Jackson Otto’s research while affiliated with Purdue University West Lafayette and other places

https://jstem.org/jstem/index.php/JSTEM/article/view/2639 While manufacturers have begun engaging with STEM education outreach efforts to address future workforce concerns and researchers have suggested that increasing students’ familiarity with these occupations through activities such as site visits and career days as a viable solution (Masters & Barth, 2022), a critical step is now determining the influence of these experiences on the occupational perception of children. Essentially, there is a gap in research on how industry public education initiatives can influence a child’s, from elementary school to secondary school, perception of manufacturing careers as well as how this influence is aligned to STEM-focused activities. Moreover, very few scholars have studied the relationship between STEM initiatives, career expectations, and alternative types of STEM career pathways into fields like manufacturing that may not require traditional 4-year bachelor’s degree (Sevilla & Rangel, 2022). Even though events such as Manufacturing Day were created to increase the number of local students entering the manufacturing career pathway, there is limited evidence to sup-port this claim. Therefore, this study sought to investigate children’s perceptions of manufacturing before and after two iterations of an industry-led STEM education event. More specifically, the study focused on the research questions of: RQ1. How do children, across grades K-12, perceive careers within the modern landscape of manufacturing? RQ2. What influence, if any, does industry-led STEM outreach have on children’s, across grades K-12, perceptions of manufacturing careers? RQ3. How, and in which ways can industry-led STEM outreach be better designed to connect industry needs and educational output?

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence that a novel, industry-situated, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Learning Laboratory (STEM Lab) experience may have on students’ (ages 10–18) perceptions of manufacturing-related careers as well as to identify any challenges/strategies for the implementation of these informal learning spaces within manufacturing facilities. STEM labs, which are similar to makerspaces, can be defined as physical spaces where students can learn integrated skills and content through hands-on experiences (Roy and Love, 2017). While STEM labs can be found in a variety of settings (e.g., school libraries, museums, or even theme parks), the industry-situated STEM lab that is the focus of this study is a unique application of such a learning environment in an informal space within a manufacturing facility. However, the aim for this specific space is to offer local students an opportunity to see manufacturing, the people that work there, and the skills that might be necessary to pursue a future career in the various aspects of this industry. This type of career awareness and preparation initiative has become an area of interest for manufacturers as they continue to face increasing challenges with attracting employees and confronting negative, potentially outdated, perceptions of manufacturing-related careers. That being said, this research will not attempt to justify the STEM lab initiative, but will instead provide a critical view of this novel context and this type of informal learning environment. This research objective was pursued by interviewing key industry stakeholders and analyzing an existing dataset—consisting of both student surveys and drawing tests—collected by the host manufacturer over the first year of the lab’s operation. By triangulating the data gathered from stakeholder interviews and both student surveys and drawing tests, which were collected before and after their experience with the STEM lab at the manufacturing facilities, this research sheds light on the challenges that similar industry-situated learning environments might face, as well as provides opportunities to potentially enhance the experience from both the student and industry perspective.

A student’s education today should reflect the evolving innovative nature of our society. While innovation was previously viewed as an economic driver or technological concept in the 20th century, modern times have innovation permeating into all branches of society, intending to seek and develop new knowledge and ideas (Lindfors & Hilmola, 2016). With this inclusion of innovation in society, students should be provided educational opportunities to develop innovation skills or practices that can better prepare them for the professional world as well as for making both societal and personal impact. Attempts to incorporate innovation education have been attempted in the past (Bartholomew, Strimel, Swift, and Yoshikawa, 2018; Strimel, Kim, and Bosman, 2019), with outcomes spanning from developing social responsibility within students (Thorsteinsson, 2014), to supplying students with skills to bring innovative behavior into their future careers (Maritz, de Waal, Buse, Herstatt, Lassen, & Maclachlan, 2014). Researchers have found that innovation capabilities are not typically a by-product of traditional comprehensive education and without specific curriculum to cultivate innovation practices among students across majors, many may be missing out on valuable knowledge and skillsets (Lindfors & Hilmola, 2016). Addressing this concern, a new undergraduate program at a large research-intensive university has been developed to provide students with the time, resources, and opportunities to enhance their innovation capabilities through co-teaching and co-learning from faculty and students from differing academic units. This novel approach specifically involves the collaborative teaching (i.e., multiple instructors in the same classroom at the same time) of innovation practices with faculty across the disciplines of liberal arts, engineering technology, and business management/entrepreneurship. Examining this approach to collaborative teaching across academic units is the focus of this study and preliminary results will be shared in this paper.

A student’s education today should reflect the evolving innovative nature of our society. While innovation was previously viewed as an economic driver or technological concept in the 20th century, modern times have innovation permeating into all branches of society, intending to seek and develop new knowledge and ideas (Lindfors & Hilmola, 2016). With this inclusion of innovation in society, students should be provided educational opportunities to develop innovation skills or practices that can better prepare them for the professional world as well as for making both societal and personal impact. Attempts to incorporate innovation education have been attempted in the past (Bartholomew, Strimel, Swift, and Yoshikawa, 2018; Strimel, Kim, and Bosman, 2019), with outcomes spanning from developing social responsibility within students (Thorsteinsson, 2014), to supplying students with skills to bring innovative behavior into their future careers (Maritz, de Waal, Buse, Herstatt, Lassen, & Maclachlan, 2014). Researchers have found that innovation capabilities are not typically a by-product of traditional comprehensive education and without specific curriculum to cultivate innovation practices among students across majors, many may be missing out on valuable knowledge and skillsets (Lindfors & Hilmola, 2016). Addressing this concern, a new undergraduate program at a large research-intensive university has been developed to provide students with the time, resources, and opportunities to enhance their innovation capabilities through co-teaching and co-learning from faculty and students from differing academic units. This novel approach specifically involves the collaborative teaching (i.e., multiple instructors in the same classroom at the same time) of innovation practices with faculty across the disciplines of liberal arts, engineering technology, and business management/entrepreneurship. Examining this approach to collaborative teaching across academic units is the focus of this study and preliminary results will be shared in this paper.

Universities have long played a crucial role in shaping society’s responses to changing technologies, economies, and living environments. However, to continue to harness the nation's great technological potential, universities must seek to better prepare undergraduates for addressing complex, contemporary challenges in both innovative and transdisciplinary ways. To best meet society’s needs, undergraduates should embrace the ability to build upon new ideas, processes, and ways of seeing things that add value to the world in a manner that emphasizes social and personal responsibility across fields of study. As the National Academy of Engineering [1] states, “innovative thinking should be an expectation of the university community and all students should be exposed to it early” (p. 6). Accordingly, multiple strategies have been enacted to attempt to engage students in innovation-focused learning, including engaging with design-based coursework in engineering settings [2] - [4] and providing learning experiences that emphasize entrepreneurial thinking [5] - [8]. While such initiatives strongly influence students, undergraduate learning continues to remain separated into individual silos, leaving students without access to authentic, transdisciplinary environments [9]. However, this paper highlights a recently developed transdisciplinary undergraduate education program focused on democratizing the practices of innovation across the broader college campus. Through this program students, regardless of their background or major, participate in co-teaching and co-learning from faculty and students in different academic units as they design, test, and optimize solutions to modern problems over multiple semesters. An examination of how the integration of these elements throughout multiple iterations of one component of the program will be presented along with its influence on students entrepreneurial thinking in regard to problem framing. These results will be positioned to better inform the development of similar educational programs as colleges and universities now have the responsibility to build a better future through the pandemic in novel and positive ways.

This Engineering in Action article presents a socially relevant lesson designed to intentionally teach secondary students core engineering concepts related to the practices of Engineering Design and Quantitative Analysis [presented in the Framework for P-12 Engineering Learning (2020)]. This lesson also situates learning in the context of computation and automation as described in Standards for Technological and Engineering Literacy (ITEEA, 2020) and addresses the standards focused on human-centered design and technological innovation/impacts. The lesson example includes (a) class discussions to engage students in a socially relevant problem (the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic) within the context of safety in public settings and (b) a design activity to help students learn and apply core concepts related to Engineering Practice (i.e., Computational Thinking, Prototyping, and Systems Analytics) as well as knowledge related to communication technologies. At the end of this lesson, students are expected to (1) design a social distancing lanyard for public events (See Figure 1), (2) explore methods of measuring distances between people via radio signals, (3) ideate several designs that meet the needs of their identified user, and (4) create a working prototype (including both digital and physical elements) of their chosen design. Additionally, students should be able to showcase their engineering practices as well as how knowledge of their user and communication technologies informed their design.

In order to feed the world’s growing population, farmers will need to produce 70% more food by 2050 than they did in 2006 (Bruinsma, 2009). To meet this demand, farmers and agriculture companies are turning to Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and data visualization to optimize analytic capabilities and ultimately, enhance their production through digital agricultural practices (Jayaraman, Palmer, Zaslavsky, & Georgakopoulos, 2015). However, few students are given the opportunity to explore the potential and impacts of modern “digital” agriculture during their educational experience. Therefore, this article will provide an example instructional activity combined with the principles of IoT technology and agriculture which could be used or mimicked to present students with an advanced look at an essential field related to food production and the growing population. Specifically, the instructional context of this lesson was developed to be situated within the Grand Engineering Challenge of Managing the Nitrogen Cycle (National Academy of Engineering, 2019). The activities of this lesson directly relate to this Grand Engineering Challenge because students will develop a means of surveying farmland for nitrogen deposits and explore ways for farmers to better manage their crop production. This exercise will also enhance the rigor of engineering design and provide socially-connected relevance to learning. Digital agriculture is an idea that many students around the world, and in the Midwest United States specifically, can find interest in, as they may be surrounded by agriculture in multiple forms. By exposing students to the concept of digital agriculture earlier in their lives, they will be able to develop the proper mindset to advance the field further when they enter the professional world. The challenge included in this lesson centers on students designing and programming a robot to monitor a field for nitrogen deposits with the intent of optimizing fertilization practices.