Effects of Research and Mentoring on Underrepresented Youths’ STEM Persistence Into College

Background: Authentic research experiences and mentoring have positive impacts on fostering STEM engagement among youth from backgrounds underrepresented in STEM. Programs applying an experiential learning approach often incorporate one or both of these elements, however, there is little research on how these factors impact youth's STEM engagement during the high school to college transition. Purpose: Using a longitudinal design, this study explored the impact of a hands-on field research experience and mentoring as unique factors impacting STEM-related outcomes among underrepresented youth. We focus on the high school to college transition, a period that can present new barriers to STEM persistence. Methodology/Approach: We surveyed 189 youth before and up to 3 years after participation in a 7-week intensive summer intervention. Findings/Conclusions: Authentic research experiences was related to increased youths’ science interest and pursuit of STEM majors, even after their transition to college. Mentorship had a more indirect impact on STEM academic intentions; where positive mentorship experiences was related to youths’ reports of social connection. Implications: Programs designed for continuing STEM engagement of underrepresented youth would benefit from incorporating experiential learning approaches focused on authentic research experiences.

Women’s career confidence in a fixed, sexist STEM environment

Background Innovation in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields in the U.S. is threatened by a lack of diversity. Social identity threat research finds messages in the academic environment devalue women and underrepresented groups in STEM, creating a chilly and hostile environment. Research has focused on the mechanisms that contribute to STEM engagement and interest at the K-12 and undergraduate level, but the mechanisms that predict sustained engagement at the graduate level have not been studied. Results In a longitudinal study of doctoral students in STEM disciplines, we demonstrate that students’ beliefs that their STEM colleagues believe intelligence is a fixed (vs. malleable) trait undermine women’s engagement in STEM. Specifically, perceiving a fixed ability environment predicts greater perceptions of sexism, which erode women’s self-efficacy and sense of belongingness and lead women to consider dropping out of their STEM career. Conclusion These findings identify one potential pathway by which women leave their STEM fields, perpetuating gender disparities in STEM.

Co-designing cross-setting activities in a large-scale STEM partnership program – Teachers’ and students’ experiences

STEM partnerships are popular initiatives but can be challenging to implement in practice. Accordingly, within the context of a nationwide, cross-setting STEM partnership program in Norway – Lektor2 – a co-design tool was introduced to support teachers to collaborate with STEM professionals in developing curriculum units involving authentic STEM problems and practices. Thus, the purpose of this study was to describe the teachers’ and students’ experiences from the curriculum units based on the co-design tool and how the tool might help facilitate partnerships in STEM education. Teacher and student data were collected in 2015-2018 (N= 2479), and responses to open-ended questions were coded using a grounded theory approach. Findings indicate that the co-design tool, particularly “the commission” – where students are commissioned by STEM professionals to design solutions to authentic problems – enhanced teachers’ collaboration with STEM professionals, led to changes in pedagogical approaches, and enabled the teachers to differentiate in their teaching. Student experiences from participating in the co-designed curriculum units are characterised as more expansive views of STEM, STEM learning, and increased STEM engagement. We discuss how the co-design tool enabled teachers to overcome partnership challenges and what aspects of the commission appeared to be important for the students’ experiences. This study provides a specific example of a co-design tool that can enhance pedagogical designs developed through STEM partnerships.

Towards Defining the Place and Role of Robotics MOOCs in ODeL

This paper focuses on the limited literature pertaining to robotics MOOCs within the STEM MOOC domain. This study provides a subset of an ongoing, more extensive systematic review of the recent advances with MOOCs to advance STEM education and engagement. The purpose of this study is to identify and discuss the place and role of robotics (as a subset of STEM) MOOCs in an open distance e-learning institution of higher education. The study provides insights into the research gaps existing in (1)literature, and (2)the domain of STEM MOOCs for robotics education and STEM engagement. The place and role of STEM MOOCs for the advancement of robotics within an open distance e-learning institution provide a practical and sustainable solution to science engagement in these times of Covid.

They’re Comparing Me to Her: Social Comparison Perceptions Reduce Belonging and STEM Engagement Among Women With Token Status

Belonging and academic engagement are important predictors of women’s retention in STEM. To better understand the processes influencing these outcomes, we investigate how numerical underrepresentation (i.e., token status) triggers social comparison perceptions—concerns that others are comparing oneself to another person—that can undermine women’s STEM outcomes. Across four experiments, female college students recruited via subject pool (Study 1a) and MTurk (Studies 1b–3) read a hypothetical scenario in which another female (Studies 1a–3) or male (Study 2) student performed well or poorly in an engineering course. Findings showed that having token (vs. non-token) status in the course increased social comparison perceptions (i.e., perceptions about being compared to an ingroup peer), which subsequently reduced course belonging (Studies 1a and 1b). Study 2 found that (a) token status increased social comparison perceptions in response to the ingroup (vs. outgroup) peer and (b) social comparison perceptions decreased belonging through stereotype threat concerns, particularly when the peer performed poorly. Study 3 directly manipulated social comparison perceptions to further establish their causal role on negative outcomes and demonstrated that these perceived direct comparisons predicted additional consequences signaling STEM disengagement. Collectively, findings identify a novel process that can diminish belonging and academic engagement for women in STEM. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ ’s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843211005447

Impact of Mixed Reality Presentation on STEM Engagement and Comprehension: A Pilot Study on Adult Scientists

Current educational presentation software used in STEM education fail to maximize student engagement and comprehension. Mixed reality presentation is one specific type of digital presentation software that has shown to significantly improve student engagement and comprehension. In this paper, we describe a pilot study on adult scientists which evaluates the usage of an integrated mixed reality presentation software in the Zyndo platform as an enhanced alternative to Adobe PDFs. A group of adult scientists (N = 20), with higher education of at least a bachelor’s degree, from an academic research center at Harvard Medical School were randomized and asked to read two articles (one on Immunology and the other on Bioengineering) presented through either the mixed reality presentation or PDFs. Our results indicate that participants improved in nearly all metrics for engagement (ranging from + 4 to 51% improvement depending on engagement metric and subject matter) when viewing the mixed reality presentation over the traditional PDFs for both articles. Specifically, the participants demonstrated improved comprehension of the scientific content and time spent viewing the presentation in a content-dependent manner. Therefore, 3D mixed reality environments can potentially be applied to enhance student learning in STEM fields, particularly Biomedical Engineering in both on-line and in person classroom settings.

Going beyond the one-off: How can STEM engagement programmes with young people have real lasting impact?

<p>A major focus in the STEM public engagement sector concerns engaging with young people, typically through schools. The aims of these interventions are often to positively affect students’ aspirations towards continuing STEM education and ultimately into STEM-related careers. Most schools engagement activities take the form of short one-off interventions that, while able to achieve positive outcomes, are limited in the extent to which they can have lasting impacts on aspirations. We review various different emerging programmes of repeated interventions with young people, assessing what impacts can realistically be expected. Short series of interventions appear also to suffer some limitations in the types of impacts achievable. However, deeper programmes that interact with both young people and those that influence them over significant periods of time (months to years) seem to be more effective in influencing aspirations. We discuss how developing a Theory of Change and considering young people’s wider learning ecologies are required in enabling lasting impacts in a range of areas.</p>