ITEST Strategies

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

ITEST Strategies is a 3 year project for grades five through eight students and teachers. Pooling resources from a host of collaborators and previously funded projects such as ?From the Ground Up? curriculum created for use with the MicroObservatory network of robotic telescopes, teachers engage students in exploring themes that researchers have found to be difficult for middle school youth. These themes include light and color, size and scale, laws of motion, and more. Activities include programming and controlling robotic telescopes from home and school. This involves imaging of galactic and extra-galactic objects and manipulating images. Students also create animations and simulations of common topographic and space-related features. Collaborators include Harvard?s Earth and Planetary Science Department, the Initiative for Innovative computing, the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston, five public and charter schools, and the Retirees School Volunteers. The project plan provides for a teacher component that includes at least 60 hours of professional enhancement each year. Additionally, the project plan includes a student component with a two-year sequential curriculum having weekly sessions, summer activities, online courses, and student-parent/guardian evenings. With this structure, the project advances knowledge and understand across the fields of information and communication technology and astronomy. The project leaders target 100 girls and disadvantaged youth. Each year there are 120 hours of exposure for the students and 60 hours of professional development for teachers. Students are involved for a minimum of two years. The PI utilizes a quasi-experimental, non-equivalent research design. The following questions drive the research: 1) How effective is the project in enhancing student STEM understanding, and in creating and sustaining a link between the STEM experiences and ICT careers for the participants? 2) What factors or settings most effectively enhance the ICT experiences for middle-school youth, and how well does the SED project support that enhancement? 3) To what degree do students perceive that the skills and conceptual knowledge developed in the project are potentially valuable for entering an ICT career or another STEM vocation? To study these questions, the PI uses distracter-driven multiple choice concept inventories developed by the Harvard Science Education Department to assess the conceptual knowledge of teachers and students both as diagnostic pretests to develop workshop content and as posttests of knowledge acquisition.