Science and Mathematics Education | Open Access Articles

Reflecting Back To Forge The Path Forward, Robert M. Capraro, Mary Margaret Capraro, Chance Lewis, Melva R. Grant, Marlon James, Eduardo Mosqueda, Jamaal Young, Jemimah Young, Ali Bicer, Tarcia Hubert, Alesia Mickle Moldavan, Susan Ophelia Cannon, Michael S. Rugh, Miriam Sanders, Jonas Chang

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

The JUME editorial team provides an update of the journal's health and progress during the 2021 calendar year and discusses coming changes and opportunities for growth.

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Validation Of The Ambassador Questionnaire For Undergraduate Students Conducting Engineering Outreach, Melissa G. Kuhn, Shanan Chappell Moots, Joanna K. Garner

Center for Educational Partnerships Publications

Although K-12 engineering outreach commonly involves college students, the young professionals who act as ambassadors for their field are less likely to be studied than the students they serve. Yet, outreach activities may offer opportunities for undergraduate students to develop aspects of their professional selves. As there is currently no comprehensive measure that allows researchers, program evaluators, and outreach advisors to examine ambassadors' professional development and growth, this study sought to develop and validate an Ambassador Questionnaire (AQ). The multi-step process included the selection and adaptation of items from extant measures of engineering students' motivation, beliefs, professional skills, and perceptions …

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Can We Make Our Robot Play Soccer? Influence Of Collaborating With Preservice Teachers And Fifth Graders On Undergraduate Engineering Students' Learning During A Robotic Design Process (Work In Progress), Krishnanand Kaipa, Jennifer Kidd, Julia Noginova, Francisco Cima, Stacie Ringleb, Orlando Ayala, Pilar Pazos, Kristie Gutierrez, Min Jung Lee

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

This work-in-progress paper describes engineering students’ experiences in an NSF-funded project that partnered undergraduate engineering students with pre-service teachers to plan and deliver robotics lessons to fifth graders at a local school. This project aims to address an apparent gap between what is taught in academia and industry’s expectations of engineers to integrate perspectives from outside their field to solve modern societal problems requiring a multidisciplinary approach. Working in small teams over Zoom, participating engineering, education, and fifth grade students designed, built, and coded bio-inspired COVID companion robots. The goal for the engineering students was to build new interprofessional skills, …

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Examining The Impact Of Online Math Games On Student Performance And Attitudes, Tian Luo, Catherine Hickman, Pauline Muljana

STEMPS Faculty Publications

Low mathematics scores in the U.S. have been pressing the educators to find engaging strategies and effective tools to promote math performance. While emerging technologies, such as digital math games, show promises in improving mathematical education, existing studies have garnered mixed findings and thereby necessitating further investigation. This study aims to examine the impact of skill-based online math games on students’ math performance and attitudes, as well as students’ perceptions of the games. Thirty-eight students ranging from fifth to eighth grade participated in the study. The results showed a mixed picture of the impact of the online games on math …

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Experiences During The Implementation Of Two Different Project-Based Learning Assignments In A Fluid Mechanics Course., Orlando Ayala, Kristie Gutierrez, Francisco Cima, Julia Noginova, Min Jung Lee, Stacie Ringleb, Pilar Pazos, Krishnanand Kaipa, Jennifer Kidd

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

There is growing evidence of the effectiveness of project-based learning (PBL) in preparing students to solve complex problems. In PBL implementations in engineering, students are treated as professional engineers facing projects centered around real-world problems, including the complexity and uncertainty that influence such problems. Not only does this help students to analyze and solve an authentic real-world task, promoting critical thinking, but also students learn from each other, learning valuable communication and teamwork skills. Faculty play an important part by assuming non-conventional roles (e.g., client, senior professional engineer, consultant) to help students throughout this instructional and learning approach. Typically in …

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Determining The Difficulty And Discrimination Parameters Of A Mathematics Performance-Based Assessment, Abraham Gyamfi, Douglas G. Wren

Educational Foundations & Leadership Faculty Publications

Performance-based assessment (PBA) is different from traditional testing methods in that PBA presents real-life problems for students to solve by integrating critical thinking with their content knowledge and skills. Implementing PBA regularly in mathematics classes is associated with improved student achievement and motivation to learn; however, there are concerns about the general lack of psychometric data to support the use of performance assessments. To address such concerns, this study applied item response theory to estimate the difficulty and discrimination indices of items that comprised a newly developed mathematics PBA. Data were collected by administering the PBA to 750 senior high …

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Blast-Building Leaders For Advancing Science And Technology: A Partnership Between The Virginia Space Grant Consortium And The University Of Virginia, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, And Old Dominion University, Cynthia Tomovic, Mary Sandy, Julie Back, Vukica Jovanovic, Kim Lester, Edward Murphy, Sueanne Mckinney, Mileta Tomovic

STEMPS Faculty Publications

This paper presents the development and delivery of educational summer intensive programs for high school students that are designed to encourage students’ interests in the STEM-related fields and the motivation to pursue a STEM-related degrees in college. BLAST (Building Leaders to Advance Science and Technology) is designed as a summer-intensive, residential, on-campus STEM-learning experience for rising ninth and tenth graders. With the intention of improving the STEM-related workforce pipeline in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Virginia Space Grant Consortium (VSGC) offers multiple BLAST programs across the Commonwealth. BLAST programs are designed as intensive three-day, STEM-related three-hour lecture-lab experiences that are reinforced …

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Women Students Learning A Stem Subject: An Analysis Of Note-Taking Practices In A Civil Engineering Course And The Association With Self-Efficacy, Cognitive Engagement, Test Anxiety, And Course Achievement, Monica Palomo, Pauline Muljana

STEMPS Faculty Publications

Women students are underrepresented in STEM education. The completion rate of women students in an engineering program are known to be low. Alongside this, the COVID-19 pandemic still occurs, threatening people’s health, leading to anxiety and depression, and influencing students’ learning. Numerous studies have displayed a negative association between self-efficacy and test anxiety, especially in quantitative subjects. All together may distract students from focusing on their cognitive goals. In turn, students may not be able to concentrate, disrupting their cognitive engagement to grasp knowledge. The present case study is aimed to investigate the note-taking strategies used in a fully-synchronous Civil …

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Work-In-Progress: Rapid Development Of Advanced Virtual Labs For In-Person And Online Education, Yiyang Li, Yuzhong Shen, Charles Sukenik, Brian Sanders, Pauline Delacruz, Justin Mason

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

During the closure of K-12 schools and universities thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, many educators turned to web conferencing tools such as Zoom and WebEx to deliver online lectures. For courses with labs, some teachers provide recorded videos of real labs. Watching recorded lab videos is a passive experience, as the procedures and point of view are fixed, and students do not have any control of the lab and thus miss the opportunity to explore different options, including making mistakes that is important part of the learning process. One approach that holds great potential to enhance laboratory experience for online …

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Digital Educational Modules Development For The Career And Technical Cybersecurity Pathways During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Vukica Jovanović, Murat Kuzlu, Otilia Popescu, Petros Katsioloudis, Linda Vahala, Michael Wu, Deborah Marshall, Michael Crespo, Mary Addison

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Virtual learning has been used now for several decades, but it has never had a bigger impact on student learning than in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Universities and schools faced shutdowns all around the world, and teachers had to adapt rapidly to online mode of instruction. Many educators were faced with a triage approach with no previous experience in distance learning, a lack of resources for professional development, and already existing shortages of current educational modules that could assist them in their day-to-day jobs. This gap was especially evident in areas such as career and technical education (CTE) …

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Philosophical Underpinnings Of Mathematics Teacher Educator's Work, Elizabeth Suazo-Flores, Signe E. Kastberg, Melva R. Grant, Olive Chapman

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

Mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) are turning research lens on themselves to explore their knowledge and practices and with that contribute knowledge to the field of mathematics teacher education. In this working group we build from our exploration of MTEs' work. MTEs will describe their work and their views of knowledge and being in their work as MTEs. We invite MTEs to join our working group and assert that MTEs' discussions of their work will provide opportunities for professional learning that reveals how their knowledge and identity inform their practice.

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Science and Mathematics Education Commons^™

Full-Text Articles in Science and Mathematics Education

Reflecting Back To Forge The Path Forward, Robert M. Capraro, Mary Margaret Capraro, Chance Lewis, Melva R. Grant, Marlon James, Eduardo Mosqueda, Jamaal Young, Jemimah Young, Ali Bicer, Tarcia Hubert, Alesia Mickle Moldavan, Susan Ophelia Cannon, Michael S. Rugh, Miriam Sanders, Jonas Chang

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

Validation Of The Ambassador Questionnaire For Undergraduate Students Conducting Engineering Outreach, Melissa G. Kuhn, Shanan Chappell Moots, Joanna K. Garner

Center for Educational Partnerships Publications

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

Examining The Impact Of Online Math Games On Student Performance And Attitudes, Tian Luo, Catherine Hickman, Pauline Muljana

STEMPS Faculty Publications

Experiences During The Implementation Of Two Different Project-Based Learning Assignments In A Fluid Mechanics Course., Orlando Ayala, Kristie Gutierrez, Francisco Cima, Julia Noginova, Min Jung Lee, Stacie Ringleb, Pilar Pazos, Krishnanand Kaipa, Jennifer Kidd

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Determining The Difficulty And Discrimination Parameters Of A Mathematics Performance-Based Assessment, Abraham Gyamfi, Douglas G. Wren

Educational Foundations & Leadership Faculty Publications

STEMPS Faculty Publications

Women Students Learning A Stem Subject: An Analysis Of Note-Taking Practices In A Civil Engineering Course And The Association With Self-Efficacy, Cognitive Engagement, Test Anxiety, And Course Achievement, Monica Palomo, Pauline Muljana

STEMPS Faculty Publications

Work-In-Progress: Rapid Development Of Advanced Virtual Labs For In-Person And Online Education, Yiyang Li, Yuzhong Shen, Charles Sukenik, Brian Sanders, Pauline Delacruz, Justin Mason

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Digital Educational Modules Development For The Career And Technical Cybersecurity Pathways During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Vukica Jovanović, Murat Kuzlu, Otilia Popescu, Petros Katsioloudis, Linda Vahala, Michael Wu, Deborah Marshall, Michael Crespo, Mary Addison

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Philosophical Underpinnings Of Mathematics Teacher Educator's Work, Elizabeth Suazo-Flores, Signe E. Kastberg, Melva R. Grant, Olive Chapman

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications