Student Portfolios to Elevate STEM Essential Skills and Technical Fluency

Purpose & objective

Our presentation will provide strategies and tools to equip teachers to incorporate several ISTE standards with their students. The presentation is built on the premise that the best educational experiences occur when students take an active role in their learning and when that learning occurs in environments that leverage technology to empower students to create viable, functional solutions to real problems. Makerspaces and school-based Fab Labs have begun providing students access to advanced technologies that make this vision possible. However, as teachers work to develop and implement project-based learning units accented by the technological power in these labs, it became clear that students needed a way to document and share their progress over time and teachers needed a tool to provide formative and summative feedback to students.

We have developed and will present a free, publicly available, data-connected website and companion mobile application to support teachers and students using makerspaces and Fab Labs to enhance project-based learning experiences. This application provides an all-in-one solution for teachers to provide formative feedback and to use embedded rubrics to assess student mastery of specified technical skills and STEM Essential skills that are relevant to student projects. Specifically, participants will learn how to leverage gamified skill-trees to provide micro-credentials (digital badges) for students through an automated student portfolio system. The application uses secure data protocols to provide students a platform to submit evidence, receive feedback, and track progress as they engage in hands-on projects. For example, if a student project consisted of laser cutting a box to house a 10 x 10 LED matrix and coded the matrix using Arduino to display various images, then the student could submit a written explanation paired with video and/or photographic evidence of their accomplishments to provide evidence for up to five technical skill micro-credentialing criteria, including 2D design using CAD software, laser cutter safety, laser cutter operations, basic Arduino coding, and soldering. The student could also submit STEM Essential Skill micro-credentialing evidence for collaboration and communication by submitting video footage of their presentation to a group of panelists.
Participants will gain first-hand experience with both the student and teacher side of the application as they engage in an example project-starter consisting of a hands-on content-connected (English Language Arts) project using 3D pens. Participants will be invited to create additional project starters (mini-lessons curated through the app) and will be provided early access to the app set to be released in full by August 2022.

Outline

[10 min] Framing presentation to share rationale and context for the work shared. We will discuss who has contributed to the app’s design and content development and share briefly about our school-based Fab Lab network in southeast Tennessee (the largest Fab Lab network in the world according to the Fab Foundation from MIT).

[30 min] We will model a 3D pen English Language Arts mini-project in which participants will be provided 3D pens, read a short story (2nd-grade Lexile level), and create an alternative solution for the main character’s problem. The project will conclude with participants submitting evidence through the app to the facilitators who will provide real-time feedback using the embedded rubric. The feedback will address three technical skills (chosen uniquely by each participant from a curated list of available/applicable skills) and three STEM Essential Skills (also chosen by each participant).

[20 min] We will provide a full demonstration of the app, highlighting specific use cases and guiding participants through the various components

[20 min] We will facilitate a project-starter design challenge asking attendees to work through the app’s instructor resource submission template to develop and submit projects that could be useful in their specific context.

[10 min] We will facilitate closing activities and feedback to reflect on the learning and to gather additional user input based on early reactions to the app.

Supporting research

Constructivist learning, student empowerment through technology, and the critical role of digital fabrication in the future of work have all been well documented. Some examples of relevant resources are listed below:

Designing Reality: How to Survive and Thrive in the Third Digital Revolution, (2017) by Neil Gershenfeld, Alan Gershenfeld, and Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld.
(https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Reality-Survive-Digital-Revolution/dp/0465093477)

Exploring problem-based learning for middle school design and engineering education in digital fabrication laboratories. ​​Chan, Monica M., and Paulo Blikstein. "Exploring problem-based learning for middle school design and engineering education in digital fabrication laboratories." Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning 12.2 (2018): 7. (https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/ijpbl/vol12/iss2/7/)

Let Me Try It! Enhancing Maker Education through Digital Fabrication.
(2019) By Joshua Sneideman, Dr. Tony Donen, and Michael Stone.
(http://www.letmetryitbook.com)