Current Projects
Investigators in bold are MEERC affiliates.
Fostering Effective Oral Communication Skills for STEM Graduate Students
Investigator(s): Shannon Willoughby (Principal Investigator)
Chris Organ (Co-Principal Investigator)
Jennifer Green (Co-Principal Investigator)
Brock LaMeres (Co-Principal Investigator)
National Science Foundation
NSF Program: NRT
Div Of Graduate Education
Awards ID: 1735124
Award Amount: $481,482
Start date: September 1, 2017
End date: August 31, 2020 (Estimated)
Abstract:
Graduate education in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)
rigorously prepares students to innovate in their fields, yet it often does not include
formal training in how to effectively communicate those innovations to others. To
ensure we live in a just and vibrant society, it is vital that scientists are able
to share their research findings with scientists in other fields, non-science experts,
and the public. Using knowledge from the performing arts, this project will implement
a novel pilot training program to teach oral communication to STEM graduate students,
facilitating a deeper understanding of communication and providing practice in public
speaking, improvisational techniques, and reading body language. This National Science
Foundation Research Traineeship award in the Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE)
track to Montana State University-Bozeman will modernize STEM graduate education by
pinpointing aspects of oral communication training that positively impact students'
abilities to communicate orally to a wide variety of audiences, and increase the public's
understanding of and engagement with science. Three recruited cohorts of eight STEM
graduate students will practice and refine their oral communication skills by creating
podcasts and speaking at community events in which they explain their research to
the public. The team working on this project includes domain experts in physics, biology,
mathematics, and engineering, as well as experts in public speaking, acting, education
research, and library sciences. This broad expertise will ensure that disciplinarily
diverse STEM students are recruited into the program, providing interdisciplinary
perspectives and instruction and facilitating the success of this pilot graduate training
program.
This research will investigate whether targeted intervention in oral communication
skills for STEM graduate students improves their ability to effectively convey their
research to a broad audience. The project will use formative, summative, and longitudinal
assessments to determine how various portions of the intervention are successful in
developing students' oral communication skills in the following realms: avoiding the
use of jargon, public speaking skills, and non-verbal delivery skills. Assessment
data for year-long longitudinal studies of each cohort will include survey data related
to three areas of oral communication, self-reports from students, and interviews with
students and their mentors. To assess competencies such as reducing jargon for communicating
with the public, this project will create, modify and use rubrics for effective public
speaking. Pre- and post-intervention data will be compared among students and cohorts
to determine the effects of each aspect of the training. Results and successes will
be shared nationwide with other STEM experts at domain-specific conferences as well
as at American Association for the Advancement of Sciences National Conferences.
The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development
and implementation of bold, new, potentially transformative models for STEM graduate
education training. The Innovations in Graduate Education Track is dedicated solely
to piloting, testing, and evaluating novel, innovative, and potentially transformative
approaches to graduate education.
Link to Program Website & Application
Designing a Middle Grades Spatial Skills Curriculum
Investigator(s): Nick Lux (Principal Investigator)
Bryce Hughes (Co-Principal Investigator)
Shannon Willoughby (Co-Principal Investigator)
Brock LaMeres (Co-Principal Investigator)
National Science Foundation
NSF Program: DRK12
Div Of Research on Learning
Awards ID: 1720801
Award Amount: $445,499
Start date: July 1, 2017
End date: June 30, 2020 (Estimated)
Abstract:
The ability to make spatial judgements and visualize has been shown to be a strong
indicator of students' future success in STEM-related courses. The project is innovative
because it uses a widely available gaming environment, Minecraft, to examine spatial
reasoning. Finding learning experiences which support students' spatial reasoning
in an authentic and engaging way is a challenge in the field. This project will create
a portable training system that can be easily deployed in middle grades (5th - 7th
grade) as a prototype for increasing students' spatial reasoning skills. The project
will study gender differences in spatial reasoning and examine how learning experiences
can be designed to develop spatial skills using Minecraft as a platform. The resources
will incorporate hands-on learning and engage students in building virtual structures
using spatial reasoning. The curriculum materials are being designed to be useful
in other middle grades contexts. The Discovery Research K-12 program (DRK-12) seeks
to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering
and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development
of innovative resources, models and tools (RMTs). Projects in the DRK-12 program build
on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts
that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.
The study is a design and development study that will design four training modules
intended to improve spatial reasoning in the following areas: rotation, mental slicing,
2D to 3D transformation and perspective taking. The research questions are: (1) Does
a Minecraft-based intervention that targets specific spatial reasoning tasks improve
middle grade learners' spatial ability? (2) Does spatial skills growth differ by gender?
The experimental design will compare the influence of the virtual spatial learning
environment alone vs. the use of design challenges designed specifically for the spatial
skills. The data collected will include assessments of spatial reasoning and feedback
from teachers' who use the materials. The spatial skills measures will be administered
as a pre-test, post-test, and six-month follow-up assessment to measure long term
effects.
Improving the Pipeline for Rural and American Indian Students Entering Computer Science Via Storytelling
Investigator(s): Brittany Fasy (Principal Investigator)
Stacey Hancock (Co-Principal Investigator)
Sweeney Windchief (Co-Principal Investigator)
Roger Fischer (Co-Principal Investigator)
Barbara Komlos (Co-Principal Investigator)
Mike Wittie (Co-Principal Investigator)
National Science Foundation
NSF Program: iTEST
Div Of Research on Learning
Awards ID: 1657553
Award Amount: $1,166,000
Start date: August 1, 2017
End date: July 31, 2020 (Estimated)
Abstract:
This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students
and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase
students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology,
engineering, or mathematics (STEM). The project will develop and research storytelling
as a culturally responsive way to engage middle school Native American and rural Montana
students in learning computer science and computing skills. Instead of creating a
new curriculum, the project will infuse computer science across the curriculum, which
will help students understand that computing skills are relevant across disciplines
and are important for a wide variety of professions in the workforce. The project
will use Alice, an object-based educational programming environment, that has been
successful by encouraging storytelling in engaging middle school students and others
who are not normally exposed to programming. Using Alice, students can tell stories
by placing objects in virtual worlds they have created, and then they can program
by dragging and dropping tiles that represent logical structures. By integrating these
computational skills, without multiplying the number of topics to be taught, the project
will promote a more diverse and comprehensive understanding of the opportunities available
to students with an ability to think computationally. The project will develop resources
for teachers to meet the requirements of Montana's Indian Education for All (IEFA)
Act, which was mandated by the state legislature in 1999 and remains a difficult requirement
for many middle school teachers to incorporate in their classrooms. The project will
serve over 300 students when piloting curriculum materials and will engage 50 teachers
in professional development workshops on the integration of computer science and computational
thinking across middle school curriculum using a storytelling approach.
The project will use a culturally responsive approach to infuse the use of storytelling
(using Alice) in the curriculum, guided by Tribal Critical Theory (TribCrit), which
maintains that cultural knowledge and academic knowledge are not mutually exclusive
but complement each other. The project tools, which will enable middle school teachers
to integrate computer science and computational thinking throughout the curriculum,
will be developed using a research-driven, iterative way to be culturally responsive
to the communities served. Project research will address two complementary research
questions: (1) Do storytelling and storymaking serve as effective means for engaging
middle-school students in computer science?; and (2) Does the integration of computing
skills into the core middle-school curriculum increase instruction and student learning
of these skills? In addition, the project will document the processes and evaluate
the effectiveness of the TribCrit culturally responsive approach taken in integrating
computer science and computational thinking into the middle school curriculum. A mixed-method
approach will be used in the research, including focus groups, small group instructional
diagnosis, surveys, and pre/post measures of computational thinking/computer science
knowledge. Project results will be disseminated through professional journals and
conference presentations. Selected student-created artifacts (i.e., Alice virtual
worlds and stories) will be presented in Montana museums.
The Formation of Undergraduate Engineers as Engineering Leaders
Investigator(s): William Schell (Principal Investigator)
Bryce Hughes (Co-Principal Investigator)
National Science Foundation
NSF Program: EEC
Div Of Engineering Education and Centers
Awards ID: 1664231
Award Amount: $298,159
Start date: June 1, 2017
End date: May 31, 2020 (Estimated)
Abstract:
Today, leaders of industry and government are calling for increasing numbers of engineering
graduates to maintain the nation's economic competitiveness. However, the expected
positive impact from increasing the number of engineering graduates will be limited,
unless the full capabilities of these graduates are harnessed. Specifically, solving
today's complex challenges will require cooperation among experts from many fields.
In order for these collaborations to be successful they must harness the diverse capabilities
of members of these groups. For that to happen, practicing engineers must exercise
technical leadership. Therefore, undergraduate engineering students need to learn
how to be effective leaders during their formation as engineers. Unfortunately, engineering
educators do not currently have sufficient understanding of how engineering students
develop into leaders. This project seeks to improve our understanding of the role
leadership plays in the process of becoming an engineer and how to develop an engineering
identity in undergraduate engineering students. The project proposes that seeing oneself
as an engineering leader requires both the development of an engineering identity
in combination with the development of a leadership identity. This project investigates
the process of becoming an engineering leader given the central role identity plays
in learning. By understanding the relationship between a leadership identity and an
engineering identity, this work will provide a foundation for improving the leadership
skills of undergraduate engineers during their time in college using cross-ethnic
notions of leadership to serve a diverse student body.
Current approaches in engineering education to develop leadership skills in engineers
do little to understand how leadership fits into the broader picture of the heterogeneous
nature of engineering work, or the role leadership plays in the formation of an engineering
identity. This project seeks to address this gap through a sequential, mixed-methods
study resulting in development of a grounded theory of engineering leadership for
undergraduate engineering students. The study will answer three research questions:
1) How does leadership identity in engineering students compare to those in other
fields? 2) What is the relationship between leadership identity and engineering identity?
3) How do engineering undergraduates define engineering leadership and develop a sense
of engineering leadership identity? This work recognizes that formation of engineers
is fundamentally an identity development process. This project combines two models:
Lave and Wenger's communities of practice model to understand development of an engineering
identity and Komives, et al.'s Leadership Identity Model to understanding how engineering
students cultivate a self-concept as a leader. Using these two models, this project
seeks to understand how the separate components of engineering and leadership identity
converge in the development of a combined engineering leadership identity among undergraduate
students. Informed by an analysis of national data, a grounded theory approach will
lead to an explanatory model of engineering leadership identity development. As an
initial application of the model a series of educational interventions will developed
and tested, enabling engineering educators to more effectively train engineering students
in leadership.
Research Initiation: Engineering a Culture of Engagement
Investigator(s): Brock LaMeres (Principal Investigator)
Jessie Smith (Co-Principal Investigator)
National Science Foundation
NSF Program: EEC
Div Of Engineering Education and Centers
Awards ID: 1544147
Award Amount: $150,000
Start date: January 1, 2016
End date: December 31, 2017 (Estimated)
Abstract:
This project aims to change the value system of college students to view engineering
as a profession that serves the public good. It has been shown that underrepresented
minorities, especially women and first generation college students gravitate toward
professions that are viewed as serving their communities and helping others. While
engineering certainly does serve public good, the common perception of the engineering
profession is one that promotes self-oriented values such as wealth and personal success.
This perception has a far reaching impact when trying to understand how students choose
to become engineers, limiting the number of incoming college students that see engineering
as a viable career. It also decreases the motivation of existing students to persist
to graduation once in a degree program. And ultimately, it limits the number of underrepresented
minorities that choose to stay in the engineering profession once in the workforce.
By changing the culture surrounding engineering to one that promotes how engineering
serves the public good, a larger and more diverse engineering workforce can be formed.
In this project the research team focuses on a specific cultural phenomenon in which
existing engineering students have less concern over time about how important it is
that engineering serves the public good. This research explores the unique approach
of "adding value" to engineering through targeted interventions to reverse the phenomenon
of disengagement to create a culture that views engineering as a profession that helps
others.
The overall objective of this project is to initiate boundary-spanning research on
how to transform a culture of disengagement into a culture of engagement that ultimately
enhances the professional formation of engineers. This research will produce original
data to understand why engineering students show less and less concern over time for
how engineering contributes to public welfare. This project is the first to initiate
a comprehensive research project specifically on Utility Value Theory with the long-term
goal of changing the value system surrounding engineering to one that has prosocial,
communal value. Creating a culture that considers engineering as a profession that
serves the public good will attract a diverse population to engineering, fostering
increased innovation for the next century. To accomplish the primary project objective,
this project has two.
Research Initiation: Effectively Integrating Sustainability within an Engineering Program
Investigator(s): Paul Gannon (Principal Investigator)
Carolyn Plumb (Co-Principal Investigator)
Ryan Anderson (Co-Principal Investigator)
National Science Foundation
NSF Program: EEC
Div Of Engineering Education and Centers
Award ID: 1544174
Award Amount: $150,000
Start Date: January 1, 2016
End Date: December 31, 2017 (Estimated)
Abstract:
The engineering curriculum typically focuses exclusively on the technical aspects
of the engineering profession. This technical emphasis alone can be a barrier for
students to enter engineering. Furthermore, students receiving only technical preparation
are less able to approach complex problems involving multiple perspectives, e.g. ethics,
economics, social justice, etc. Sustainability is a fundamentally complex issue that
covers many of these additional perspectives. Thus, topics in sustainable energy engineering,
such as hydraulic fracture oil well stimulation (fracking), can be used to not only
teach technical engineering concepts but also expose students to broader issues. By
considering these complex engineering problems more holistically, students from a
range of diverse backgrounds (particularly women and Native Americans) will more likely
enter and remain in engineering. These students will then be better prepared to address
the major challenges facing society. This project is initiating research into how
best to integrate these sustainability topics throughout the curriculum to maximize
these benefits in engineering education. To spread successful elements, the research
team is facilitating institutionally-sponsored effective teaching and sustainability
workshops for engineering faculty as well as K-12 STEM teachers. More broadly, the
results will increase awareness of the engineering profession and its association
with issues in sustainability.
The overall research aim is to improve the professional formation (recruitment, retention,
and preparation) of diverse engineering students by integrating sustainability within
engineering education programs. This research is studying the effectiveness of integration
approaches within different required and elective undergraduate engineering courses,
as well as within engineering faculty development and outreach activities. Two basic
questions are being addressed related to the integration methods: (1) does it work?
and (2) what are the barriers? Framing the proposed research are theoretical models
describing student learning styles; cognitive, social and professional development;
sustainability literacy; as well as the ontology of and attitudes toward engineering.
These aims are being accomplished by leveraging existing resources within the Chemical
Engineering program at Montana State University: a recently-tenured engineering faculty
member (PI); two unique engineering elective courses including a large, entry-level
"energy and sustainability" university-core science course aimed at non-STEM majors,
and a smaller upper-level engineering elective course focused on "sustainable energy";
a pre-tenure engineering faculty collaborator (Co-PI) who instructs a large required
engineering course (fluid mechanics); an established educational psychologist (Co-PI)
experienced with theoretical frameworks, assessment, and data collection and analysis;
and, ongoing outreach activities including engineering student presentations to local
4th grade classrooms and workshops for both MSU engineering faculty and K-12 teachers
on Native American reservations. The PIs are systematically investigating the integration
of contemporary sustainability issues within the three undergraduate engineering courses
and various workshop and outreach activities. Ad hoc interdisciplinary teams of professionals
within academia and industry are being established to grow engineering education research
capacity and help align future research directions with industry needs. Validated
and/or adapted assessment instruments and analyses of candid research participant
comments will provide rich quantitative and qualitative data sets from unique research
participant cohorts. Periodic assessment of participant cohorts and control groups
is being conducted to determine legacy impacts, and results will help inform future
research and innovation in engineering education.
Promoting the Development of Metacognition and Combating Robust Misconceptions in a Gateway STEM Course Using an Intelligent Web-based Homework System
Investigator(s): James Becker (Principal Investigator)
Katharine Polasek (Co-Principal Investigator)
Rockford Ross (Co-Principal Investigator)
National Science Foundation
NSF Program: DUE
Division Of Undergraduate Education
Award ID: 1504880
Award Amount: $249,724
Start date: June 15, 2015
End date: May 31, 2017(Estimate)
Abstract:
To meet the current and projected needs of industry for Science, Technology, Engineering
and Math (STEM) professionals, significant efforts to recruit students into STEM fields
continue across the nation. Once recruited into a STEM field, retention is of paramount
importance. Examinations of the retention issue have identified key gateway courses
as areas in which many students are lost from STEM fields. Failure and withdrawal
rates in such courses often exceed 30% and issues related to inadequate metacognitive
skill and self-regulated learning among struggling students appear to be key contributors
to attrition. This project is exploring cost-effective and transferable means to foster
metacognitive skill development among STEM majors in a key gateway engineering course
so students become self-regulated learners and progress successfully not only through
the gateway course, but through the entire curriculum.
Toward this end, an "intelligent" web-based platform is being developed and deployed
in an electric circuit analysis course at two institutions. The system is being designed
to identify knowledge deficits of a student and to deliver an individualized experience
for each user according to their current level of mastery. The web-based approach
ensures the interventions will be scalable and transferable and their grounding in
established theories from cognitive science suggests they will be effective and broadly
applicable. Unique within the system are features which foster self-reflection on
the part of the user with the promise of enhancing metacognitive skill and the correction
of common misconceptions. Rigorous assessment and evaluation measures are in place
to quantify the project's effectiveness.
Design and Development Research: Deploying Adaptive Learning Environments to overcome Background Deficiencies and Facilitate Mastery of Computer Engineering Content
Investigator(s): Brock LaMeres (Principal Investigator)
Carolyn Plumb (Co-Principal Investigator)
Mark Jacobson (Co-Principal Investigator)
National Science Foundation
NSF Program: DUE
Division Of Undergraduate Education
Award ID: 1432373
Award Amount: $298,102
Start Date: January 1, 2015
End Date: December 21, 2017 (Estimated)
Abstract:
Many students who intend to major in computer engineering do not persist through the
introductory sequence of digital logic courses that are part of every accredited computer
engineering program in the U.S. These students often lack the necessary prerequisite
knowledge due to their varied backgrounds and incoming preparedness levels. This problem
is compounded by the large class sizes of introductory college courses, which make
it difficult to accommodate the background knowledge and the skills of individual
students. Additionally, an e-learning environment has the potential to reach a broad
audience through remote delivery, thus further increasing the impact of this approach.
This enables community colleges and 4-year universities to move toward a true two-plus-two
transfer program by allowing students to complete lower-level computer engineering
courses remotely before transferring.
The adaptive learning materials in this project will be developed for use in an introductory
digital circuits course and a logic design course. Both of these courses contain laboratory
components that will also be addressed by this work. The materials will be developed
as self-contained learning modules that can be used at different colleges with varying
schedules (e.g., semester vs. quarter). The materials will consist of a unified, adaptive
learning environment that can be implemented using any course management system (e.g.,
Moodle, Desire2Learn, Blackboard) to eliminate the need for proprietary software.
An accompanying lab kit will facilitate hands-on learning in a low-cost, portable
form factor to facilitate remote delivery and eliminate the financial barrier of offering
a meaningful laboratory experience. The materials will be tested at a diverse set
of institutions: Montana State University, a Ph.D. granting, research active university,
MSU-Billings, a 4-year non-research university, Flathead Valley Community Colleges,
the largest 2-year community college in Montana, and Salish Kootenai College, a Tribal
College proving both 2-year and 4-year degrees for Native Americans. This broad range
of participants will allow the team to assess the effectiveness of the adaptive learning
materials while simultaneously considering the relationship between student background
and the student learning experience.
Both quantitative and qualitative measures will be used to assess the adaptive learning
modules. Direct measures will be collected on student performance, including the number
of ungraded quiz attempts within an adaptive module, end of module exam scores, time
required to complete a module, and time spent at each level of difficulty within a
module. Surveys will be used to collect student satisfaction with the adaptive learning
environment that will include feedback on their impression of content difficulty,
workload compared to other courses of the same credit load, and their sense of how
well the material was personalized to their needs. Student demographic information
will be collected including gender, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic background, ACT
scores and college credits obtained. This information will be used to understand how
different groups use and benefit from the course materials. Focus groups will also
be conducted with student participants at Michigan State University in order to collect
qualitative data on student learning and attitudes toward the e-learning system. Phone
interviews will be conducted with students from the other participating institutions.
The interim findings from this assessment will be used as feedback to enhance the
adaptive learning system in order to accommodate a broader range of participants.