Thank you Jeannette. We're very proud of the program, and the logo :)

Hi Kirby!  Yes, you are correct-- we are working with engineering teachers. Generally, there are fewer constraints in engineering classes than there are in core science classes, which gives us a little more flexibility.  Because of COVID, we haven't been in the classroom, but we have run professional learning for our pilot teachers last summer.  A key question that we are trying to answer is: how much biological content do the engineering teachers need to know to be comfortable teaching this curriculum? We hope we'll get a better sense on teacher effects (and maybe even student effects!) when we roll out the first two units next academic year. 

Thanks! We definitely love the interdisciplinary perspective since it has a variety of benefits, both inspirational and pedagogical. We are working with engineering teachers, since we want to embed this into what engineers do, and because the engineering field is not particularly diverse. One of our central ideas is using biology (which also invokes sustainability) can increase persistence and motivation to pursue engineering in groups that are so far less well represented. But yes, it is a challenge to engineering teachers, many of whom have not much of a biology background. So a good part of our work is to figure out how to scaffold this for those teachers. They do need a richer context for the biology, and we are identifying the best ways to give them this.

Great comment and important questions. We definitely see that, in other contexts, people take a more functional view and start to think about how animals actually work and why, and relate that to their own problems, but it goes well beyond this. The environmentalist Dioum said "In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we are taught". We know informally from  other contexts that BID causes a significant revaluation of nature, even when people cannot use BID directly, We respect (!) our teachers and BID involves learning from organisms as much as learning about them.Part of our research will be to look at attitudes around sustainability;   we will consider this project a success if it improves those attitudes, as well as increasing persistence in engineering particularly among underrepresented groups. We will be successful if we can understand in enough detail what is required to scaffold BID for teachers and students and develop a scaled up web based platform to deliver training. We want every HS teacher in the US to be able to do this if they desire.

One of the not so secret secrets of BID is that it often goes from solution to problem-which were the examples in the video (glad you liked them). These examples are really good for inspiring, but not as good for teaching engineering and design methods, of which we want BID to be a part. We will use both solution to problem and problem to solution activities across the three course sequence and begin with the solution oriented approach since it immediately engages the novel and hopefully interesting biological part. These activities are centered on organismal function and then making an analogy to human problems, which builds the necessary approach and is largely conceptual.  Most of the design-build activities are focused on particular problems/challenges. In the first course in the sequence we start with the problem of maintaining temp, contextualizing this as a problem of delivering something important (like a vaccine) to people with no need for refrigeration (we know societally relevant problems are more engaging). We then have the students deconstruct current products to gain some understanding of how they work, and then look at organisms from the context of providing insulation. The students have to prototype some material and this is associated with tests using simple temperature probes.  In the second course we start with research on elephants (we have connections with labs doing this) to again inspire, and then move onto a the problem of building a gripper that can pick up non-regular and delicate objects, which connects to how elephants use their trunk (soft-robotics is a robust BID field). The last course is probably going to have a more open ended design activity, but we're just getting around to this aspect. Covid has delayed our progression somewhat. 

Thanks, Julia! Yes, with NGSS now including engineering design explicitly, this is a great opportunity to infuse some biology content with practices and cross-cutting concepts (data collection/ visualization, asking questions, using models, etc.) We have found in a past project (AMP-IT-UP, which focused on engineering courses for middle school) that infusing these practices in engineering courses (along with foundational mathematics) actually boosted students' performance in math and science when they took engineering at least twice (Alemdar, R. Moore, J. Lingle, J. Rosen, J. Gale, M. Usselman (2018) The Impact of a Middle School Engineering Course on Students’ Academic and Non-Cognitive Skills, International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science, and Technology, Vol 6(4), 363-380.) While that's not really the focus of this project, and the sample size would be too small at this point, we have evidence to support this type of curriculum development as being effective for students in terms of attitudes and competencies. :) 

haha-- thanks, Nick! Hope you're doing well. :) 

Hi Brian! Good to hear from you!

In this research, we are looking at students' proficiency, understanding of the engineering design process. One of our hypothesis is that the BID integration could increase students' understanding of the initial stages of the EDP such as problem scoping. We have several research instruments from our previous NSF engineering project ( AMP-IT-UP ). We have developed a web-based EDP log and tested a EDP rubric as part of the project. We now revised it to capture the BID components. Additionally, as part of our previous project, we have EDP assessment (Multiple Papers about the assessment). We are also working on student self-assessment for EDP. Engineering classrooms usually lack quality formative assessments, so we are hoping that we'll be able to provide some new formative assessment tools to the teachers. Other student outcomes are engineering self-efficacy; attitudes toward the natural and designed world; engagement and intent to persist in engineering (pre-post surveys). 

Thank you for your interest. 

Meltem

Hi Mel, thanks for all the linked materials, and glad to see that your previously developed research instruments are put to work here too! I agree about the need quality assessments that teachers can use formatively, especially if they can help teachers and students focus on the process as well as the final product.