Rapid advances in science and engineering, and pervasive adoption of resulting technological products, are influencing every aspect of human living and fueling a growing demand for a workforce that is adequately prepared for the emerging occupations in STEM fields. Educating students for success in the modern technology-rich workplace requires…

Background: There is a well-known gender disparity in the engineering field. Three of the most important factors related to the participation of women in engineering are differences in perceived societal relevance, technical self-efficacy, and tinkering self-efficacy. Purpose/Hypothesis: Soft robotics is a relatively new engineering application…

This study aims to explore psychomotor performance and perception on task-centered hands-on STEM learning of educational robotics. The study adopted a convergent parallel mixed method to gather both quantitative and qualitative data in the same period of time. Participants were 42 tenth-grade students (25 male students and 17 female students) from…

Engineering career interest, especially that of young women, declines as they approach high-school graduation. We used expectancy-value theory, which emphasizes expectations for success and subjective value of experiences as antecedent factors to choice, as a framework for investigating new 9th grade soft robot design lessons. Compared to…

We performed an innovative STEM outreach project. High school students from the Colombian robotics' designed a prototype of a Lunar Loo named Tech Lunar Toilet (TLT) that was part of the international HeroX-NASA Challenge. These experiences were possible thanks to a wonderful network of collaboration. As a result of this program, the students that…

This paper presents the project Hydrobots, which the Eugenides Foundation has run in Greek secondary education schools since 2012. It is based on the MIT's Sea Perch project and more than 300 student teams got involved and built successfully an underwater remotely operated vehicle. The formal Greek education system lacks large-scale STEM-related…

The purpose of this study is to present students' experiences, interest in engineering, and personal narratives while participating in a robotics summer camp in a metropolitan city in Turkey. In this study, I used qualitative data collection methods such as interviews, field notes, and observations. I used the four principles of Engle and Conant…

Mentors play important roles in determining the working environment of out-of-school-time clubs. On robotics teams, they provide guidance in hopes that their protégés progress through an engineering process. This study examined how mentors on one robotics team who defined their mentoring style as "let the students do the work" navigated…

Documentation of ideas and the engineering design process is a critical, daily component of a professional engineer's job. While patent protection is often cited as the primary rationale for documentation, it can also benefit the engineer, the team, company, and stakeholders through creating a more rigorously designed and purposeful solution.…

Microcontrollers are used extensively in transportation and communications technologies, in automobiles to monitor and control engine speed and performance so as to maximize fuel economy and efficiency, and by manufacturing industries to produce "smart" technology. The flexibility, imagination, and spirit that make these tiny devices so…

Summer outreach programs provide pre-college participants an introduction to college life and exposure to engineering in an effort to raise the level of interest and bring more students into engineering fields. The Junior Engineering, Mathematics, and Science (JEMS) program is a project-based summer workshop in which teams of high school students…

The haptic paddle is a force-feedback joystick used at several universities in teaching System Dynamics, a core mechanical engineering undergraduate course where students learn to model dynamic systems in several domains. A second goal of the haptic paddle is to increase the accessibility of robotics and haptics by providing a low-cost device for…

The IT-Adventures program is dedicated to increasing interest in and awareness of information technology among high school students using inquiry-based learning focused on three content areas: cyber defense, game design programming, and robotics. The program combines secondary, post-secondary, and industry partnerships in educational programming,…

Students in technology education programs from middle school through high school around the nation are benefiting from--and enjoying--hands-on experience in mechanical engineering, applied mathematics, materials processing, basic electronics, robotics, industrial manufacturing, and other STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math)-focused…

The objective of this exploratory study was to describe patterns in self-regulated learning (SRL) for both high school students and college freshmen while engaged in a design activity. The main research question guiding this study was: How did high school and first-year college students self-regulate their approaches to learning when engaged in an…