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Partnerships in Education and Research (PER) Supplement to the VaNTH ERC in Bioengineering Educational Technologies

Objectives and Specific Aims - Background - Redesign of VaNTH Modules - Significance

The VaNTH ERC is a project aimed at synthesizing learning science, learning technology and the knowledge domains of bioengineering in order to address the curriculum needs for bioengineering in higher education. VaNTH ERC also provides outreach programs to pre-college education and post-college continuing education.

Pre-college efforts to date in VaNTH have been centered primarily at Northwestern University and at The University of Texas at Austin. Both universities have supplied instructional environments for K-12 classrooms. These instructional environments emphasize learners applying science, mathematics, and engineering content to solving extended challenges or projects. This work has been greatly influenced by the incorporation of reports issued by the Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning along with the Committee on Learning Research and Educational Practice. The Committees were convened by the National Research Council, and the resulting publication “How People Learn” has been the basis for the overarching framework to situate our research and development of instructional design activities in VaNTH ERC.

Preservice mathematics and science teachers at the undergraduate level have been using materials influenced and developed by VaNTH as part of their curriculum since the Spring 2000 semester. At The University of Texas at Austin these preservice teachers are part of an NSF supported program known as UTeach. UTeach (DUE-9953187) is a collaboration between the College of Natural Sciences and the College of Education in conjunction with the Austin Independent School District, to improve the preparation of secondary science and mathematics teachers. Anticipating a projected steady state of 500 students, UTeach is fast becoming the largest program for secondary science and mathematics teacher preparation housed in a research university in the United States. For the past three semesters, over fifty UTeach students have been utilizing VaNTH’s Jumping Jack module as a case study in how extended inquiry projects are designed, developed and implemented.

Jumping Jack introduces students to some of the essential concepts in mechanics and muscle physiology as they relate to human movement. The module is comprised of three challenges: (1) How high can you jump?, (2) What physical characteristics determine jump height in humans?, and (3) Why does Michael Jordan jump higher than Bill Gates? The increasing complexity of these challenges are meant to provide a progressive deepening of the learner’s knowledge and understanding of movement biomechanics.

Inservice mathematics and science teachers at the graduate level (generally over 50% of graduate students in Mathematics and Science Education at UT are inservice) have been using materials influenced and developed by VaNTH as part of their curriculum for the past three semesters. For instance, in the Fall of 2000 students enrolled in “Knowing and Learning in Mathematics and Science” took one of the challenges presented in Jumping Jack What physical characteristics determine jump height in humans?) and developed a 4 week project based unit on the topic incorporating national Standards in Mathematics and Science, conducted interviews with experts around campus, digitized video, incorporated VaNTH’s instructional delivery shell (LEGACY) and created multimedia presentations. In addition, graduate students and faculty involved with VaNTH ERC served as resources for both in class and e-mail access to the inservice teachers during their projects. As an indication of the quality work done in these classrooms, two students incorporated the modified version of the unit into their own classrooms and the results of their classroom based research will be presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. To date, twenty inservice teachers have utilized VaNTH materials.