Greetings!  On behalf of our team at Parametric Studio and Iowa State University, I would like to welcome you to our project video for EDISON. 

     EDISON is equal parts STEM curricula, engineering design and simulation platform, and constructivist game.  Students carryout virtual missions designing hobby scale projects to assist their game character.  They apply engineering design, model their problems using math and science virtually, simulate their creations, and iterate on their virtual designs before either exporting them to a 3-D printer or to paper templates for real world construction and testing.

 

     This project is just nearing the end of its first phase and we now have a fully functional prototype and curricula for bridge and RC-scale car design that we have been extensively testing in Middle School classrooms.  In creating EDISON our team has sought to target 4 key objectives:

 

     1) Engineering standards are now present for all middle school students. And our team has sought to address engineering standards and engineering design instruction for all students with flexible and accurate engineering tools with numerous types/modes of design.

 

     2) Engineering is multidisciplinary and as such can be a powerful tool for targeting math, science, and literacy standards. In EDISON our team strives to implement this approach to STEM through cross disciplinary engineering design projects, integrated curricular components, and effective and pervasive use of engineering modelling.

 

     3) In the real-world engineering is a team sport. So, it was important that we provide a collaborative environment that fosters communication and facilitates contributions from all team members.

 

     4) Time is always a key problem for educators. Therefore, our team has designed EDISON to minimize the impact of implementing engineering on: instruction time (using virtual design tools), preparation time (with embedded evaluation tools, game-based learning, scaffolded instruction, and integrated tutorial content), and on PD time (by keeping the interfaces, strategies, and environments of the platform the same.  In other words learn it once and then use it over and over).

 

     We are very excited about the project and our results and hope to reach a lot of students with EDISON to help inspire the next generation of problem solvers, scientists, and engineers. 

 

     We look forward to:

--Sharing our passion for STEM education;

--Answering any questions you may have about EDISON;

--Connecting with organizations and people interested in implementing EDISON;

--And interacting with others interested in STEM education just like you.  

 

Talk to you soon!  

 

Chris Whitmer,

CTO, Parametric Studio

www.parametricstudioinc.com

@ParametricSTDIO

https://www.facebook.com/ParametricStudioInc/

Very interesting product.  Are the physical bridge-building activities part of the curriculum and closely integrated with the software?  In your bridge-building curriculum, what percent of the time is on the computer vs. building and testing physical objects?

Thank-you.  The physical bridge building activities are part of the curriculum and are the physical test build part of the capstone challenge.  Typically in a module (bridge design is one of several - RC cars, gliders being others) the curriculum is structured loosely as follows  

     

     1) Small hands-on activities and research activities are utilized to assist the students in building models that use particular math concepts or scientific phenomena.  These are directly tied to standards and will form a piece of the design and analysis process used in the larger capstone design challenge.

 

     2) Students utilize the EDISON software environment to conduct virtual testing, undertake a mini-design challenge, or to collect virtual test data to build and refine models for the bridge.  Say for instance how trusses behave, how materials fail, what effect cross sections and their shapes have on design. 

 

     3) Students encorporate and build on these models to formulate their final design problem, conceptualize solutions, conduct analysis, and then iteratively prototype, test, and refine their designs.  

 

     4)  Finally students export their virtually refined designs for 3-D printing, or hand construction and testing in the real world, and may if time permits refine the design using this information.

 

So the mixture is about 20% setup activities for helping to formulate models, 60% software activities where they apply these concepts in design and iteration, and 20% physical prototyping and testing of the final designs.  The software is the facilitator for deeper exploration and understanding as they can make countless iterations not only their designs but also on their descriptions of how they should behave (their models).

Thank you for the answer to Marion's question. That helped provide a better context for how EDISON is actually implemented with students.

I'm curious to know if you have had an opportunity to test this in a school that already has the infrastructure to implement fully integrated PBL. EDISON seems like a wonderful solution to add practicality and constructivist approaches to middle school math and physical science concepts. While you spoke to the potential of EDISON to teach engineering as a trans-disciplinary subject, have you observed measurable impacts on students' science and math competencies?

Very neat project. I see lots of possibilities in this for fostering learning of math and science, but I don't know a lot about the curriculum itself. Please tell us about the curriculum and the pedagogy. (1) I wonder what research and know-how inform the design of the curriculum and pedagogy. (2) I wonder, too, what is built into the pedagogy so that you are making sure kids are learning disciplinary content along with having a good time and building things that work and working together in teams. (I can make some suggestions if you want them; so can Marion who commented above. ;-)) 

I agree with Janet's questions.  also, how long does the bridge building unit take to complete?

Thanks Michael and Janet for your questions.  I'm sorry for the delay today in responding but we are actually in the classroom right now with 120 6th grade students, in the final week (capstone design challenge) of the 3 week module.  I will address that first question quickly and then my co-presentors Dr. Jackson and Dr. Appelgate can fill in more details regarding the curriculum and pedagogy.  

 

The first phase of the project (prototyping, and development of curricula and software) is still ongoing until July.  We have been testing in schools thus far in math and science classrooms with a traditional instructional pedagogy.  So thus far we have not been in school with a fully integrated PBL approach.  This is actually by design, since we want to test the feasibility, implementability, and impact of implementing EDISON in traditional math and science classrooms.  In future testing we are interested in testing with fully integrated PBL schools and STEM schools.  

In response to your second question about measurable impacts for this project we are still collecting our data.  We are looking at several things including:  Improvements in math and science content knowledge, mastery and understanding of the Engineering Design Process, STEM efficacy, as well as general usability and product use questions (for software refinement).  

Preliminary results look good.  This study is similar to one we conducted in the Fall with 4th graders where we looked at essentially the same things.  For this study and short 6 week duration in the class we were showing sizable and statistically significant improvements in STEM content knowledge pre-to-post (which were roughly equivalent to a full letter grade) 

In addition to the outcomes in STEM knowledge, I'm wondering about the impact of the social organization of the work - teamwork, relevant tasks, a combination of rich conceptual challenges with real world enactment of a solution. This has many of the features of an approach to would help reinforce a sense of belonging and personal meaning. This seems like the sort of approach that also yield higher engagement. Do you have any direct measures there? I'm thinking about the application of this approach in upper grades were we often see women and minority students begin to disengage with STEM work. Do you believe you might see down steam positive effects around persistence of traditionally underrepresented students in more traditional classrooms?

Very good question, and I want to urge you (the PIs) to take advantage of what you are seeing in the teamwork and sense making that is going on in designing the reflection and sense-making activities that go with all the design. We can point you towards some literature on how to do that (some of it my papers, just to be honest about things).