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Icon for: Chelsea Lyles

CHELSEA LYLES

Virginia Tech

Radically Expanding Pathways in the Professional Formation of Engineers

NSF Awards: 1623067

2022 (see original presentation & discussion)

Grades K-6, Undergraduate

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech was awarded an IUSE/Professional Formation of Engineers: Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (IUSE/PFE: RED) grant through the National Science Foundation in 2016. One of the goals of the grant was to provide outreach opportunities for K-12 students in underserved and underrepresented populations to attract a broader pool of students and prepare them for a wide variety of careers. Floyd County Public Schools (FCPS) was awarded an Advancing Computer Science Education grant in 2018 to integrate computer science (CS) standards of learning into classroom instruction. Through a pilot of a new undergraduate service learning class, Dr. Chelsea Lyles collaborated with Ms. Kim Keith, an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher and Virginia Tech-FCPS Liaison, to pilot a model for developing sustainable, mutually beneficial relationships between universities and K-12 school systems while teaching undergraduate students how to provide STEM educational outreach that meet the needs of K-12 teachers. Through an interdisciplinary approach combining literacy with computational thinking, undergraduate students helped to increase teacher understanding of computer science fundamentals and develop the capacity and confidence to integrate computer science concepts into instruction. Students collaborated with teachers to introduce and work directly with students while modeling unplugged computer science lessons in first grade classrooms in a rural, Title I elementary school. Resources were developed that align with the Virginia Standards of Learning for the openly licensed #GoOpenVA repository.

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Discussion from the 2022 STEM For All Video Showcase (11 posts)
  • Icon for: Chelsea Lyles

    Chelsea Lyles

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Director of Broader Impacts
    May 10, 2022 | 01:12 p.m.

    Thanks so much for viewing our video!

  • Icon for: Nickolay Hristov

    Nickolay Hristov

    Facilitator
    Senior Scientist, Associate Professor, Director
    May 11, 2022 | 12:09 a.m.

    Hi Chelsea. Very neat project! The vertical structure for learning-then-teaching that has existed in grad/undergrad college instruction for decades is extended to the K-12 level.  Likely a wonderful experience for the undergraduate engineering and computer science students, now also teachers. What sort of preparation and professional development support did you have in place for these students. In other words, how did you teach these new teachers to be most effective facilitators in the K-12 setting.

  • Icon for: Chelsea Lyles

    Chelsea Lyles

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Director of Broader Impacts
    May 11, 2022 | 04:28 p.m.

    Hi Nickolay,

    The undergraduate service learning students received lessons on preK-12 outreach from Ms. Keith (former classroom teacher), communicating with preK-12 learners, asset-based community development, intercultural competence and communication, the social change model of leadership development, Virginia Standards of Learning, curricula and programming (lesson planning - classroom and 4H/informal learning), and universal design and design justice (among others). In addition to service learning as pedagogy, the course leans heavily on oral and written reflection, supported and evaluated using the DEAL Model of Critical Reflection (Ash & Clayton, 2009). Students practiced their lessons in class with Ms. Keith and I pretending to be their audience and demonstrating potential student behaviors and questions. 

  • Icon for: Sue Allen

    Sue Allen

    Facilitator
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 11, 2022 | 05:20 p.m.

    What a great set of courses! Chelsea could you say a bit more about how the asset-based community development fits in with this activity? I'm used to service-learning focusing on community needs outside the classroom.

  • Icon for: Chelsea Lyles

    Chelsea Lyles

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Director of Broader Impacts
    May 11, 2022 | 05:47 p.m.

    Certainly! We read an article titled Assets Based Community Development (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1996) (I haven't found a more recent resource that I like as much), as a way to enter into discussions on needs-based vs. assets-based approaches to community engagement. My aspiration for the course is that we will move on a spectrum from "volunteerism" towards "critical service learning" (Mitchell, 2008), where we recognize individual and community assets that can come together in a mutually-beneficial collaboration between members of our university community and members of educational organizations (such as schools and museums) with whom we work. I hope that community members benefit from the students' educational outreach initiatives while students are growing in their own career readiness competencies (communication, critical thinking, etc.)

  • Icon for: Channa Comer

    Channa Comer

    Facilitator
    STEM Educator
    May 11, 2022 | 04:14 p.m.

    Hello and thank you for sharing your work. I think it is wonderful to introduce computational thinking to the youngest students to prepare them for what they will need in the future. I would love to hear more about your choices in this project, What was the thinking behind choosing first grade over other grades? Why was the focus on "unplugged" lessons? 

    Can you describe in more detail what distinguishes a lesson as "unplugged" and clarify what the literacy component is in the project?

  • Kim Keith

    K-12 Teacher
    May 12, 2022 | 02:39 p.m.

    First graders were chosen for this project because students around this age are able to describe technologies used in daily life as well as consider the human impact on and with the technologies. The vocabulary covered: programmer, code, and sequencing are foundations that students this age can relate to. 

    Unplugged lessons do not require a device or computer yet build understanding and application of computational thinking. This type of lesson is beneficial to students of all ages and is appealing to teachers and students alike because of the hands-on element. CS Unplugged is a wonderful site for this type of resource. 

    As far as the literacy component, sequencing directly aligns with the Virginia Standards: English: 1.1i (giving simple directions) and 1.2b (tell stories in sequential order). 

    Examples of curricular lessons with BeeBot can be found at this generationrobotics site. 

     

     
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    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Chelsea Lyles
  • Icon for: Sue Allen

    Sue Allen

    Facilitator
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 11, 2022 | 05:35 p.m.

    I really like the way the robots were integrated with narrative matching the class's language arts units - I haven 't seen that before and I think integrating CS into regular classroom schedules is going to be the best approach from a systemic perspective.

    I was reminded of some of the projects in previous showcases, e.g.

    https://stemforall2021.videohall.com/presentations/2103

    https://stemforall2021.videohall.com/presentations/2110

    so I hope you'll be able to include on your site some links to resources created outside of Virginia Tech as well.

  • Icon for: Chelsea Lyles

    Chelsea Lyles

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Director of Broader Impacts
    May 11, 2022 | 05:52 p.m.

    Sue, thank you for this. Here are the links to related open-access lesson plans and professional development resources created by Ms. Kim Keith mentioned in the video: 

    https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/4296

    https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/4351

    https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/3005

    https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/4295

    https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/3546

    https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/3516

    https://goopenva.org/courses/hello-ruby-key-con...

  • Icon for: Sue Allen

    Sue Allen

    Facilitator
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 12, 2022 | 08:43 p.m.

    Thanks, it's nice to see you using Creative Commons to make the materials open-access. 

    My other question is about evaluation of impact - presumably there's learning happening at all levels, by the teacher, undergrads, and children. What kinds of impacts have you seen? Thank you.

  • Icon for: Chelsea Lyles

    Chelsea Lyles

    Lead Presenter
    Associate Director of Broader Impacts
    May 16, 2022 | 02:26 p.m.

    Great question! There are a few ways we measured impact in this program. Student learning for this activity was measured through formative, in-class assessment by students (1st graders) responding to the question, "Who is smarter, a human or a robot?" and counting the number of students who selected human at the beginning and end of the session. Student (college) learning is measured primarily through written reflection, where I look for students ability to translate what they learn through the team-based educational outreach project to their future plans by considering NACE career readiness competencies (https://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/compet...). We are hoping to see increased teacher comfort in checking out and using Beebots and related materials, as well as  increased teacher confidence in developing lesson plans that meet CS standards of learning. I don't have this data yet, but plan to collect in the future. 

  • Further posting is closed as the event has ended.