Physical Science Robotics Interdisciplinary Design in Computer Science Education: Broadening Participation in STEM through Cascading Peer-Mentorship

This project investigates how an innovative cascading peer-mentorship approach can improve upon current practices in K-12 CS education. The project will design, field test, support teachers with professional development, and evaluate a cascading peer-mentoring model that connects high school, middle, and elementary school students as well as their CS and science teachers with the Advanced Telerobotics Research Lab at Kent State University through CS curriculum. This curriculum provides students with interdisciplinary learning experiences in physical science, robotics, and robotics engineering design challenges. Cascading mentorship transforms junior members from passive recipients into active participants by allowing them to mentor younger students while creating opportunities for participants to experience reciprocal mentoring and develop an understanding of what it means to teach or mentor somebody else in CS. This project will create and implement a cascading mentorship ladder in formal educational settings that connects more than 650 students along with their CS and science teachers with a University CS research lab. The goal of this project is to create multiple pathways that encourage students with different interests to connect to and communicate about science and robotics by (a) combining engineering design challenges with robotics, (b) encouraging storytelling and creativity within robotics, (c) including mentoring and socializing experiences, and (d) organizing robotics exhibitions. A design-based research approach will be used to iteratively design and field test the proposed project curriculum with cascading mentoring to find out what works and what does not, improve it in an informed way, and evaluate its impact on students. A mixed methods experimental intervention design that employs quantitative and qualitative data will be used to investigate how the proposed curriculum with and without cascading peer-mentorship influences participating students' CS and physical science learning and their attitudes toward CS and science. In addition, it will explore students' cascading peer-mentorship experiences and engagement in CS using surveys, focus group interviews, classroom observations, and school metric data. This project will contribute to the research on K-12 CS education by developing a prototype of a cascading peer-mentoring model, field testing it in real-world classrooms, and examining its impact on participants. Moreover, it will contribute to the research on educational robotics by examining the sociocultural dimensions of computing and connecting robotics with science using an affordable custom-developed robot. This project is co-funded through The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) and the CS for All: Research and RPPs program. The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.