Collaborative Research: Center for Mobile Hands-on STEM

Collaborative Research: Center for Mobile Hands-on STEM Remarkable progress has been made in the development and implementation of hands-on learning in STEM education. The mantra of See One, Do One, Teach One overly simplifies the idea but does provide a helpful structure to understand how many engineering educators are attempting to change the learning experience of our students. Until recently, this effort has been faced with a major limitation. While we can easily incorporate traditional paper and pencil and numerical analysis, synthesis, and simulation in our classrooms, the remaining key aspect of doing the job of an engineer – experimentation – has only been included through the use of expensive and limited-access lab facilities. Small, low-cost Mobile Hands-On STEM (MHOS)learning platforms (e.g., myDAQ, Analog Discovery, and Circuit Gear Mini) provide almost unlimited opportunities to solve this remaining problem in engineering courses. Pedagogy based on these tools has been implemented and studied in several institutions in the US and in other countries, impacting thousands of students each year. In all cases in which hands-on learning has been studied, the pedagogy has been successfully implemented, even in traditionally theory-only based courses, with more engaged students and instructors. Although the initial assessments of this new approach to STEM education argue for broad application, the definitive case for its adoption has yet to be documented so that all STEM educators can fully appreciate its merit.The Center for Mobile Hands-On STEM is pursuing activities that support the following goals: • gather strong evidence of the effectiveness of Mobile Hands-On STEM (MHOS) pedagogy on student learning • develop an effective and pro-active dissemination strategy for the entire STEM educational community.To achieve these goals, we have recently focused on: • creating and implementing new standardized assessment tools that measure student learning, especially through the development of new experimentally focused concept inventories, as well as measure ease of adoption by instructors. • identifying implementation barriers for wide-spread adoption and how these might be overcome by applying the business start-up methodology of the NSF I-Corps program, working with faculty who have recently received funding to implement the mobile pedagogy, and holding focus groups among different constituencies.Both of these general areas of activity represent works-in-progress. In the former we are investigating formulations of concepts and possible learning and assessment activities and collecting data on their effectiveness and feedback from faculty interested in MOHS pedagogy.For the latter, we have had a group of our colleagues go through I-Corps training as part of a pilot program to determine whether the I-Corps model could be used to expand the impact of educational research. In addition, strong collaborative relationships have been developed with new groups who are aggressively implementing similar pedagogy throughout all of their engineering programs. Progress and problems will be presented in this paper