts in STEM fields, and university STEM faculty in order to develop interdisciplinary STEM scientific research experiences for students. This poster will show how teachers are using Place-based Education, Problem Based Learning and Understanding by Design pedagogy to …

Stem Apps For Android Devices, Daniel E. Rivera Mr.

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

We will showcase free STEM related apps for Android devices (and indicate which are also available for iOS). Android tablets will be provided so that visitors can try the apps themselves.

Investigating The Influence Of The Csu Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program On College Students' Teaching Plans, Leigh A. Mathis, Cindy Ticknor, Deborah Gober, Timothy Howard, Kimberly Shaw

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

The Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (CRAFT-STEM) at Columbus State University offers academic and financial support for students pursuing secondary teaching certificates in STEM fields. In return, students commit to teaching in high-need K-12 school districts in Georgia. Here we provide preliminary results regarding influences on students’ reasoning as they select teaching as a career, STEM as a content focus, and high-needs schools as future employment. With the support of a literature review, we plan to offer a preliminary qualitative analysis of case studies representing three Noyce scholarship recipients with a range of experiences: (1) a former scholarship recipient who …

The Diy Data Collecting Computer Project: Integrating The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning And Scholarship Of Community Engagement, Joe Covert, Jennifer Lindly, Markus Hitz, Paul F. Baldwin

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

This poster highlights an innovative STEM project focused on two goals: (1) reducing the cost of computer-based measuring devices, and (2) the implementation of these devices in middle school classrooms. The first phase of the project -- creating the DIY Data Collecting Computer -- was a collaborative effort between computer science and science teacher education faculty and their students. Single-board computers, including the Raspberry Pi and Arduino Uno, were used as the basis for the data collecting computer. In the second phase, the university team worked with middle school teachers and administrators to implement a multi-day unit in which eighth …

Experimental Methods In Biology Course Engages Students In Authentic Research On Phage Superinfection Immunity Testing, Latanya Hammonds-Odie, Diane Dorsett

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

One of the recommended action items from the 2011 Vision and Change report was for undergraduate biology courses to be active, outcome oriented, inquiry-driven and relevant. At four-year undergraduate teaching institutions similar to Georgia Gwinnett College, maximizing student outcomes while providing quality, substantive research experiences for each student can be challenging. The Experimental Methods in Biology (BIOL4570) course was designed to enable students to investigate a problem from literature to the bench, within the limits of a fifteen week semester. The objective of the course was to provide students with direct, hands-on experience that would be relevant in most biological …

Analyzing Ngss Scientific Practices In Action., Robert C. Idsardi Jr, Barbara A. Crawford, Jaclyn K. Murray, James F. Ammons

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

This poster presentation will present ongoing research on the Science Practices in the Classroom Matrix (SPCM), an analytical tool used for identifying the level of sophistication of scientific practices occurring in classroom lessons and the level of student versus teacher centeredness. The SPCM has been used to analyze video recordings of middle grades teachers who participated in a professional development program on inquiry, the nature of science (NOS), and evolutionary concepts. Pre- and post-tests revealed participant teachers’ knowledge and views of inquiry and NOS. This poster highlights interactions, if any, between implementation of the scientific practices and teacher knowledge and …

Positive Impacts Of A Stem-Centered University Service-Learning Course, Gretchen D. Perkins, Ashley Collins, David Knauft Phd, Nick Fuhrman Phd

Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference (2012-2019)

Service-learning courses have become increasingly popular at universities over the past decade. Fostering Our Community’s Understanding of Science, known as Project FOCUS, has been a service-learning course at the University of Georgia for the past 13 years. Undergraduate students collaborate with teachers in the community to teach hands-on science lessons to elementary and middle school students. The course has enrolled over 1000 undergraduates, who have taught science to an estimated 25,000 local students. Students enrolled in this course experience increased interest in community involvement and teaching science. This poster is an informative glance at Project FOCUS as recommendations for K-12 …