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This paper describes an engineering outreach programme designed to increase the interest of under-represented youth in engineering and to disseminate pre-engineering design challenge materials to K-12 educators and volunteers. Given university students' critical role as facilitators of the outreach programme, researchers conducted a two-year design experiment to examine the programme's effectiveness at preparing university students to lead pre-engineering activities. Pre- and post-surveys incorporated items from the Student Engagement sub-scale of the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale. Surveys were analysed using paired-samples t-test. Interview and open-ended survey data were analysed using discourse analysis and the constant comparative method. As a result of participation in the programme, university students reported a gain in efficacy to lead pre-engineering activities. The paper discusses programme features that supported efficacy gains and concludes with a set of design principles for developing learning environments that effectively prepare university students to facilitate pre-engineering outreach programmes.

Researchers pretested and posttested 114 electrical engineering technology majors to answer questions related to student field independence/field dependence's effect on achievement in a computer-assisted instruction (CAI) lesson. Results indicate a distinct relationship between field independence and student achievement in CAI. (CH)

The development of the Ohio Technology Academic Content Standards is a high point on a long road of curriculum revision in Ohio. A third political element of the process was the Governor's Commission for Student Success. This was a broad-based group of parents, school personnel, politicians, and community members that recommended that the Academic Content Standards be developmentally appropriate and built on the best of what was being done in Ohio and around the country. Nine standards were developed, but through the writing process it was determined that two of the standards should be combined with others, and so the final content standards have a total of seven standards. Technology Academic Content Standards for Ohio did indeed come up with a blend of standards from the three technology related standards: National Educational Technology Standards for Students.