Effective: 2024-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Benjamin Kelcey

Institution: University of Cincinnati Main Campus

This project aims to serve the national interest by developing explanatory machine learning methods for the study of teaching effectiveness in STEM education. There is consistent evidence that teachers vary widely in their effectiveness but conventional analytic methods have largely failed to explain why and under what contexts teaching and teachers vary. Explanatory machine learning methods hold significant potential in developing fundamental knowledge and theories of equitable and effective...

Effective: 2024-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Prateek Shekhar

Institution: New Jersey Institute of Technology

This project aims to serve the national interest by advancing the understanding of undergraduate engineering students' participation in entrepreneurship education programs. Entrepreneurship and innovation are important for economic success, and engineers often hold a central role in leading innovation in today's high-technology world. To compete successfully in the global technological innovation economy, graduating engineers need to possess entrepreneurial skills to identify opportunities and...

Effective: 2024-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Mariana Castro

Institution: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Multilingual learners are the fastest growing student population in the United States. Therefore, it is concerning that they have shown poor performance on national science assessments. Despite this concern, few teachers report feeling prepared to engage them in science instruction. This project aims to prepare science teachers to increase their knowledge, skill and efficacy in facilitating multilingual learners' engagement in scientific argumentation, which is an essential skill in science...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: John Hu

Institution: Oklahoma State University

This project serves the national interest of semiconductor workforce development by understanding how to teach circuit debugging in undergraduate courses. As the transistor count and complexity of today’s chips grow, thanks to Moore’s Law, fewer new chips can work perfectly for the first time. Hence, a high level of engineering effort is put into debugging, a process that identifies and fixes any discrepancies between the expected and measured chip behavior. This project seeks to explore...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Dayoung Kim

Institution: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Despite the emphasis on both entrepreneurship and social responsibility for engineering students, education, and research on the two topics have been mostly separate efforts. Technology-based social entrepreneurship education for engineers has ample potential to give engineering students the opportunity to become socially responsible engineering leaders with an entrepreneurial mindset. However, very little research on the topic has been conducted in the field of engineering education. This...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Angela N Google

Institution: University of Rhode Island

Given the national need for a compositionally diverse and culturally competent workforce in the field of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), higher education has begun to recognize that cultural norms must change to create a welcoming environment for all in STEM fields. This project aims to create greater understanding of how to broaden participation in biology, chemistry, and physics by (1) examining how graduate students with more than one potentially stigmatizing...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Nicole Panorkou

Institution: Montclair State University

This project uses technology as both a pedagogical tool and a democratizing force to expand student access to the mathematics of area measurement and multiplication, and to support meaningful connections between these topics and students' everyday lives. The project builds on prior work with Dynamic Measurement for Area (DYME-A), an approach that engages students in exploring models of area as a dynamic sweep of a line segment over a distance. Prior results suggest that this approach supports...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Xinyu Zhang

Institution: West Virginia University Research Corporation

Baccalaureate Engineering student Success and Transition (BEST) programs are holistic student success programs at four-year undergraduate universities that provide evidence-based, well-structured activities to enhance engineering students' academic and professional success in the college transition and to increase their retention in the engineering major. These programs often struggle to attract diverse students, including women, students from underrepresented minority groups, first-generation...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Stephanie M Halmo

Institution: University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc

This project aims to serve the national interest by enhancing science learning and collaboration for undergraduate students in biology and biochemistry. The Nation’s ability to stay on the leading edge of scientific development hinges on a STEM workforce with well-developed collaboration skills. Some evidence suggests that successful collaboration depends on social metacognition, or the awareness and regulation of another’s thinking. Social metacognition occurs when one person stimulates...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Karla Rivera Caceres

Institution: Florida International University

Increasingly, STEM educators seek alternatives to traditional grading strategies out of a concern that traditional ways of evaluating student work can undermine meaningful learning. For example, when professors assign points to assignments, students’ goals shift to achieving a high score instead of learning the content and skills provided in the course. Furthermore, grading has also been linked consistently with lower internal motivation, increased anxiety, and decreased self-awareness about...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Jing Zhang

Institution: University of Nebraska-Lincoln

This project aims to serve the national interest by investigating faculty professional identity in Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) community networks. Undergraduate research experiences have been shown to benefit undergraduate students’ success by improving critical thinking skills, retention in STEMs, and graduation rate. CUREs provide effective alternatives to traditional and extensive undergraduate research experiences through incorporating key components of research...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Erin Ottmar

Institution: Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Using perceptual cues in mathematical problem solving has been shown to improve students' performance. Attention and executive function skills are two potential mechanisms that explain how and for whom perceptual supports have the greatest impact. However, measuring executive function, attention, and cognitive control with students in educational settings is challenging. Using more scalable and affordable web-based tools such as open-source executive function and eye gaze measures provides a...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Nicole M James

Institution: Reed College

This project aims to serve the national interest by identifying the concepts and skills necessary for materials chemistry research. Solutions to the Nation’s most challenging problems require materials designed with the right chemical properties. For example, addressing energy needs requires higher-efficiency solar panels; decreasing the prevalence of microplastics requires robust plastic alternatives. Consequently, materials chemistry is a rapidly growing field of research and area of the...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Charlie Blake

Institution: Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville

The project from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville will work to update instructional bioscience content in high-school curricula to increase accuracy and decrease sociocultural biases. The proposed project will increase our understanding of how biology instructional content can impact student bioessentialist beliefs and has the potential to contribute foundational knowledge about the epistemology of bioessentialist bias and the process by which these attitudes develop. There has been...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Megan R Brown

Institution: Northern Illinois University

To address the Nation’s need for solutions to the complex problems that face American citizens, expert STEM workers from many sectors and communities are needed. Education must engage young people from diverse cultures to train in science and problem-solving so they can pursue the many challenges of the world around us. Geoscience is the disciplinary home from which to study the many resources we depend on, from air, water, and minerals, to safeguarding communities from natural hazards such...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Hamid Karimi

Institution: Utah State University

To develop student skills in computer programming, it is essential to understand how students approach computer programming assignments. This knowledge can improve teaching techniques, foster a diverse and inclusive student body, and enhance our Nation's digital proficiency. This project at Utah State University seeks to investigate students' keystroke patterns as they work on Python programming assignments in introductory computer programming courses. This innovative approach provides...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Justin T McDaniel

Institution: Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

The transition from active-duty military service to civilian life is challenging. Securing a job following retirement from the military is important, not least because it is a major social determinant of health and wellbeing. Only 3% of military veterans in Illinois - compared to 7% nationally - are employed in science, engineering, technology, or mathematics (STEM) occupations. Furthermore, rural-dwelling veterans are nearly 50% less likely than urban-dwelling veterans to work in STEM. Because...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Stephen R Podowitz-Thomas

Institution: Thomas Jefferson University

Self-concept is the set of ideas that people hold about who they are, how they behave, and who they have the potential to become. The self-concept of students has a strong impact on their academic success and persistence in higher education. This project aims to develop a tool to measure self-concept as a neurodivergent student in STEM and investigate its relationship to academic motivation and identification with STEM. Although a significant and growing number of undergraduates are...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Traci S Kutaka

Institution: University of Virginia Main Campus

Young children experience and express many emotions as they learn to make sense of and solve story problems. Mathematics anxiety is the most well-studied and familiar achievement emotion and, as a result there are now teaching practices and policies to reduce its impacts on learning. Yet, much less is known about how basic, universal emotions such as joy, surprise, sadness, anger, and fear impact learning and achievement. This project addresses this knowledge gap through two primary activities:...

Effective: 2023-2026

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Roghayeh L Barmaki

Institution: University of Delaware

Emerging technology poses potential benefit to all Americans. Technologies support innovations in many fields, including agriculture, electronics, transportation, data science and computing. The workforce that forms the engine for this growth must first receive education and training to understand and master the advanced STEM methods that form the foundation of technological growth. That workforce includes educators with knowledge in STEM and in learning sciences to engage and prepare students,...

Effective: 2023-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Simone Sisneros-Thiry

Institution: California State University, East Bay Foundation, Inc.

This project aims to serve the national interest by contributing to the understanding of experiences of students and instructors of assessment strategies aligned with active learning methods. Towards this goal the project will seek to incorporate the student voice into professional development experiences for collegiate mathematics instructors. In particular, this project will focus on assessment strategies that are aligned with the values and practices of active learning. The community of...

Effective: 2023-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Jeremy Hsu

Institution: Chapman University

Many skills are typically taught in introductory biology lectures and labs and are important for success as a biologist. One of these skills is quantitative reasoning. Quantitative reasoning is the ability to use mathematical concepts in biological contexts, which encompasses processing and interpreting numerical and graphical data. However, many students in introductory biology struggle to apply quantitative reasoning skills taught in math classes and other classes to these biological...

Effective: 2023-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Youmi Suk

Institution: Teachers College, Columbia University

The current math course-taking plan for high school students across much of the United States is not optimized for every student’s success in math, especially in advanced mathematics. In particular, there has been disproportional participation in advanced math courses among different racial/ethnic and income groups. To this end, this research project develops data-driven, personalized math course-taking plans by leveraging recent advances in personalized medicine. In personalized medicine,...

Effective: 2023-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Peggy McNeal

Institution: Towson University

This project aims to serve the national interest by developing a researcher’s skills to conduct fundamental geosciences education research that investigates how college students use spatial reasoning to think and learn about fluid-Earth science concepts. In fluid-Earth science courses, topics such as atmosphere and ocean dynamics are highly abstract and mathematical without a natural bridge to everyday understanding of physical reality. The important leaps in thinking from mathematical...

Effective: 2022-2028

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Sona Gholizadeh

Institution: University of South Carolina at Columbia

This project will investigate the influence of family on student interest and persistence in engineering. The overarching goal of this project is to expand the investigator’s expertise to conduct fundamental research on the influence of family in engineering fields to better understand facilitators of student persistence. The research findings have the potential to inform a larger quantitative study through developing and testing a theory about impacts of family relationships on STEM student...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Kimberly C Rogers

Institution: Bowling Green State University

Undergraduate mathematics courses are required foundational courses for almost all STEM majors, since science, technology, and engineering are all built on mathematical underpinnings. Therefore, effective mathematics instruction at the undergraduate level opens the door to these fields, making it possible for students to pursue studies in scientific and technical areas. Unfortunately, students typically cite ineffective or uninspiring classroom instruction in foundational mathematics courses as...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Alejandra J Magana-de-Leon

Institution: Purdue University

As society becomes increasingly globalized, STEM graduates are increasingly called upon to work with individuals from different cultures and backgrounds. Thus, organizations and governments expect STEM graduates to contribute as productive members and leaders of intercultural teams. This project is designed to conduct fundamental research on team cognition, an important component of teamwork training. Team cognition refers to the knowledge, interactions, and processes essential to effective...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Lizandra C Godwin

Institution: University of New Mexico

Advancing participation in engineering is significant for meeting NSF’s goals and benefits national priorities. The University of New Mexico aims to improve understanding of the impacts of Latinas’ undergraduate experiences on their graduate school and career aspirations in engineering. As a designated Hispanic-serving Institution, the University of New Mexico is an ideal site for this study. Through advancing knowledge of the impact of intersectional identities on interest in graduate...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Dina Verdin

Institution: Arizona State University

The project aims to build the investigator’s capacity to conduct robust fundamental STEM education research by implementing a small-scale research project and a professional development plan. The research investigates how culturally responsive gamified activities impact STEM identity development and promote STEM pathways among students of migratory families. The project extends the efforts of the Migratory Student Summer Academy at Arizona State University that provides summer enrichment...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Allyson Flaster

Institution: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Advanced training and education in STEM are of critical importance for the nation’s workforce and economic status. Equitable access to graduate level training reduces barriers for individuals from minoritized groups. Standardized graduate exams are becoming less important in the graduate admissions process, which places a higher weight on letters of recommendation for the selection of graduate students for a program. This project focuses on examining the language used by mentors in describing...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Nicole C Kelp

Institution: Colorado State University

Broadening participation in STEM is critical on many levels, from the equity perspective of removing barriers for success for people from historically excluded groups and from the perspective of increasing knowledge in the field of STEM. Both people and scientific endeavors benefit from increasing inclusion. However, evidence indicates that students who experience marginalization due to their socioeconomic status, first generation college attendance, or race and ethnicity are underrepresented...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Jennifer G Cromley

Institution: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

To better support college students in learning about science, it is important to understand how they make connections among the concepts and ideas as they are learning. Network Analysis (NA) has potential to enable new ways of analyzing student learning data to reveal such connections. This project seeks to serve the national interest by developing a researcher’s skills to apply the statistical techniques of NA to real-time data about students’ science learning. The principal investigator...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Steve Bennoun

Institution: University of California-Los Angeles

This project aims to serve the national interest by enhancing student learning in calculus with a teaching method called interleaving. Unlike the common practice of studying and practicing one topic at a time and them moving to the next topic, interleaving consists in intermixing the study and practice of different topics together. Research conducted in middle school mathematics classrooms shows evidence that interleaving can help improve student learning. Yet, it is currently unknown if...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Julianne Wenner

Institution: Clemson University

Families are children’s first teachers and significantly influence children’s interest, engagement, and aspirations (IEA) in science. Family attitudes, conversations about science, expectations for their children, and family science/STEM career role models can be influential, particularly for people who identify with populations that are underrepresented in science. However, what families from these populations provide in terms of support for IEA in science is often framed as inadequate or...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Ryan Stowe

Institution: University of Wisconsin-Madison

To prepare learners to productively use scientific knowledge as they navigate life, science courses must develop students’ understandings of what it means to know and learn science (i.e., their epistemologies). This project aims to serve the national interest by developing a researcher’s skills to conduct fundamental chemistry education research that investigates both instructors’ and students’ epistemologies in the context of organic chemistry courses. Studies indicates that...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Mohammad Amin Alipour

Institution: University of Houston

This project aims to serve the national interest by understanding the impact on computer science education of using artificial intelligence (AI) to generate computer code. Artificial intelligence tools can generate computer code from the description of a problem written in natural language, and it may lead to faster and easier development of high-quality software programs. While these “code intelligence” (CI) systems may positively improve workflow for professional developers in industry,...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Sara Hooshangi

Institution: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Participation in computer science by women is a significant goal for NSF and benefits the nation’s workforce in emerging technologies. Academic and career path decisions are made by individuals and understanding barriers that contribute to student selection of computer science careers may reduce the gender gap in this field. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University seeks to understand personal, social, and institutional constraints that influence the decision-making of first-year...

Effective: 2022-2025

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Fashina Alade

Institution: Michigan State University

Advancing participation in STEM is significant for meeting NSF’s goals and benefits the nation. Michigan State University aims to improve understanding of the impacts of STEM-focused children’s media programming by identifying children’s understanding of racial diversity cures in educational television shows. The professional development plan will build research capacity by exploring children's attention to and interpretations of diversity cues and then building a multi-method study that...

Effective: 2022-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Christopher A Randles

Institution: The University of Central Florida Board of Trustees

To meaningfully understand a discipline, students not only need to remember concepts but also understand how those concepts connect to one another. Understanding connections between concepts requires students to engage with their discipline in ways such as using visual representations (e.g. diagrams and graphs), experimental activities (e.g. testing hypotheses), societal influences (e.g. the nature of science and society), and information literacy (e.g. how information is presented and used)....

Effective: 2022-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Tim McEldowney

Institution: West Virginia University Research Corporation

This project aims to illuminate how undergraduate student knowledge about the graduate school application and admissions processes acts as a barrier to earning advanced degrees in mathematics for students historically underrepresented in STEM disciplines. The project will consist of a combination of exploratory research and professional development activities to advance the PI’s expertise in quantitative and qualitative research methods. The project will survey undergraduate mathematics...

Effective: 2021-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Monica C Vroman

Institution: Rutgers University New Brunswick

This project, administered by Rutgers University New Brunswick, builds capacity in STEM Education Research (SER) through the investigator’s participation in intensive professional growth experiences and application of their new knowledge in the design and implementation of a SER study. The investigator will build proficiency in mixed methods research by engaging in focused coursework, professional conferences, and mentoring by SER experts over the life of the project. In tandem with...

Effective: 2021-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: John Fife

Institutions: Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia State University

Interest in STEM is often shaped in middle school and understanding the STEM attitude and interest of African American middle school students would be significant in reducing barriers to STEM careers. Virginia State University aims to advance knowledge on the impacts of holistic contextual factors, such as race/ethnicity, school quality, family dynamics, gender, social supports, daily danger exposure, social status, and interpersonal competence, on STEM interest and attitudes. The project...

Effective: 2021-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Sammy L Steen Jr

Institution: George Mason University

This project aims to increase the number of Black male youth who can be successful in advanced mathematics while in public schools. The researcher will use a mixed-methods design to gain a comprehensive and culturally appropriate student perspective. The project includes the implementation of a group counseling program for Black male students beginning in seventh grade and following them through eighth grade. The researcher will gain the knowledge and skills necessary to integrate quantitative...

Effective: 2021-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Alexander J Stokes

Institution: University of Hawaii

This capacity-building project, administered by the University of Hawaii, is designed to develop the investigator’s knowledge and skills in STEM Education research (SER) through participation in intensive professional growth activities including mentoring by a team of experts in STEM Education research, workshops in research methods and cultural competence, and participation in SER professional conferences. In tandem with the project’s professional development activities, the investigator...

Effective: 2021-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Paul Asunda

Institution: Purdue University

This STEM education research capacity building project combines a research project aimed at examining teachers as agents of change in STEM education and a professional development plan focused on facilitating the principal investigator’s acquisition of competencies in conceptual frameworks and research designs for exploring integrated STEM (iSTEM) learning environments in middle school settings. The research project will investigate teachers’ conceptions of iSTEM teaching and learning and...

Effective: 2021-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Omar S Lopez

Institution: Texas State University - San Marcos

Improving graduation rates of STEM majors for Hispanic students at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) will contribute to the goal of broadening participation in STEM career fields. Texas State University aims to identify links between investment inputs and success in graduating Hispanic students from Hispanic-Serving Institutions using data submitted to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES). Patterns in HSI inputs that are associated with institutions that are more efficient at...

Effective: 2021-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Aleata K Hubbard

Institution: WestEd

This project will explore the significance of race and equity in secondary computer science (CS) education. Despite the importance of CS across all aspects of life, there is little racial diversity in the field along the pipeline from elementary school to industry. At the secondary level, even students who are highly interested and confident in CS remain underrepresented in the field. To address this problem, researchers have created culturally responsive computing approaches to effectively...

Effective: 2021-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Zerrin Ondin

Institution: Georgia Tech Research Corporation

The importance of removing barriers to accessing STEM instructional materials is paramount to broadening the representation of students with visual impairments in STEM careers. Tactile graphics are important STEM instructional aids, but they are often difficult to understand or have limited content compared to the original. This project aims to conduct a synthesis of the existing body of knowledge of student experiences with tactile graphics to develop a set of best practices and establish...

Effective: 2021-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Garth V Crosby

Institution: Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station

This capacity-building project is designed to develop the investigator's knowledge and skills as a STEM education researcher through intensive training followed by the design and implementation of a study to investigate the perceptions and self-efficacy of engineering faculty members who teach lab-intensive STEM courses online. The multifaceted professional development plan comprises coursework in educational research, workshops, and mentoring by a team of education researchers. The research is...

Effective: 2021-2024

Funding Type: BCSER IID

Principal Investigator: Qingxia Li

Institution: Fisk University

The project is designed to enable the principal investigator to conduct an exploratory research project while acquiring skills and competencies to conduct robust STEM education research. The research component will examine factors and experiences that impact African American students’ decision to pursue careers that require quantitative and computational skills. The mentored professional development component will provide the investigator with expertise in qualitative research design and...