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In the last two decades, pre-college engineering education has been on a sharp rise. However, limited research, if at all, considered aspects of engineering thinking of children with disabilities. Therefore, in line with the call for diversifying engineering education, considering inclusion of children with disabilities is necessary. Among different disabilities, the number of children with autism is rapidly growing. In addition, studies have shown that individuals with autism have the potential to perform well in activities that require systematizing abilities like engineering. Given the importance of participating in engineering learning opportunities from childhood and its impact on future engineering performance, engaging children with autism in appropriate engineering experiences is necessary. Therefore, we need to gain a deep understanding of how they engage in engineering learning activities. This study is a part of a bigger project in which we aim to characterize engineering thinking of children with autism. In this study, we are closely looking at the first and very important engineering practices; problem scoping. The main purpose of this study is to investigate how 8- 10 years old children with autism engage in problem scoping. We focused on three main components of problem scoping in engineering design (1) Problem Framing, (2) Information Gathering, and (3) Reflection. For this study, we have conducted a qualitative single case study analysis. We carefully chosen one case of child with autism. The child is make and 9 years old and participated in this study with his parent. They were asked to solve an engineering problem of building a roller coaster for a local amusement park in 60 minutes. Their interaction was videotaped and pictures of their designs were captured. We have analyzed the video data video analysis approach based on the codebook we developed by reviewing literature on problem scoping. The instances that we have seen in mom-child interactions and conversation provided evidence that the child with autism was capable of engaging in all three actions of problem scoping. The behaviors we have observed were mostly associated to Problem Framing and Information Gathering. However, we have seen some evidence of Reflection. We believe, that the findings of this study lays foundation for future studies on children with autism and engineering design, and how to effectively engage in them in these activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrating science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects in pre-college settings is seen as critical in providing opportunities for children to develop knowledge, skills, and interests in these subjects and the associated critical thinking skills. More recently computational thinking (CT) has been called out as an equally important topic to emphasize among pre-college students. The authors of this paper began an integrated STEM+CT project three years ago to explore integrating these subjects and literacy in a curriculum for 5-8-year-old students. We reported on the development of this project and an analysis of how the existing curriculum highlighted CT knowledge and skills, and how we expected the curriculum to engage students in CT in an ASEE conference paper in 2016. This paper reports on the evolution of the project and curriculum. Part of this evolution included the defining of CT and its associated competencies and what it would look like for this young age group. In this paper, we discuss this evolution as well as how we have operationalized the competencies with data from classroom testing. At the outset of this project, there were few resources that specifically considered teaching CT with 5-8-year-old children and fewer clear examples of what it looked like for children to engage in CT. However, there were many, sometimes competing, definitions and approaches to CT more generally. After further review of the literature and classroom testing of our revised curriculum, the team developed definitions for the following CT competencies: abstraction; algorithms and procedures; automation; data collection; data analysis; data representation; debugging/troubleshooting; problem decomposition; parallelization; simulation; and pattern recognition. Analysis of hundreds of students and tens of teachers implementing the curriculum allowed us to develop concrete examples of how students engage in CT competencies as well as how kindergarten through second grade teachers foster CT competency development. We report on these examples and how they informed the development of the integrated STEM+CT curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this poster is the educational programming and evaluation associated with an NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC). CISTAR, the Center for Innovative and Strategic Transformation of Alkane Resources, is a new NSF ERC in its second year. The center's mission is to create a transformative engineered system to convert light hydrocarbons from shale resources to chemicals and transportation fuels in smaller, modular, local, and highly networked processing plants. The center, a collaborative network of five universities, is supported by four pillars: workforce development, diversity, industry, and research. This poster will outline research experiences and career and graduate school preparation and associated evaluation related to workforce development and diversity including a Research Experience for Teachers (RET) for middle and high school teachers, a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) and a Young Scholars program for high school students. Our presentation documents and describes steps taken to launch the educational programming during the first year of the center. The overarching broader impact goal of CISTAR Workforce Development is to create a technically excellent and inclusive community of hydrocarbon systems researchers, learners, and teachers. CISTAR aims to create an environment where people of all backgrounds are welcomed, supported, and respected. The center engages an external evaluation team with extensive experience in evaluating STEM education programs, technology-based projects, professional development programming, and materials development projects. While the intensity and lengths of the summer 2018 programming varied, all participants engaged in key aspects of research (hypothesis development, experimental design, data collection and analysis, and communicating their results to others), were included in research meetings and presentations involving scientists at a widerange of expertise (novice to mature), and had one on one mentoring with graduate students and other CISTAR program personnel. The external evaluators administered pre and post program surveys and mid-point interviews to both participants and mentors to collect formative feedback on the potential impacts of the project on the participants, graduate mentors, and to ask whether the goals and objectives were accomplished as planned, and identify strengths and limitations of the project. These evaluation strategies will be detailed as well as modifications to programming based on the results of this assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting the participation of under-represented minorities in engineering is a national imperative. Focusing on elementary school students is critical for broadening participation in engineering, as many children form lasting beliefs about their STEM identities and STEM selfefficacy in elementary school. While there has been a recent surge in efforts to integrate engineering in curriculum in traditional school settings, out-of-school settings continue to play an important role in promoting equity in pre-college engineering experiences. Out-of-school settings in particular can be ideal for providing children with culturally-relevant engineering experiences. This project focuses on the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)'s Summer Engineering Experiences for Kids (SEEK) program. This multi-partner project allows us to expand and strengthen the experience, conduct research on the impact of the program, and conduct research on how such outreach programs might grow in sustainable manners. Our poster will present a summary of the large-scale data collection that occurred during the summer of 2018 at all 16 sites located across the US. We administered a variety of instruments to identify changes in the children's STEM-related outcomes over the course of the SEEK experience. To further operationalize the variation in organizational contexts across sites, we collected data from parents and mentors. In the poster we will share information about the instruments used for this study. Additionally, our poster will summarize the work that we have done to further strengthen the curricular and training aspects of SEEK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal learning environments such as science centers and museums are instrumental in the promotion of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. These settings provide children with the chance to engage in self-directed activities that can create lifelong interest and persistence in STEM. In addition, the participation of parents in these settings can engage children in conversations that can boost understanding and enhance learning of STEM topics. To date, a considerable amount of research has focused on adult-child dialogue. Findings from those studies revealed that children experience more elaborate scientific thinking when parents facilitate learning. Given the need for engineers to have computer science skills, academic discourse has placed emphasis on studying computational thinking (CT) in children. While some recent studies have focused on the roles parents play to promote children's engineering thinking, very few studies have explored parents' influence on children's engagement in CT. Therefore, in this study, we investigate the roles that parents play in promoting computational thinking in their young children. In this study, families of 5-7 year-old children were invited to a science center. The families were asked to interact with an exhibit, "Computing for the Critters," that was designed to promote engineering and computational thinking in children. We conducted a qualitative case study to closely examine child-parent interactions during one portion of the exhibit that is a computerbased coding game. Drawing on previous literature from engineering education and informal science education, a coding scheme was developed with the essential roles that parents play in science centers and museums. The roles include Supervising, Co-learning, Facilitating, Encouragement and Student of the Child. In this study, we have observed that parents take multiple roles in which some of them resulted in children's enactment of CTs. The findings of this study advance our understanding of how parents can support computational thinking while engaging in conversations during engineering activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational Thinking (CT) is an often overlooked, but important, aspect of engineering thinking. This connection can be seen in Wing's definition of CT, which includes a combination of mathematical and engineering thinking required to solve problems. While previous studies have shown that children are capable of engaging in multiple CT competencies, research has yet to explore the role that parents play in promoting these competencies in their children. In this study, we are taking a unique approach by investigating the role that a homeschool mother played in her child's engagement in CT. This qualitative case study of a homeschool family is comprised of a mother and her six-year-old daughter. They engaged in two STEM+C activities designed by our research team. The parent first utilized the integrated STEM+C+literacy curriculum at home, and then visited a local science center. During their visit, both the parent and child interacted with an exhibit designed to promote engineering and computational thinking among children. Their engagement in both activities was video- and audio-recorded. Interviews regarding their experience were also conducted at the end of each activity (curriculum and exhibit participation). In this study, we employed a video analysis approach to examine childparent interactions and utilized a thematic analysis approach to analyze the interviews. Our findings suggest that homeschool parents are integral to supporting children's understanding of CT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The data collection procedure and process is one of the most critical components in a research study that affects the findings. Problems in data collection may directly influence the findings, and consequently, may lead to questionable inferences. Despite the challenges in data collection, this study provides insights for STEM education researchers and practitioners on effective data collection, in order to ensure that the data is useful for answering questions posed by research. Our engineering education research study was a part of a three-year, NSF funded project implemented in the Midwest region of the US. The project has engaged more than 60 teachers from 15 different public elementary schools and one private elementary school from five different school districts, as well as homeschool educators. More than 1,000 students, ages kindergarten to second grade, have been involved. Through this project, children engaged in integrated STEM + literacy +computational thinking activities in formal, informal, and homeschool settings. For this multi-faceted project, data collection was complex. The primary data collected for this project was video-recordings of K-2nd grade-aged children as they engaged in curriculum activities in both classroom and homeschool settings, as well as in activities designed for and set in a science center setting. Video recordings allow us to examine the ways that the children engage in engineering design and computational thinking, as well as in mathematics, science, and literacy. Video recordings also allow us to examine the interactions between children, as well as interactions between children and teachers/parents. Additional data included: copies of student work (e.g. worksheets, engineering design prototypes); field notes collected during classroom observation and science center visits; post-implementation interviews with teachers and parents; and surveys. In addition, a new approach, referred to as the 1+2 technique, in video data collection was developed to record the targeted data. Overall, the main aim of this paper is to provide critical insights for researchers who anticipate implementing more successful, purposeful and effective data collection in elementary schools, specifically in K-2 grade levels. We also anticipate that this paper will help practitioners and professional developers consider how they might collect video recordings: whether for allowing practitioners to reflect on their teaching practices; allowing teachers to share with families the in-class activities that children engage in; or assisting professional developers in developing video-based training materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineers today consider how to advance technologies with limited natural resources to achieve a sustainable future. Sustainability has been integrated into a variety of engineering curricula where educators face challenges of the misconception perceived by students that technology can offer complete solutions to sustainability. In this study, a constructive educational module of sustainability was integrated into a K-12 industry-oriented curriculum at a public middle school as a practice to introduce the societal, economic, and environmental mindsets to pre-college students with reduced technological content. Data collected are instructor's reflections for the module that lead to a summative critique of the outcomes and improvements. This study provides the engineering education community the evidence that middle-school youth can well perceive sustainability framework and the insights for researchers who are looking to integrate sustainable engineering to pre-collegiate engineering settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid growth of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) jobs in the United States, stakeholders are investing more resources to expand participation in these fields in terms of overall numbers as well as representation across demographics. Although there has been a steady stream of federal and corporate investments in STEM programs, reaching and engaging youth from underrepresented communities remains a challenge. Attempting to disrupt this trend, the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) is leveraging over ten years of experience to further develop and expand the nation-wide Summer Engineering Experiences for Kids (SEEK) program. In partnership with education researchers from Virginia Tech and Purdue University, NSBE aims to expand participation in SEEK using the research-to-practice cycle to identify and develop best practices moving forward. This paper summarizes preliminary results from the first year of the three-year project, Strengthening the STEM Pipeline for Elementary School African Americans, Hispanics, and Girls by Scaling Up Summer Engineering Experiences. Findings from this research suggest that over the course of the SEEK program students showed increases in their conceptual knowledge (i.e., math, science, and engineering) as well as their attitudes towards these disciplines and their overall perceptions of engineering, but there is certainly room for improvement from this baseline year as the research begins to inform practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children spend most of their time in out-of-school settings. As a result, informal learning settings can play a significant role in children's learning development. Museums and science centers are informal settings that are intentionally designed to promote learning and interest development. Studies show that these settings are where children begin to develop competencies, skills, knowledge and problem-solving processes that support participation in STEM-related careers. For example, many engineering exhibits have been designed for children to promote their engineering skills and practices as well as their understanding of engineering careers. One engineering practice is troubleshooting; troubleshooting is a practice used in many aspects of engineering work, including design, analysis, and programming. We situate this study in the engineering design literature as the task that our participants engaged in was an engineering design task. In this study, we examined ways young women engaged in design-based troubleshooting and compared them with what previous studies showed about the ways informed and beginning engineers troubleshoot their designs. To do so, we asked 7-11 years old girls with their caregivers to design a pneumatic ball run using pneumatic pistons in thirty minutes. The video data of four cases were then analyzed. Design-based troubleshooting was observed very often due to the immediate feedback they received (i.e., falling the ball means a problem). Our findings suggest that children can engage in some aspects of troubleshooting the same way as informed designers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]