This innovative practice work in progress paper presents Biologically inspired design (BID) to tr... more This innovative practice work in progress paper presents Biologically inspired design (BID) to transfer design principles identified in nature to human-centered design problems. The Biologically Inspired Design for Engineering Education (BIRDEE) program uses biologically inspired design to teach high school engineering in a way that uniquely engages students in the natural world. For high school students, identifying natural systems' analogues for human design problems can be challenging. Furthermore, it is often the case that students focus on and transfer superficial structures, rather than underlying design principles. Based on the Structure-Behavior-Function (SBF) design ontology, we developed a modified cognitive scaffold called Structure-Function-Mechanism (SFM) to assist students and teachers with identifying functionally similar biological analogies and identifying and transferring design principles. In this paper we describe SFM and its importance in BID and our observations from teaching SFM to high school teachers during a multi-week professional development workshop in the summer of 2020. Based on teachers' work artifacts, transcriptions of discussions, and focus groups, we highlight the challenges of teaching SFM and our plans to scaffold this important concept for students and teachers alike.
This innovative practice work in progress paper presents the Biologically Inspired Design for Eng... more This innovative practice work in progress paper presents the Biologically Inspired Design for Engineering Education (BIRDEE) project, to create socially relevant, accessible, highly-contextualized biologically inspired design experiences that can be disseminated to high school audiences engineering audiences in Georgia and nationally. Curriculum units are 6–10 weeks in duration and will meet many standards for high school engineering courses in Georgia. There will be three curriculum units (one for each engineering course in the 3-course pathway), each building skills in engineering design and specific skills for BID. Currently in its second year, BIRDEE has developed its first unit of curriculum and has hosted its first professional development with 4 pilot teachers in the summer of 2020. The BIRDEE curriculum situates challenges within socially relevant contexts and provides cutting-edge biological scenarios to ignite creative and humanistic engineering experiences to 1) drive greater engagement in engineering, particularly among women, 2) improve student engineering skills, especially problem definition and ideation skills, and 3) increase students awareness of the connection and impacts between the engineered and living worlds. This paper describes the motivation for the BIRDEE project, the learning goals for the curriculum, and a description of the first unit. We provide reflections and feedback from teacher work and focus groups during our summer professional development and highlight the challenges associated with building BID competency across biology and engineering to equip teachers with the skills they need to teach the BIRDEE units. These lessons can be applied to teaching BID more broadly, as its multidisciplinary nature creates challenges (and opportunities) for teaching and learning engineering design.
Volume 6: 33rd International Conference on Design Theory and Methodology (DTM), 2021
In this case study we report on the use of a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned for... more In this case study we report on the use of a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned form of Structure-Behavior-Function, called Structure-Function-Mechanism (SFM), to teach four high school engineering teachers an approach for Biologically Inspired Design (BID). Functional theories of design describe a natural way in which designers solve design problems. They provide support for case-based and analogical-based reasoning systems and have been used successfully to teach BID to undergraduate students. We found that teachers instructed on BID practice and pedagogy using our modified theory were able to grasp the structural concepts and looked for clear markers separating mechanism (behavior) and function. Because of the systems-of-systems nature of most biological entities, these boundaries were often subjective, presenting unique challenge to teachers. As high school engineering teachers look for methods to enhance their pedagogy and to understand multidisciplinary content, ...
Data Saves the Whales! was developed as part of the Advanced Manufacturing and Prototyping Integr... more Data Saves the Whales! was developed as part of the Advanced Manufacturing and Prototyping Integrated to Unlock Potential (AMP-IT-UP) project, funded by the National Science Foundation through its Math and Science Partnership program. A central outcome of the AMP-IT-UP project was the development of 1-week modules for core middle school math and science courses that were aligned with best practices as put forth in the Next Generation Science Standards and Standards of Mathematical Practice. Data Saves the Whales! is a middle school mathematics module that is set within a marine ecosystem. It focuses on independent and dependent variables and Cartesian coordinate graphing, and on math practices related to data representation—i.e. how data can be represented in different ways to communicate various messages to an audience. Students engage in a simulated investigation to collect oceanographic data, meant to mimic the experimental procedures used by marine scientists when collecting samples, and learn different methods of graphing the data to effectively communicate their findings. This module features work conducted by the research team of Dr. Ellery Ingall, Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Science at Georgia Tech, and integrates math skills with marine science and the concepts of food webs and the interdependence of organisms.
Innovations in Higher Education Teaching and Learning, 2020
In January 2016, Georgia Tech launched a campus-wide academic initiative (“Center for Serve-Learn... more In January 2016, Georgia Tech launched a campus-wide academic initiative (“Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain”) aimed at preparing undergraduate students in all majors to use their disciplinary knowledge and skills to contribute to the major societal challenge of creating sustainable communities. The initiative calls for faculty members from all six Georgia Tech colleges to develop courses and co-curricular opportunities that will help students learn about sustainability and community engagement and hone their skills by engaging in real-world projects with nonprofit, community, government, and business partners. Affiliated courses address various aspects of the Center’s sustainable communities framework, which presents sustainability as an integrated system connecting environment, economy, and society. This chapter reports on one engineering instructor’s ongoing efforts that bring sustainability into the engineering classroom through sociotechnical project-based learning. This cornerstone design course is one of more than 100 Center-affiliated courses currently offered; the full set of Center-affiliated courses enrolls over 5,000 students per year across all six colleges. The sustainability activities introduced in the freshman design course pertain particularly to the Center’s vision that all graduates of the institute, a majority of whom will graduate with engineering degrees, are able to contribute to the creation of sustainable communities and to understand the impact of their professional practice on the communities in which they work. A situated knowledge and learning pedagogical theory is used in the Center-affiliated course, where concept, activity, and context are involved in student learning to produce useable robust knowledge. The sociotechnical project-based teaching model with contextualized design problems is used to engage students throughout the course by utilizing computer-aided-design problems that incorporate sustainability within both individual and team projects. In this chapter, the authors present the pedagogical approaches to learning, strategies, and challenges for implementation and assessment of intervention activities, and data analyses of both student reflection data and pre- and post-survey data.
STEM teacher leadership represents the intersection of two important educational foci in the U.S.... more STEM teacher leadership represents the intersection of two important educational foci in the U.S.: STEM education and teacher leadership. This paper set includes studies that explore a conceptual framework for STEM teacher leadership both theoretically and empirically. Within that set we will describe how the conceptual framework has evolved, as well as what we have learned about the impact of that framework on the teacher and leadership development of a group of 32 teaching fellows (TFs) and master teaching fellows (MTFs) in the Noyce-funded I-IMPACT project. Paper 1 will describe the development of the framework and initial insights concerning the internalization of key principles from it by the MTFs. Paper 2 will describe how used social network analysis has been used to examine the MTFs participation in various communities of practice. Paper 3 looks at how the EQUIP observation protocol has been utilized to examine MTF-TF mentoring interactions. Paper 4 explores how the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire can be utilized to trace the leadership development of both the TFs and MTFs. Finally, paper 5 considers how both utilization-focused and theory-driven evaluation frameworks can be used to examine identity development and teacher leadership capacity of project participants
2021 Conference on Research in Equitable and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT), 2021
Computational thinking has become pervasive across many technical and creative disciplines. Creat... more Computational thinking has become pervasive across many technical and creative disciplines. Creating a computationally literate workforce capable of recognizing and eliminating algorithmic discrimination requires diverse perspectives and lived experiences. Diversity within computing is a persistent problem; in 2014, several large tech companies released diversity reports and made commitments to improvement. As of 2020, improvements have been minor, especially for Black employees. Compared to US demographics, the percentage of Black and Latinx students pursuing degrees in computing remains low, even as numbers improve in STEM more broadly. It is more important than ever to prioritize a diverse computing workforce and a computationally literate workforce, more broadly, whose interests reside with equitable outcomes.
The Advanced Manufacturing and Prototyping Integrated to Unlock Potential (AMP-IT-UP) project is ... more The Advanced Manufacturing and Prototyping Integrated to Unlock Potential (AMP-IT-UP) project is an NSF-sponsored Math and Science Partnership between the Griffin-Spalding County School System and Georgia Tech’s Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing (CEISMC). The AMP-IT-UP curriculum consists of engineering coursework for middle and high schools and 1-week modules that integrate STEM practices for middle school science and mathematics classrooms. Three modules have been designed for each core math and science class across grades 6-8 and integrate the Georgia Standards of Excellence and the Next Generation Science Standards. Each module focuses on one of the practices of Experimental Design, Data Visualization and Data-Driven Decision Making, integrates math and science content, and uses grade level core ideas as a backstory to engage students. Middle school math and science teachers will experience hands-on activities associated with the modules, learn how to implement them, and receive access to all curriculum materials
Evidence-centered design (ECD) is an assessment framework tailored to provide structure and rigor... more Evidence-centered design (ECD) is an assessment framework tailored to provide structure and rigor to the assessment development process, and also to generate evidence of assessment validity by tightly coupling assessment tasks with focal knowledge, skills, and abilities (FKSAs). This framework is particularly well-suited to FKSAs that are complex and multi-part (Mislevy and Haertel, 2006), as is the case with much of the focal content within the computer science (CS) domain. This paper presents an applied case of ECD used to guide assessment development in the context of a redesigned introductory CS curriculum. In order to measure student learning of CS skills and content taught through the curriculum, knowledge assessments were written and piloted. The use of ECD provided an organizational framework for assessment development efforts, offering assessment developers a clear set of steps with accompanying documentation and decision points, as well as providing robust validity evidenc...
Although teaching self-efficacy is associated with many benefits for teachers and students, littl... more Although teaching self-efficacy is associated with many benefits for teachers and students, little is known about how teachers develop a sense of efficacy in the early years of their careers. Drawing on survey (N = 179) and interview (N = 10) data, this study investigates the sources of self-efficacy in a national sample of teachers who participated in the Noyce program. All teachers completed an online survey that included both the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Instrument and open-ended items prompting them to reflect on the sources of their self-efficacy. Ten teachers participated in semi-structured follow-up interviews. Enactive mastery experiences were the most common source of self-efficacy identified by teachers, followed by social persuasions and vicarious experiences. Physiological and affective states were identified infrequently and more often related to negative experiences that lowered self-efficacy than to positive experiences. Beginning teachers identified more negative en...
Madison, where Dosa conducted discipline-based education research looking at environmental decisi... more Madison, where Dosa conducted discipline-based education research looking at environmental decision-making and reasoning processes. During this time, she also completed the DELTA Certificate for Research, Teaching and Learning. Dosa holds a master's degree in environmental science and environmental biology from Eotvos Lorand University. She is currently working on developing workshops for faculty and graduate students, and supports future faculty and teaching assistant development programs. Dosa's current research interests are teaching-as-research, incorporating sustainability across the curriculum, team science, and competency development in higher education.
2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
is a graduate student at Georgia Institute of Technology. He obtained his Bachelor's degree from ... more is a graduate student at Georgia Institute of Technology. He obtained his Bachelor's degree from Georgia Tech and is currently obtaining a Master's degree from the same institute. His research primarily focuses in the impact of maker spaces on students and design problem equivalency as it pertains to assessing creativity.
The development of teacher leaders in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics has becom... more The development of teacher leaders in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics has become a focus as demand grows on the national scale to improve student learning in these disciplines. As teachers' role in leadership continues to be redefined, research and professional development in teacher leadership will continue to evolve. Given the lack of a clear conceptualization of teacher leadership in the empirical literature, there is a clear methodological challenge for evaluators who are charged with assessing the impact of teacher leadership professional development programs. This paper describes how both the Utilization-Focused Evaluation and Theory-Driven Evaluation frameworks were used concurrently to design evaluation methods that were effective for assessing the impact of a dynamic teacher leadership program. The evaluation is specifically situated within the context of a Robert Noyce Scholarship Program, which aimed to grow veteran science teachers into teacher lead...
Recent reforms in science education worldwide include an emphasis on engineering design as a key ... more Recent reforms in science education worldwide include an emphasis on engineering design as a key component of student proficiency in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics disciplines. However, relatively little attention has been directed to the development of psychometrically sound assessments for engineering. This study demonstrates the use of mixed methods to guide the development and revision of K-12 Engineering Design Process (EDP) assessment items. Using results from a middle-school EDP assessment, this study illustrates the combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques to inform item development and revisions. Overall conclusions suggest that the combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence provides an in-depth picture of item quality that can be used to inform the revision and development of EDP assessment items. Researchers and practitioners can use the methods illustrated here to gather validity evidence to support the interpretation and us...
Purpose This paper aims to provide a snapshot of K-12 Latino families’ beliefs about education, t... more Purpose This paper aims to provide a snapshot of K-12 Latino families’ beliefs about education, their awareness and interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers and their perceived educational challenges. It builds on the existent body of literature by dispelling pervasive notions that Latino parents do not value education. It contributes to the field by providing evidence of Latino parents’ beliefs, awareness and interest in STEM careers for their children. Design/methodology/approach This study reports the results of a focus group needs assessment conducted with Latino parents, surveys and interviews collected for three years during Latino family-focused events. Findings Surveyed parents thought children should attend college to prepare for a better future and career decisions should be dependent on their preference and vocation. They believed STEM careers were important for the Latino community and reported talking to their children about having a job in S...
Volume 3: 18th International Conference on Advanced Vehicle Technologies; 13th International Conference on Design Education; 9th Frontiers in Biomedical Devices, 2016
The influence of inerter on the performance of passive suspension systems is studied by comparing... more The influence of inerter on the performance of passive suspension systems is studied by comparing six different suspension architectures using a simplified quarter-car model. The suspension architectures can have one or two springs, damper, and inerter. Ride comfort, road holding, and working space are considered as the objective functions, while the suspension spring stiffness, damping ratio, and inerter equivalent mass are taken as the design variables for the multi-objective optimization. The Pareto-optimal solutions are computed and compared in the objective functions domain. The results confirm that specific inerter architectures provide advantages when all the design variables are varied. The inerter benefits are more evident in all the considered architectures, when the suspension spring stiffness is kept constant.
This innovative practice work in progress paper presents Biologically inspired design (BID) to tr... more This innovative practice work in progress paper presents Biologically inspired design (BID) to transfer design principles identified in nature to human-centered design problems. The Biologically Inspired Design for Engineering Education (BIRDEE) program uses biologically inspired design to teach high school engineering in a way that uniquely engages students in the natural world. For high school students, identifying natural systems' analogues for human design problems can be challenging. Furthermore, it is often the case that students focus on and transfer superficial structures, rather than underlying design principles. Based on the Structure-Behavior-Function (SBF) design ontology, we developed a modified cognitive scaffold called Structure-Function-Mechanism (SFM) to assist students and teachers with identifying functionally similar biological analogies and identifying and transferring design principles. In this paper we describe SFM and its importance in BID and our observations from teaching SFM to high school teachers during a multi-week professional development workshop in the summer of 2020. Based on teachers' work artifacts, transcriptions of discussions, and focus groups, we highlight the challenges of teaching SFM and our plans to scaffold this important concept for students and teachers alike.
This innovative practice work in progress paper presents the Biologically Inspired Design for Eng... more This innovative practice work in progress paper presents the Biologically Inspired Design for Engineering Education (BIRDEE) project, to create socially relevant, accessible, highly-contextualized biologically inspired design experiences that can be disseminated to high school audiences engineering audiences in Georgia and nationally. Curriculum units are 6–10 weeks in duration and will meet many standards for high school engineering courses in Georgia. There will be three curriculum units (one for each engineering course in the 3-course pathway), each building skills in engineering design and specific skills for BID. Currently in its second year, BIRDEE has developed its first unit of curriculum and has hosted its first professional development with 4 pilot teachers in the summer of 2020. The BIRDEE curriculum situates challenges within socially relevant contexts and provides cutting-edge biological scenarios to ignite creative and humanistic engineering experiences to 1) drive greater engagement in engineering, particularly among women, 2) improve student engineering skills, especially problem definition and ideation skills, and 3) increase students awareness of the connection and impacts between the engineered and living worlds. This paper describes the motivation for the BIRDEE project, the learning goals for the curriculum, and a description of the first unit. We provide reflections and feedback from teacher work and focus groups during our summer professional development and highlight the challenges associated with building BID competency across biology and engineering to equip teachers with the skills they need to teach the BIRDEE units. These lessons can be applied to teaching BID more broadly, as its multidisciplinary nature creates challenges (and opportunities) for teaching and learning engineering design.
Volume 6: 33rd International Conference on Design Theory and Methodology (DTM), 2021
In this case study we report on the use of a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned for... more In this case study we report on the use of a Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned form of Structure-Behavior-Function, called Structure-Function-Mechanism (SFM), to teach four high school engineering teachers an approach for Biologically Inspired Design (BID). Functional theories of design describe a natural way in which designers solve design problems. They provide support for case-based and analogical-based reasoning systems and have been used successfully to teach BID to undergraduate students. We found that teachers instructed on BID practice and pedagogy using our modified theory were able to grasp the structural concepts and looked for clear markers separating mechanism (behavior) and function. Because of the systems-of-systems nature of most biological entities, these boundaries were often subjective, presenting unique challenge to teachers. As high school engineering teachers look for methods to enhance their pedagogy and to understand multidisciplinary content, ...
Data Saves the Whales! was developed as part of the Advanced Manufacturing and Prototyping Integr... more Data Saves the Whales! was developed as part of the Advanced Manufacturing and Prototyping Integrated to Unlock Potential (AMP-IT-UP) project, funded by the National Science Foundation through its Math and Science Partnership program. A central outcome of the AMP-IT-UP project was the development of 1-week modules for core middle school math and science courses that were aligned with best practices as put forth in the Next Generation Science Standards and Standards of Mathematical Practice. Data Saves the Whales! is a middle school mathematics module that is set within a marine ecosystem. It focuses on independent and dependent variables and Cartesian coordinate graphing, and on math practices related to data representation—i.e. how data can be represented in different ways to communicate various messages to an audience. Students engage in a simulated investigation to collect oceanographic data, meant to mimic the experimental procedures used by marine scientists when collecting samples, and learn different methods of graphing the data to effectively communicate their findings. This module features work conducted by the research team of Dr. Ellery Ingall, Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Science at Georgia Tech, and integrates math skills with marine science and the concepts of food webs and the interdependence of organisms.
Innovations in Higher Education Teaching and Learning, 2020
In January 2016, Georgia Tech launched a campus-wide academic initiative (“Center for Serve-Learn... more In January 2016, Georgia Tech launched a campus-wide academic initiative (“Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain”) aimed at preparing undergraduate students in all majors to use their disciplinary knowledge and skills to contribute to the major societal challenge of creating sustainable communities. The initiative calls for faculty members from all six Georgia Tech colleges to develop courses and co-curricular opportunities that will help students learn about sustainability and community engagement and hone their skills by engaging in real-world projects with nonprofit, community, government, and business partners. Affiliated courses address various aspects of the Center’s sustainable communities framework, which presents sustainability as an integrated system connecting environment, economy, and society. This chapter reports on one engineering instructor’s ongoing efforts that bring sustainability into the engineering classroom through sociotechnical project-based learning. This cornerstone design course is one of more than 100 Center-affiliated courses currently offered; the full set of Center-affiliated courses enrolls over 5,000 students per year across all six colleges. The sustainability activities introduced in the freshman design course pertain particularly to the Center’s vision that all graduates of the institute, a majority of whom will graduate with engineering degrees, are able to contribute to the creation of sustainable communities and to understand the impact of their professional practice on the communities in which they work. A situated knowledge and learning pedagogical theory is used in the Center-affiliated course, where concept, activity, and context are involved in student learning to produce useable robust knowledge. The sociotechnical project-based teaching model with contextualized design problems is used to engage students throughout the course by utilizing computer-aided-design problems that incorporate sustainability within both individual and team projects. In this chapter, the authors present the pedagogical approaches to learning, strategies, and challenges for implementation and assessment of intervention activities, and data analyses of both student reflection data and pre- and post-survey data.
STEM teacher leadership represents the intersection of two important educational foci in the U.S.... more STEM teacher leadership represents the intersection of two important educational foci in the U.S.: STEM education and teacher leadership. This paper set includes studies that explore a conceptual framework for STEM teacher leadership both theoretically and empirically. Within that set we will describe how the conceptual framework has evolved, as well as what we have learned about the impact of that framework on the teacher and leadership development of a group of 32 teaching fellows (TFs) and master teaching fellows (MTFs) in the Noyce-funded I-IMPACT project. Paper 1 will describe the development of the framework and initial insights concerning the internalization of key principles from it by the MTFs. Paper 2 will describe how used social network analysis has been used to examine the MTFs participation in various communities of practice. Paper 3 looks at how the EQUIP observation protocol has been utilized to examine MTF-TF mentoring interactions. Paper 4 explores how the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire can be utilized to trace the leadership development of both the TFs and MTFs. Finally, paper 5 considers how both utilization-focused and theory-driven evaluation frameworks can be used to examine identity development and teacher leadership capacity of project participants
2021 Conference on Research in Equitable and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT), 2021
Computational thinking has become pervasive across many technical and creative disciplines. Creat... more Computational thinking has become pervasive across many technical and creative disciplines. Creating a computationally literate workforce capable of recognizing and eliminating algorithmic discrimination requires diverse perspectives and lived experiences. Diversity within computing is a persistent problem; in 2014, several large tech companies released diversity reports and made commitments to improvement. As of 2020, improvements have been minor, especially for Black employees. Compared to US demographics, the percentage of Black and Latinx students pursuing degrees in computing remains low, even as numbers improve in STEM more broadly. It is more important than ever to prioritize a diverse computing workforce and a computationally literate workforce, more broadly, whose interests reside with equitable outcomes.
The Advanced Manufacturing and Prototyping Integrated to Unlock Potential (AMP-IT-UP) project is ... more The Advanced Manufacturing and Prototyping Integrated to Unlock Potential (AMP-IT-UP) project is an NSF-sponsored Math and Science Partnership between the Griffin-Spalding County School System and Georgia Tech’s Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing (CEISMC). The AMP-IT-UP curriculum consists of engineering coursework for middle and high schools and 1-week modules that integrate STEM practices for middle school science and mathematics classrooms. Three modules have been designed for each core math and science class across grades 6-8 and integrate the Georgia Standards of Excellence and the Next Generation Science Standards. Each module focuses on one of the practices of Experimental Design, Data Visualization and Data-Driven Decision Making, integrates math and science content, and uses grade level core ideas as a backstory to engage students. Middle school math and science teachers will experience hands-on activities associated with the modules, learn how to implement them, and receive access to all curriculum materials
Evidence-centered design (ECD) is an assessment framework tailored to provide structure and rigor... more Evidence-centered design (ECD) is an assessment framework tailored to provide structure and rigor to the assessment development process, and also to generate evidence of assessment validity by tightly coupling assessment tasks with focal knowledge, skills, and abilities (FKSAs). This framework is particularly well-suited to FKSAs that are complex and multi-part (Mislevy and Haertel, 2006), as is the case with much of the focal content within the computer science (CS) domain. This paper presents an applied case of ECD used to guide assessment development in the context of a redesigned introductory CS curriculum. In order to measure student learning of CS skills and content taught through the curriculum, knowledge assessments were written and piloted. The use of ECD provided an organizational framework for assessment development efforts, offering assessment developers a clear set of steps with accompanying documentation and decision points, as well as providing robust validity evidenc...
Although teaching self-efficacy is associated with many benefits for teachers and students, littl... more Although teaching self-efficacy is associated with many benefits for teachers and students, little is known about how teachers develop a sense of efficacy in the early years of their careers. Drawing on survey (N = 179) and interview (N = 10) data, this study investigates the sources of self-efficacy in a national sample of teachers who participated in the Noyce program. All teachers completed an online survey that included both the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Instrument and open-ended items prompting them to reflect on the sources of their self-efficacy. Ten teachers participated in semi-structured follow-up interviews. Enactive mastery experiences were the most common source of self-efficacy identified by teachers, followed by social persuasions and vicarious experiences. Physiological and affective states were identified infrequently and more often related to negative experiences that lowered self-efficacy than to positive experiences. Beginning teachers identified more negative en...
Madison, where Dosa conducted discipline-based education research looking at environmental decisi... more Madison, where Dosa conducted discipline-based education research looking at environmental decision-making and reasoning processes. During this time, she also completed the DELTA Certificate for Research, Teaching and Learning. Dosa holds a master's degree in environmental science and environmental biology from Eotvos Lorand University. She is currently working on developing workshops for faculty and graduate students, and supports future faculty and teaching assistant development programs. Dosa's current research interests are teaching-as-research, incorporating sustainability across the curriculum, team science, and competency development in higher education.
2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
is a graduate student at Georgia Institute of Technology. He obtained his Bachelor's degree from ... more is a graduate student at Georgia Institute of Technology. He obtained his Bachelor's degree from Georgia Tech and is currently obtaining a Master's degree from the same institute. His research primarily focuses in the impact of maker spaces on students and design problem equivalency as it pertains to assessing creativity.
The development of teacher leaders in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics has becom... more The development of teacher leaders in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics has become a focus as demand grows on the national scale to improve student learning in these disciplines. As teachers' role in leadership continues to be redefined, research and professional development in teacher leadership will continue to evolve. Given the lack of a clear conceptualization of teacher leadership in the empirical literature, there is a clear methodological challenge for evaluators who are charged with assessing the impact of teacher leadership professional development programs. This paper describes how both the Utilization-Focused Evaluation and Theory-Driven Evaluation frameworks were used concurrently to design evaluation methods that were effective for assessing the impact of a dynamic teacher leadership program. The evaluation is specifically situated within the context of a Robert Noyce Scholarship Program, which aimed to grow veteran science teachers into teacher lead...
Recent reforms in science education worldwide include an emphasis on engineering design as a key ... more Recent reforms in science education worldwide include an emphasis on engineering design as a key component of student proficiency in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics disciplines. However, relatively little attention has been directed to the development of psychometrically sound assessments for engineering. This study demonstrates the use of mixed methods to guide the development and revision of K-12 Engineering Design Process (EDP) assessment items. Using results from a middle-school EDP assessment, this study illustrates the combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques to inform item development and revisions. Overall conclusions suggest that the combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence provides an in-depth picture of item quality that can be used to inform the revision and development of EDP assessment items. Researchers and practitioners can use the methods illustrated here to gather validity evidence to support the interpretation and us...
Purpose This paper aims to provide a snapshot of K-12 Latino families’ beliefs about education, t... more Purpose This paper aims to provide a snapshot of K-12 Latino families’ beliefs about education, their awareness and interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers and their perceived educational challenges. It builds on the existent body of literature by dispelling pervasive notions that Latino parents do not value education. It contributes to the field by providing evidence of Latino parents’ beliefs, awareness and interest in STEM careers for their children. Design/methodology/approach This study reports the results of a focus group needs assessment conducted with Latino parents, surveys and interviews collected for three years during Latino family-focused events. Findings Surveyed parents thought children should attend college to prepare for a better future and career decisions should be dependent on their preference and vocation. They believed STEM careers were important for the Latino community and reported talking to their children about having a job in S...
Volume 3: 18th International Conference on Advanced Vehicle Technologies; 13th International Conference on Design Education; 9th Frontiers in Biomedical Devices, 2016
The influence of inerter on the performance of passive suspension systems is studied by comparing... more The influence of inerter on the performance of passive suspension systems is studied by comparing six different suspension architectures using a simplified quarter-car model. The suspension architectures can have one or two springs, damper, and inerter. Ride comfort, road holding, and working space are considered as the objective functions, while the suspension spring stiffness, damping ratio, and inerter equivalent mass are taken as the design variables for the multi-objective optimization. The Pareto-optimal solutions are computed and compared in the objective functions domain. The results confirm that specific inerter architectures provide advantages when all the design variables are varied. The inerter benefits are more evident in all the considered architectures, when the suspension spring stiffness is kept constant.
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Papers by Meltem Alemdar