Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011

Executive Summary
2011 was another strong year for the Center. We graduated four PhD students, three of which went on to become faculty members (at Tufts, UMass Boston, and Arizona State) and the fourth received a very prestigious postdoctoral position at TERC - an education consulting rm in Boston. We received a large new grant looking at web-based collaboration, along with a number of smaller grants that have allowed us to evaluate and try out new ideas in a number of different technologies. On the engineering side, we spent the year building origami robots, developing collaborative websites, writing software with National Instruments, testing out new hardware with Texas Instruments, authoring a universal language for small robots, programming smart quadcopters, and building a heterogeneous swarm of LEGO robots. We started a new program that turns LEGO bricks into MIDI controllers so that the NXT can now play music through GarageBand. We also spent a bit of time developing the tools for high school students to track objects in a YouTube movie and through that develop models for the world around them. Finally, our student-run BotLAB participated in a number of robotics competitions, ran their own classes, and even started their own outreach effort to involve more students from Arts and Sciences. In education research, two PhD dissertations developed accounts of students' design and use of visual representations as part of their reasoning about topics in physical science including sound and air pressure, working with both paper and pencil and using SAM Animation as media; another dissertation studied students' learning in science, in particular around causal mechanisms, within engineering activities. We began new work in the project Integrating Engineering and Literacy, gearing up for work that will take place over the next several years. Our early efforts have already produced pilot data that provides existence-proof evidence of what can come of students' identifying engineering problems in ctional literature. We are already presenting ndings from this work at conferences and preparing manuscripts for publication, highlighting students' abilities for planning and the synergies between literacy and engineering. In particular, the students' are able to identify, dene, and work to solve engineering problems that arise for CEEO Staff, Students and Faculty characters in the stories they read. In an effort to help better guide the Center through its growth, in 2012, we hired a new Associate Director, Dr. Merredith Portsmore (one of our recent PhD graduates in Engineering Education). Her role will be to run the day-to-day operation of the Center. Merredith is well-prepared to run the CEEO because she has been very inuential at the Center almost from its beginning - she began working at the Center over 10 years ago. Our STOMP outreach program is her brainchild, as is the idea of bringing education research into the Center. David and I will continue as co-directors, but our role will be mainly helping guide the long-term Center vision as well as leading individual research projects within the Center. In particular, I want to concentrate more on bringing our quest for understanding student thinking into the Tufts classroom. Elissa Milto will become the new Director our Outreach programs while Morgan Hynes and Ethan Danahy will continue overseeing Educational Research and Tool Development, respectively. We look forward in 2012 to continuing to build our expertise in understanding student thinking, to helping teachers identify and nurture student ideas, and to developing new products that motivate students to ask questions.

David Hammer, CEEO Co-Director

1

Chris Rogers, CEEO Co-Director

Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011

Table of Contents
Who We Are and What We Do
About the CEEO 3 4 5 6 CEEO People and Organization: 2011 CEEOs Impact at a Glance

Project and Program Overview: 2011 Milestones

Highlight at a Glance

Graduating and New Graduates of 2011 Checking in with our CEEO Alumni Highlights of 2011

7 8 9

Featured Initiatives in 2011

Integrating Engineering and Literacy 11 13 16 17 19 20 21 23 24 InterLACE: Interactive Learning and Collaboration Environment CEEO in the News

Press and Publications in 2011

Publications and Presentations by CEEO Authors in 2011 2011 Financials: Overview of Revenue and Expenses 2011 Balance Overview and Total Commitments Grants applied for in 2011

Financial Statements

Goals for 2012

CEEO Directors of Educational Research, Engineering Research, and Outreach Highlight Challenges for 2012 Thank You to our Donors

ABOUT THE CEEO

The Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) is a leading innovator in K-12 engineering education. We inject engineering learning into K-12 classrooms to change how students think and learn today, ultimately shaping how they invent tomorrow. We believe all students are budding innovators who will excel by learning through failure, working in teams and solving problems. The CEEO knows Kids Can . . . Think. Solve. Discover. Invent. Change the World.

INSPIRED BY KIDS IDEAS

Kids are naturally engaged in figuring out the world, curious about how things work, open to trying new things and not afraid to fail. Yet early classroom experiences often focus on achieving measurable outcomes, coming up with the right answer, avoiding failure and memorizing other peoples ideas. At the CEEO, were all about shifting the focus back to kids ideas. We research how young people build and use their ideas and engineer classroom-tested tools to fuel their creative instincts and support them as they explore the world in new ways.

ENGINEERING A BETTER FUTURE

We are at a critical juncture: we need to inspire and catalyze the next generation of American innovators, or risk losing a competitive edge in the global market. The CEEO believes that by providing our k-12 teachers with the opportunity and support to take risks and be innovative in their teaching, they will engage students in a whole new world of creativity and excitement in the classroom. Our teachers are integral partners as we prepare our students to be world-class innovators who can create a brighter future in a safer, cleaner and healthier world.

! MAKING A WORLDWIDE IMPACT

The CEEOs innovative curricula, educational tools and research are sought by educators, administrators and corporations around the globe. Known for inspiring students to engineer at a young age, the impact of the Centers work can be felt worldwide. ! In conjunction with LEGO, the CEEO developed ROBOLAB and LabVIEW for LEGO Mindstorms robotics software and training tools that have helped more than 10 million students learn math, science, engineering and technology. ! The CEEOs Student Teacher Outreach Mentorship Program (STOMP) has sent more than 200 TUFTS students into 60 Massachusetts classrooms and sparked 10 programs across the U.S. ! The CEEOs SAM Animation software, which empowers students and teachers to express their ideas using stop-motion animation, has attracted 20,000- 30,000 users and is available on every continent.

Who We Are and What We Do

CEEO People and Organization: 2011

NOTE: An average of 50 undergraduate students work part-time at the CEEO throughout the year as fellows in STOMP, research project assistants, operational support, activity development, and website support.
Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011 4

Who We Are and What We Do

CEEOs Impact at a Glance

7 184 5,200 8,300 355,400

Graduate students at the CEEO pursuing either M.S. or Ph.D degrees in Engineering Education through the Tufts Math, Science, Technology, and Engineering (MSTE) Education program. Countries with at least one visitor to CEEO websites in 2011. Educators who have participated in LEGO Engineering Conferences and Symposia since they began in 2004. K-12 students in the Boston area impacted by STOMP since its inception in 2001. Visits to CEEO websites in 2011.

Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011

Who We Are and What We Do

Project and Program Overview: 2011 Milestones
NEW GRANTS
InterLACE: Interactive Learning and Collaboration Environment, NSF PETE: Preparing Engineers to Educate, NSF SciGames: A Technology-enhanced Model for Bridging Informal and Formal Science, NSF Bringing LEGO Engineering to A.B. Columbus School, LEGO BotLAB Support, Texas Instruments SciPlay Lab, Motorola ChangeMakers Foundation Award, ChangeMakers Foundation

Steinway: Steinway funded a number of undergraduate capstone design projects looking at possible improvements for the piano design (like a pedal extender for young kids with short legs) and improvements on a MIDI pickup device. The gift also funded a new course at Tufts, teaching students iPad programming by having them build music-based apps. Texas Instruments: Texas Instruments (TI) gave a gift to support the Tufts University BotLAB and for CEEO to hire undergraduates to work on projects focusing on TI technology Verizon Foundation: Verizon Foundation will be supporting a program to help engage more females in engineering education which was incorporated with STOMP creating W-STOMP.

NEW GIFTS

WORKSHOPS AND SYMPOSIUMS IN 2011

Parent-Student Engineering January 29, 2011 Grades: 1-6 Homeschool Workshop: Integrating Engineering & Literacy with Robotics February 1, 8, 15; March 1, 8, 15 Grades 3-5 Afterschool: NASA - Humans in Space February 9, 16; March 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, April 6, 13, 27 Grades 4-6 Inventors Workshop February 12 Grades: 1-3 Parent-Student Engineering March 19 Grades: 1-6 Inventors Wrkshp: Knights & Princesses April 9 Grades: 1-3 Mother's Day Off: Art-Making Robots May 8 Grades: 1-4 2011 LEGO Engineering Symposium May 24-26 Adults CEEO NASA Robotics Internships July 5-29 High School Students Early Robotics: Around the World in 80 Days July 6-8 Grades 1 - 2 Early Robotics: Pirates July 6-8 Grades 1-2 Girls Week: Environmental Engineering July 11-15 Grades 5-8 Co-Ed Robotics July 16-20 Grades 3-8 Co-Ed Robotics July 23-27 Grades 3-8 LEGO Eng. Institute for Educators Aug 1-5 Adults Early Robotics: Treasure Hunters August 9-11 Grades 1-2 Afterschool: Robotic Zoo Workshop Oct 18, 25; Nov 1, 8, 15, 29; Dec 6 Grades 4-6 Halloween LEGO Workshop October 29 Grades 4-6 Grades 1-3 Toy Design Team Open House November 9, 16 Ages: 4-8 Winter Wonderland Carnival December 3 Grades 4-6 Grades 1-3

Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011

Highlights at a Glance
Graduating Students of 2011

2011 CEEO Graduates

Brian Gravel, Ph.D. in Science Education
Thesis: Elementary Students' Multiple Representations of Their Ideas About Air Currently: Lecturer and Director of Elementary Education at Tufts University

Chris Wright, Ph.D. in Science Education

Thesis: Learning to See Sound: An Investigation into the Intellectual and Linguistic Resources that Urban Middle School African American Boys Utilize in the Practice of Representing Sound Transmission Currently: Post-Doctoral Associate at TERC

Elsa Head, M.S. in Engineering Education

Thesis: Teaching Engineering Design Among Teachers Enrolled in the Tufts University Student Teacher Outreach Mentorship Program Currently: Noyce Fellow in the MAT in Mathematics program at Tufts University

Ashley Russell, M.S. in Human Factors

Thesis: A Cognitive Load Theory Approach to LearnerCentered Design of Digital Instructional Media and Supporting Accessibility Tools Currently: Human Factors Engineer at Cambridge ConsultCEEO MSTE PhD Graduates from left to right ants Top: Merredith Portsmore, Morgan Hynes, Adam Carberry,
Bottom: Kristen Wendell, Chris Wright, Brian Gravel

New Graduate Students at CEEO

Danielle Dowling, pursuing Masters in MSTE Education, InterLACE
B.A., physics, Hunter College B.A., journalism, University of Massachusetts at Amherst Eric Fournier, pursuing Masters in Mechanical Engineering, STOMP Manager B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Tufts University Chris Macrander, pursuing Ph.D. in MSTE Education S.B. Chemistry, University of Chicago M.A.T. Elementary Education, University of Chicago Jessica Noble, pursuing Masters in Mechanical Engineering B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Tufts University Brian OConnell, pursuing Masters in Mechanical Engineering, IEL B.S Mechanical Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst Jessica Swenson, pursuing Masters in MSTE Education, W-STOMP B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern Ra Yagudin, pursuing Masters in Computer Science, IEL BS in Operations Management, Tufts University
Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011

Highlights at a Glance
Checking in with our CEEO Alumni Kristen Wendell, CEEO Alumni from Tufts University
MSTE PhD program Kristen Wendell graduated in 2010 and recently began work as an Assistant Professor of Elementary Science Education at UMass Boston. We are excited that we are continuing to work with her on the Integrating Engineering and Literacy project. We chatted with her recently to see what shes up to, I am excited to continue work with the CEEO as I explore how pre-service and novice teachers learn to combine science and engineering with reading and writing in their elementary classroom. Kristen noted that, in addition to Kristen Wendell, Assistant inuencing the kinds of data I collect from classrooms Professor in Elementary Science (many kinds of data in multiple representations!) and the Education, UMass Boston way I analyze it (with an aim to understand the students' thinking!), the CEEO is really the inspiration for my research agenda. It was responsible for my rst educational research question can kids learn science concepts by doing engineering?, and it continues to inspire the research questions I am asking today. Ever ambitious and resourceful, Kristen is also working with Arthur Eisenkraft to explore ways to incorporate engineering into high school physics and biology curricula. What CEEO moment made the most lasting impression on Kristen? I'll always remember... Chris's never-failing refusal to accept no for an answer when it came time to invite me to the weekly frisbee game, even when I was 8 months pregnant :)

Adam Carberry, Assistant Professor at Arizona State University

Adam Carberry received an Assistant Professor position Arizona State University in the College of Technology and Innovation Department of Engineering

Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011

Highlights at a Glance
Highlights of 2011
In 2011 we had some exciting new developments at the CEEO: STOMP was the winner of the Changemakers competition, the W-STOMP program is in full effect, our spin off company, iCreate to Educate, made great strides, LabVIEW for LEGO Mindstorms was released, and CEEO marketing took a new turn.

Tufts STOMP wins $10,000 for its innovative approach to engineering education
This past summer Ashoka Changemakers invited organizations to participate in their Partnering for Excellence: Innovations in Science + Technology + Engineering + Math (STEM) Education competition. The CEEOs STOMP program, which pairs undergraduate students with local K-12 teachers to support engineering activities, was named one of the 10 nalists (out of over 255 entries) that exemplify Ashokas criteria for social impact, sustainability, and innovation, while demonstrating the strongest initiatives to bring the passion and real-life skills of STEM professionals to advance STEM learning in public schools. STOMP went on to win the Jhumki Basu Foundation Prize, which recognizes organizations that work to democratize science education. The prize of $10,000 will be used to support 5 classrooms in the STOMP program.

W-STOMP focusing on women With generous support from the Verizon Foundation, the CEEOs STOMP program has launched a pilot program targeting female engagement with engineering education. W-STOMP (Women and STOMP) focuses on a systemic approach to engaging female 4th and 5th grade students in engineering through formal and informal experiences. The program was inspired by the fact that over fty percent of the STOMP fellows are female. During summer 2011, eight teachers participated in professional development at Tufts that focused on engineering and teaching practices that engage female students. These teachers are being supported 1-2 hours per week during the 2011/2012 2011 STOMP group photo school year with two STOMP fellows each, at least one of which is female to serve as a role model and mentor. Participating classrooms have engaged in a range of engineering activities from LEGO-robotics to service learning projects. The program will conclude this summer with a 1-week camp experience for the female students from participating classrooms. Ongoing evaluation and research will look at the impact of the program as well as the dynamics of classrooms engaged in these activities.

Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011

Highlights at a Glance

iCreate to Educate, CEEO spin off company, has made great strides in 2011 iCreate has grown signicantly in 2011, organically expanding to over 50,000 users and a regular staffed team of 7 with the broader mission of bringing active learning to K12 classrooms worldwide. For iCreate founder and former CEEO Assistant Director, Melissa Pickering, 2011 started off with incubation among 23 other edtech startups (out of over 1000 applicants) by the Kauffman Foundation. Over the course of 4-months, with the help of other edtech entrepreneurs, advisors, mentors, and business leaders, Melissa was able to identify and make early strides in implementing a sustainable high growth business model. Hitting the ground running at the conclusion of the program in June, she focused on building a team and expanding a customer base of teachers. As a result, iCreate closed out the year meeting revenue targets and forming a solid story to share with prospective investors in 2012.

iCreate's early success has been through the commercialization of the SAM Animation software, as it holds an exclusive perpetual license with Tufts University. Over the course of the year with feedback from school users from UK to Singapore to California, iCreate began mapping the software to core content, and also building out early sketches for porting the product to tablets. Moving forward, iCreate will continue to create and design other products all within the framework of giving kids a simple and effective way to create content while leveraging media to do so. With more investors and entrepreneurs paying attention to the K12 education space than ever before, there's a slow revolution building in the edtech world, and it's exciting for iCreate to be among the change-makers.

Melissa Pickering, iCreate to Educate founder

LabVIEW for LEGO Mindstorms

The CEEO and National Instruments (NI) collaborated on a new version of LabVIEW, NIs agship software, specically for LEGO Mindstorms. This version allows the user full control of the NXT along with a new project area where students can easily test motors and sensors on their robot and give labels to their motors for more readable Tetrix programs. We used LabVIEW for LEGO Mindstorms (or A simple LVLM program LVLM), in a number of our classes at Tufts, where students built everything from that runs all motors for one LEGO-controlled shadow puppets to musical instruments. We are currently playsecond ing around with ideas that will extend LVLM into the world of image processing so that students can allow their robots to see.

CEEO makes new marketing initiatives In 2011, Kathleen Bowden, CEO of CXO Communication, worked closely with CEEO directors to create a message platform to help shape CEEOs marketing and to help CEEO advertise internally (within Tufts University) and externally to the world. Our main goal was to create consistency across CEEO messaging between presentations, handouts, and our website. Our work with CXO Communication resulted in developing a message platform, a one-pager for distribution, and a consistent presentation for conferences. In 2012, CXO Communication will help CEEO develop a publicity strategy by helping to publish articles in local newspapers and to continue to shape and spread CEEOs mission. CEEO has also made great strides in our social media outreach. The CEEO Facebook page reached out to followers in 20 different countries and from 2010 to 2011 we doubled the amount of people that like out Facebook page. CEEO also uses Twitter, Linkedin, and Pinterest to reach out through social media and continues to explore other social networking areas for reaching out to Teachers, Students, Companies, and the Tufts University community.

Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011

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Featured Initiatives in 2011

Integrating Engineering and Literacy (IEL) Grant
Project Development in 2011 Update on IEL grant in 2011 The Integrating Engineering and Literacy (IEL) Project is an NSF-funded grant that works with 3rd-5th grade teachers to identify childrens literature to serve as a source for engineering design challenges. The project is in its second of ve years. Last year, the focus was pilot testing IEL activities in local classrooms, developing content for the professional development (PD), and holding two professional development workshops. This year, the IEL team has been working to support the 15 teachers that attended the summer PD and has led PD for 6 new classrooms. Student working on IEL project us- Currently, 21 classrooms are involved with the project across 4 school districts in ing found materials in the classroom the greater Boston area. Beginning in September, the IEL team has been holding monthly on-going PD with IEL teachers and supporting them in their classrooms as they implement IEL activities. As the students read the books, teachers help them identify the characters problems so the students are able to design solutions to the issues. Sample solutions that students have engineered are a balloon car to help the mouse in The Mouse and the Motorcycle escape the trash compactor, devices to rescue a stuffed rabbit from the bottom of the ocean in The Adventures of Edward Tulane, and a refrigerator for the boys-turned-into-mice in The Witches. In addition to PD, the IEL research team has been analyzing classroom videos and student projects to examine how the kids engage in both engineering and literacy practices during IEL activities. In particular, the team is writing up results that show how the rich world of a book can provide resources to support students' engineering and likewise how the process of designing can support thinking about the characters, plot, and themes of the book. The results of this research will speak to literature on integrated English-Language Arts instruction, providing much-needed data on student reasoning and practices in these environments. Furthermore, our results will add to and challenge existing engineering education research, showing how students can engage in the beginnings of key engineering practices, such as problem-framing and planning. We will have numerous opportunities to visit classrooms and collect data through the end of the 2011/2012 school year. Classrooms are planning to read books that include The Adventures of Hugo Cabret, Tarantula in my Purse, The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and Johnny Tremain. We look forward to seeing what the kids design and then to showing the teachers videos of their students in action during the summer professional development.

A look into Mechanical Engineering student Brian OConnells work for the IEL Project During IEL activities, students use found materials to create simply amazing constructs representing their solutions to literature based problems. Sometimes those imagined solutions involve lights, sounds or other actions not easily reproduced with cardboard, paper, and glue. Brian OConnell is developing a simple electronics kit, for IEL, that allows students to add lights and sounds to their found material projects, easily connecting the modules in a simple circuit and mounting them using the commercially available Makedo Kit. This is just one project Brian OConnell, MS Grad Student, works on inexwhere students created an alarmed lunchbox to keep a charac- pensive robotics in the classroom for the IEL Project ter's lunch from being stolen. Triggered by a switch module in the handle that sets off the alarm, the students get to fully experience their idea grow from paper to product with all the bells and whistles - literally. Being able to create functional models helps students to evaluate and iterate on their design ideas.

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Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011

Featured Initiatives in 2011

Integrating Engineering and Literacy (IEL) Grant
A chance to hear work from our IEL PostDocs and PhD Student Jessica Watkins, IEL PostDoc Since joining the project as a postdoctoral researcher this year, I have been excited to see how IEL projects provide students opportunities to engage in reading, writing, science, and engineering in new ways. My educational research background has been grounded in science - mostly physics - so I am enjoying comparing and contrasting students' reasoning and practices across disciplines. In looking at their engineering practices, I am encouraged by how enthusiastic students are to have their own ideas in design and how they hold those ideas accountable to engineering constraints, client needs, and user experiences. By using video data of students working in pairs or small groups and presenting to the whole class, not only can we richly describe the practices and contexts of students' engineering, but we can also develop detailed case studies that can inform instruction and professional development. In my research so far, I have focused mostly on characterizing how these beginning engineers participate in problem-framing practices, with the goals of disseminating how young students do engineering and helping teachers and instructors attend to and support this aspect of it.

Kathleen Spencer, IEL Literary Expert I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow on the IEL project and have been looking at the ways that integrating engineering and English Language Arts units may support literacy learning. I am particularly interested in how engineering projects that are based on the problems faced by characters in a book can encourage students to think deeply about characters, setting, key vocabulary, and important themes. I am currently analyzing video data in which elementary-aged students spontaneously use the specics of a novel to guide their design process and establish textbased criteria for evaluating their projects. These students meaningfully engage in target literacy practices, including in-depth character study, discussion about the limits and resources inherent in the setting and situation, and consideration of key themes in the book. In short, IEL projects may support reading comprehension and other important literacy goals in the general elementary classroom.

Mary McCormick, IEL MSTE PhD Student As a new graduate student on the IEL project this year, I thought I would be researching how to teach engineering to elementary level students; I never imagined that the elementary students would profoundly impact the way I perceive engineering. In the IEL approach, students navigate the engineering design process without a prescriptive set of engineering design steps, often drawing on the literature for design criteria and constraints to solve a specic problem. As such, the engineering design process as practiced by children, similar to professionals, is often iterative and messy, reecting the ill-structured nature of the problem. My current research endeavor seeks to explore what the beginnings of engineering look like in children when they are immersed in a literature-based context. From an engineering perspective, I am interested in how they frame engineering problems in an overlapping classroom-literature setting, how they manage and balance criteria and constraint trade-offs, how and why they spontaneously test product feasibility and functionality, and how they evaluate themselves and their designs throughout the process. In conducting research in classrooms, I am attending to the unique ways that students engineering design processes unravel, exploring the role that artifactual representations and social interactions have. As we continually learn about how children engineer on this project, I believe we will be better prepared to design informed methods of integrating engineering into classroom subjects and activities.

Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011

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Featured Initiatives in 2011

InterLACE: Interactive Learning and Collaboration Environment Grant
Overview of the InterLACE Project Intro to the InterLACE Project In September 2011, Ethan Danahy received a new NSF grant (along with Morgan Hynes and Dan Hannon, Tufts Professor of the Practice in Human Factors) to explore the design, development, and use of a new software environment called InterLACE: Interactive Learning and Collaboration Environment. Funded at $2.3M over the next 4 years, the team also includes Leslie Schneider as project manager, new graduate students Danielle Dowling (education) and Eric Coopey (computer science), and a Design Team of local high-school physics teachers. Overview The InterLACE Project seeks to test an innovative web-based learning environment in supporting high school physics students in carrying out collaborative design-based inquiry science/engineering projects. A participatory design process InterLACE Grant PI Ethan Danahy is being used to create a toolbox of web-based solutions that presents to teachers provides both technology and content to facilitate productive collaborative classroom activities including problem identication, brainstorming, debate, visualization, reection, collective sense making, and other conceptual activities. The goal is to enable high quality, collaborative inquiry-based activities.

Work So Far Developing a framework for how collaborative inquiry learning is enacted, modied, and augmented in the classroom, through transcript analyses, pilot tests, and design discussions Observing physics classrooms to understand the context of use Designing InterLACE technology tools to support student discussion and sense-making Generating a set of activities to test InterLACE functionality for use in our pilot studies Dening methodologies and rubrics for assessing the software and classroom practices Co-PI Morgan Hynes presenting initial classroom Documenting and disseminating the software, activities, and ndings in conference papers and through newsletter observations during working group meeting updates to funders and advisors

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Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011

Featured Initiatives in 2011

InterLACE: Interactive Learning and Collaboration Environment Grant
In the Classroom and the Design Team The InterLACE Prototype The team has created a prototype version for testing in classrooms that supports teachers developing interactive worksheet-like activities and supports the input of student ideas and answers into a shared, public workspace for class-wide visualization and discussion. Student entries may be made using text or pictures and are visible to the entire class in a persistent public space both on their local personal computer screens and projected at the front of the room. Both students and teachers can dynamically rearrange students post-it-note-like entries to highlight work by an individual group or point out patterns and connections across group ideas. Additionally, members of the class can also use InterLACEs comment feature to show support, contribute to, or critique ideas in real time.
Early InterLACE software demonstrating visualization of multiple ideas simultaneously

The Design Team We have worked closely with a Design Team made up of high school physics teachers who collectively possess a wide range of teaching experience from small to large schools within urban and rural settings. The ve teachers who comprise our Design Team represent a student population of a myriad of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. They play a critical role during this project both as co-designers of the The design team teachers (L to R): Gary Garber (BU Academy), Rory Kondrad (Somerville HS), Bill Church (Lit- technology and facilitators for initial in-school tleton HS), Adriana Costache (Fenway HS), and Richard pilot testing of the InterLACE toolbox.
Danahy (Sant Bani School)

For more information: http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu/interlaceproject

Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011 14

Press and Publications in 2011

CEEO in the News
The CEEO was recognized both internally and externally to Tufts in 2011. The list below identies areas where the CEEO was in the news, and more detail on each article can be found online: http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu/ceeonews Tufts University Tisch College Newsletter (March, 2011) -- Verizon Foundation awards grant to Tufts CEEO to engage girls in engineering BrokenAirplane.com (March 9, 2011) -- SAM Animation is the standard for what educational software could be Mass High Tech Business News (March 16, 2011) -- 2011 Women to Watch: Melissa Pickering Boston.com (April 7, 2011) -- Verizon to donate $60,0000 to Tufts University CEEO 4-Traders.com (April 7, 2011) -- Verizon: Foundation awards grant to Tufts CEEO Boston Business Journal (April 7, 2011) -- Verizon Donates to Tufts CEEO for Girls STEM Education NewtonSTEM.org (April 11, 2011) -- iCreate and SAM: Learning STEM by doing Stop-Motion Animation TuftsDaily.com (April 20, 2011) -- Verizon awards grant for Science and Math Education Empowering the Nation Through Discovery and Innovation: NSF Fiscal Plans for Fiscal Years (FY) 2011-2016 (May 4, 2011) -- CEEO is part of NSF Strategic Plan for scal year 2011-2016 Tufts University Tisch College Newsletter (May 16, 2011) - President Bacow recognizes graduating students for outstanding citizenship Ed Tech Digest (May 16, 2011) -- Interview: Melissa Pickering says, iCreate toEducate Click Brick (May 27, 2011) -- Thoughts on the LEGO EngineeringSymposium Washington University in St. Louis: Science Outreach (June 17, 2011) -- Engineers design learning for young students using LEGO curriculum Washington University in St. Louis: Newsroom (July 12, 2011) -- Learning LEGOs Daily Freeman (July 27, 2011) -- Rhinebeck gets donation for Lego Robotics school project Boston.com (August 4, 2011) -- Proposed Somerville charter school to focus on ESL Internet Scout Project (August 5, 2011) -- Tufts University Center for Engineering Education and Outreach Boston.com (September 18, 2011) -- A real test for techies: the education market Wicked Local Melrose (November 9, 2011) -- New events highlight STEM education in Melrose District Administration (November 15, 2011) -- The 2011 Readers' Choice Top 100 Products ChangeMakers.com (November 15, 2011) -- Nations most innovative STEM solutions honored in Partnering for Excellence Competition
Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011 16

Press and Publications in 2011

Publications and Presentations by CEEO Authors in 2011

Bratzel, B. (2011). LabVIEW lessons: Classroom activities for learning and using LabVIEW with LEGO Mindstorms. Knoxville: College House Enterprises. Cao, C. and Danahy, E. (2011). Increasing accessibility to medical robotics education. Paper presented at the IEEE International Conference on Technologies for Practical Robotic Applications, Boston, MA. Coffey, J. E., Hammer, D., Levin, D. M., & Grant, T. (2011). The missing disciplinary substance of formative assessment. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48(10), 1109-1136. Crismond, D., Hynes, M., and Danahy, E. (2011). Integrating NASA science and engineering: Using an innovative software curriculum delivery tool to create a NASA-based curriculum. Paper presented at the annual conference for the American Society for Engineering Education, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Danahy, E. and Russell, A. (2011). Increasing STEM accessibility for students with cognitive disabilities via interactive curriculum. Paper presented at the annual conference for the American Society for Engineering Education, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Gravel, B. (2011). Elementary students' multiple representations of their ideas about air. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Tufts University, Medford. Hammer, D., Gupta, A., & Redish, E. F. (2011). On static and dynamic intuitive ontologies. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 20(1), 163-168. Head, E. (2011). Teaching engineering design among teachers enrolled in the Tufts University Student Teacher Outreach Mentorship Program. (Unpublished masters thesis). Tufts University, Medford. Head, E., & Hynes, M. (2011).The nature of teacher knowledge of and self-efcacy in teaching engineering design in a STOMP Classroom.Paper presented at the annual conference for the American Society for Engineering Education, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Hynes, M. M., Head, E., & Danahy, E. E. (2011).Integrating NASA science and engineering: Using innovative software curriculum delivery tool to create NASA-based curriculum.Paper presented at the annual conference for the American Society for Engineering Education, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Hynes, M. M., McKenna, A. F., Rogers, C. B., Mueller, M. K., Neumeyer, X., & Lerner, R. M. (2011).The role of intentional self-regulation in achievement in engineering.Paper presented at the annual conference for the American Society for Engineering Education, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

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Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011

Press and Publications in 2011

Portsmore, M. (2011). Exploring constructed artifacts and planning drawings 1st grade students create while solving engineering design problems in development of creativity in artifact use and design. Paper presented at the biannual conference for the Society of Research in Child Development, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Portsmore, M. (2011). Exploring how rst-grade students planning via drawing impacts their engineering design solutions in children's invented representations as tools for developing understanding in science and engineering: A symposium. Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA. Portsmore, M., Brizuela, B., (2011). First grade students planning and artifact construction while working on an engineering design problem. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the American Society of Engineering Education. Vancouver, BC. Russell, A. (2011). A cognitive load theory approach to learner-centered design of digital instructional media and supporting accessibility tools. (Unpublished masters thesis). Tufts University, Medford. Tobin, R.G., Crissman, S., Doubler, S., Gallagher, H., Goldstein, G., Lacy, S., Rogers, C.B., Schwartz, J., & Wagoner, P. (2011). Teaching teachers about energy: Lessons from an inquirybased workshop for K-8 teachers. Journal of Science Education and Technology (20): 785-789. Wendell, K.B., Kendall, A., Portsmore, M., Wright, C., Jarvin, L., & Rogers, C.B. (2011). Engineering-design-based science, science content learning, and science attitudes in the elementary grades. Paper presented at the annual conference of the National Association of Science Teachers, San Francisco, CA. Wendell, K., Portsmore, M., Wright, C., Rogers, C., Jarvin, L., Kendall, A., (2011). The impact of engineering-based science instruction on science content understanding and attitudes. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the American Society of Engineering Education. Vancouver, BC. Wright, C. (2011). Learning to see sound: An investigation into the intellectual and linguistic resources that urban middle school African American boys utilize in the practice of representing sound transmission. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Tufts University, Medford.

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Financial Statement
2011 Financials: Overview of Revenue and Expenses
Statement of Activities
2011 brought in more growth for CEEO. We received two grants from NSF and gifts from the Verizon Foundation, Steinway, and Texas Instruments. We had a large shift in staff becoming faculty, as reected below in the labor expenses and we also hired two new PostDocs. As the CEEO continues to grow, you can see that so do our expenses, as a Center.

Revenue

2011

2010
$34,220 $67,205 $290,000 $1,359,187 $94,000 $19,437 $511,148

Royalties $24,235 Fees $62,485 Private Grants $315,580 Government Grants $1,387,480 Tufts SOE Deans Ofce $104,265 Endowment $17,340 Gifts $690,310 In Kind Support Hardware donations LEGO $50,000 NI $20,000 Total Revenues $2,671,695

$65,000 $20,000 $2,460,197

Expenses
Labor Faculty Staff Administrative Project Staff PostDocs Students Teacher Stipends and Consulting Materials Travel Domestic International F&A Total Expenses $277,950 $59,940 $158,880 $42,580 $296,180 $149,945 $94,595 $129,400 $67,220 $289,090 $0 $278,560 $118,160 $87,195

$30,920 $27,650 $28,220 $21,300 $311,820 $189,160 $1,451,030 $1,207,737

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Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011

Financial Statement
2011 Balance Overview and Total Commitments for 2012-1015
As we wrap up 2011, the chart Snapshot of Balance as of December 31, 2011 shows the ending balance of our accounts. We are still mostly funded by government grants starting the year 2011. Total commitments reects how much money is contracted to us in 2012-2015 according to our yearly budgeted amount from government grants, private grants, and gifts awarded to the CEEO.

Total Commitments from Existing Grants

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Financial Statement
Grants Applied for in 2011
Captured here is an overview of grants that were applied for in 2011. In total, CEEO faculty members applied for $23 million worth of grants as either a PI or CoPI.
Note: Grants may not be reected in CEEO nancial page if CEEO faculty member is CoPI on grant and grant belongs to a different Tufts department department.

Grant Name 1 ChangeMakers Foundation Award 2 3 SciGames: A Technology-Enhanced Model for Bridging Informal and Formal Science InterLACE: Interactive Learning and Collaboration Environment

Foundation ChangeMakers NSF NSF NSF LEGO Texas Instruments Motorola NSF NSF

Status Funded Funded Funded Funded Funded Funded Funded Pending Pending

Total Amount $10,000 $13,401 $2,918,541 $299,675 $54,000 $20,000 $6,569 $449,999 $49,969

4 Preparing Engineers to Educate 5 Bringing LEGO Engineering to A.B. Columbus School 6 BotLAB Support 7 SciPlay Lab 8 9 Seeing the Unseen: Visualizing Temperature Through Infrared Thermography and LabVIEW in the Classroom Interactive Multi-Touch Collaboration Table for the Classroom

Advancing Female STEM Faculty through 10 Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Parental Support Programs (SPROUTS) 11 Change the Equation: STEM Learning Database

NSF Change the Equation

Pending

$3,646,829

Declined

$389,852

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Center for Engineering Education and Outreach: Annual Report 2011

Financial Statement
Grants Applied for in 2011

Grant Name 12 13 14 Investigations on One Machine with Multiple Simultaneous Users in Education NRI-Small: Development of Modular Robotic Assistance for People with Disabilities Intelligent Seeing Platform for Social, Self-guided STEM Inquires

Foundation NSF NSF NSF

Status Declined Declined Declined

Total Amount $536,209 $1,159,821 $49,969

Understanding How Students with Learning 15 Disabilities Acquire and Retain Concepts in Science Education 16 Energy City 17 Maine Solar Decathlon 18 BotLab: Building Robotics Literacy Across the US 19 20 The Art of Inventing: Building the Tufts Robotic Orchestra Using Robotics to Increase STEM Pipeline -- A collaboration of In-school and Out-of-School Learning

NSF NSF NSF NSF Tufts NSF Steinway NSF NSF

Declined Declined Declined Declined Declined Declined Declined Declined Declined

$449,058 $258,669 $60,000 $10,000,000 $14,000 $2,053,800 $149,000 $448,259 $49,974

21 Embedding the Internet into a Steinway Grand Piano 22 Motivating Innovation In and Outside the Classroom 23 Interactive Multi-Touch Collaboration Table for the Classroom

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Goals for 2012

CEEO Directors of Educational Research, Engineering Research, and Outreach Highlight Challenges for 2012
Education Research Challenges The Centers Education Research pillar remains busy with a number of exciting research projects. The Integrating Engineering and Literacy project has yielded some fascinating cases of elementary students engaging in engineering. The InterLACE project is excited to see students and teachers interacting with visual representations of students ideas. The Service Learning project is investigating the dynamics of learning through service in K-12 classrooms, and the Design Compass project is collecting data of students designing and reecting. While the diversity of projects and research interests keeps us all on our toes, we do believe that looking for synergies across research projects will allow us to do better research and make stronger claims about the kind of work we do in classrooms. To this end one key challenge for 2012 will be to identify and then to act upon these synergies throughout the Center. For example, one such synergy we have identied is to create a case study repository to store and share the rich video data we collect across our projects. We might also investigate ways to better collaborate with our Outreach and Engineering Research programs to systematically collect data across those efforts to both inform our research agenda and help us to improve upon that work. While we are clear that these sorts of efforts are valuable and worthwhile, it is not so simple to act upon these synergies as we are all busily working to fulll our current projects goals leaving little time to begin new efforts. That being said, we are condent that 2012 will be the year of collaboration maybe that cool InterLACE tool can help! Engineering Research Challenges The Engineering Research pillar within the CEEO is the section of the Center that is focused on developing new educational technologies. Headed by Ethan Danahy, a Research Assistant Professor in Computer Science, there needs to exist a careful balance between the formation of industry partners and productization of our technological innovations with the concentration on strictly research-based activities necessary for furthering the academic careers of the CEEOs faculty and graduate students. A lot of internal discussions have focused on understanding and achieving an acceptable balance of these aspects while trying to understand how the tradeoffs fall both within the goals of the entity as a whole and also apply to individual aspirations of the members who make up the Center. It remains important, when moving forward and selecting new initiatives, to recognize impacts related to characteristics of the funding sources (and their intrinsic requirements), the expected output from the research, the anticipated impact of the proposed work, and the various distribution channels available for developed products. Outreach Challenges One strength of the CEEOs work has been the synergy between outreach, research, and tool development. As research and tool development change and grow, outreach is challenged to evolve as well to keep the circle of research and practice closely connected. 2011 has seen some strides in this area but synergy continues to be an ongoing area of development and change. The W-STOMP initiative, which focuses a portion of STOMPs activities on female engagement, includes one of our rst efforts to include research in an outreach-centered activity. The combining of research and outreach has presented some obstacles, in terms of time and priorities, as project personnel work to fulll dual roles of researcher and project support. However, the ability to use video data collected for research in training sessions for STOMP fellows has been an unexpected benet. When the CEEO had a single tool (ROBOLAB), it was easy for Outreach programs to use the tool on a regular basis and provide substantive feedback. However, as the CEEOs catalog of tools has expanded (LabVIEW for LEGO Mindstorms, SAM, Design Compass, ETC.) it is difcult to use all of these tools regularly. We are currently looking at different ways to include more tools in our outreach activities, such as using SAM as a way for K-12 students to document a problem they want to design a solution for in a STOMP classroom. In addition, as more schools, teachers, and parents are thinking about K-12 engineering education, the CEEO gets more and more requests for our workshops and services (some from as far away as India). We are currently working on how to capture and prioritize these requests (that come from emails, phone calls, and even folks walking in the door) and match them with the resources currently available to support them.
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Goals for 2012

Thank You to our Donors
We would like to thank the following donors for their generous contributions to the CEEO between 2009 to 2011

Corporation and Foundation Donations

Kodosky Foundations James S. McDonnell Family Foundation LEGO Education LLL Foundation, Inc. National Instruments Foundation Raytheon Company The Stacey C & Robert R Morse Family Foundation Texas Instruments Verizon Foundation

Personal Donations
Cejka Family Dr. Ethan Danahy Elsa Head Will and Holly James Estate of Dr. Herbert J. Mason Alicia McDonnell Jeff and Jennifer McDonnell John and Anne McDonnell Stacey Coleman Morse Chris and Catherine Rogers Leila Shakkour and Mike Thorne Charlie & Laurie Sims Greg and Marcella Stevens

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