Ron Skinner’s research while affiliated with University of California, Santa Barbara and other places

... MOXI, The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation and the University of California, Santa Barbara collaboratively developed and tested a suite of engineering-focused education programs that linked engineering design challenges completed on field trips to the interactive science center to classroom science and engineering learning through pre-and post-field trip classroom activities (Harlow et al., 2020). Two Engineering Explorations field trip programs were implemented with over 200 K-6 classrooms between September 2018 and March 2020. ...

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Recognition of Design Failure by Fourth-Grade Students During an Engineering Design Challenge

... The work here focuses on the first two modules which are summarized in Table 1. More details can be found in [22,23]. ...

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Design Principles to Support Physics and Engineering Learning in Complementary Classrooms and Field Trip Activities

... The term applied improvisation (improv) is rapidly growing in popularity in large organizations, corporate offices, and classrooms as a powerful, learner-centered approach that emphasizes intuition, spontaneity, creativity, collaboration, and total engagement of both facilitator and learner (Chan, 2021;Dudeck & McClure, 2018;Gao et al., 2019;Hoffmann-Longtin et al., 2018;Skinner et al., 2022). In short, applied improv is the general term for using theater techniques, exercises, and games to facilitate learning and development outside the theater (Dudeck & McClure, 2018). ...

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Applied Improvisation in the Sport Management Curriculum

... Students with handson experience are more likely to reason based on their experiences rather than disciplinary knowledge. Thus, they may not be able to foresee design failure (Skinner & Harlow, 2023), and make fair comparisons or employ productive strategies to facilitate improvements (Johnson et al., 2021). Students usually provide incomplete reasoning or think of reasons or explanations from a limited perspective. ...

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Development and validation of an instrument for assessing secondary students’ transdisciplinary STEM practices

... For example, Coxon et al., (2018) stimulated an interest in Mathematics through engaging students in Lego We Do Robotics. One way to create these informal learning opportunities is for schools to forge partnerships with external organisations such as universities (Harlow et al., 2020;Taraban et al.' 2007). Like the role of mentors, the advantage of this kind of partnership is that it opens learners' minds to potential STEM study and career pathways (Harlow et al., 2020). ...

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Creative STEM Pathways - Supporting Pacific Learners through 3D Printing: Supporting Pacific Learners through 3D Printing

... Unlike the field trip program that needed to be implemented similarly across grade levels, teachers could implement a classroom activity more tailored to their grade level. Thus, each of these modules were differentiated across broad grade level bands (see [25]); however, through iterative testing and discussions with teachers, we found the largest difference between grade levels was not in student science or engineering knowledge, but in their literacy and math capabilities. Using the literacy and math standards to guide our differentiation allowed us to do more age-appropriate activities, especially in the ways that students collected and analyzed data. ...

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Design Principles to Support Physics and Engineering Learning in Complementary Classrooms and Field Trip Activities

... In an effort to disrupt how compliance can perpetuate marginalization and exclusion, institutions should review their IRB process. For example, Harlow and Skinner (2020), worked with their IRB to determine multiple paths to gain parental consent for childrens' participation in research at their partner museum. Additionally, RPPs have to consider partner organizations' compliance structures. ...

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Equitable Research-Practice Partnerships: A Multilevel Reimagining

... Nowadays, VTS is a method used in museums, schools, colleges and universities, mainly in the United States. In educational contexts, VTS became an art teaching method that improves critical thinking skills through discussions of visual images facilitated by the teacher, both in adults (Jasani & Saks, 2013), school-aged children (Campos, 2018;Connolly et al., 2019;Köksal & Çöğman, 2019;Smolkowski et al., 2020) and undergraduate students (Ishiguro et al., 2021). According to researchers involved in VTS, this art appreciation method encourages participation of students in a group prob-1 The method of art appreciation called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is fully detailed on the Website: https://vtshome.org/. ...

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Influence of Regular Visual Thinking Strategies Activities on Sustained Attention Abilities of Quebec Primary School Students: A Developmental Perspective

... The goal of the project is to develop suites of coordinated STEM activities. Each suite focuses on an engineering task completed at MOXI, The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation (e.g., Harlow, Skinner & O'Brien, 2017 ). Activities done in classrooms prior to the fi eld trip exhibit develop physical science and engineering ideas that the students will use in their fi eld trip program and require students to use mathematics skills being developed in their classrooms. ...

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Creating STEM Learning Opportunities Through Partnerships