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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
By incorporating the NRC’s How People Learn framework with VaNTH’s and UTeach’s emphasis on the thoughtful integration of technology and deep content knowledge, we are attempting to educate a new generation of teachers who are able to utilize modern learning theory in K-12 classrooms. In addition, UTeach students have developed their own units on the mechanics of running as well as why muscles burn after exercise (in addition to other project based units). These standards based units will be incorporated into their field based teaching as well as their eventual teaching assignments once they have entered the profession. In this manner, we are building capacity within Central Texas for teachers cognizant of both deep content knowledge as well as the learning sciences. Our position is that the way to meet the needs of K-12 educators improve science, mathematics, and technology based teaching and learning is best achieved by reworking the challenge based instructional environments into project-based K-12 science curricula. To do this, we employ the same sort of collaborative design teams (that include both teaching and learning and subject-matter expertise) used by the rest of VaNTH. For outreach, this means that K-12 teachers, education researchers, ERC undergraduate and graduate students and bioengineers all work together to design project-based K-12 science instructional materials. It is in this context that we have an existing working relationship with Ms. Karen Laurenzi and Ms. Neelam Kulkarni, experienced teachers within the Austin Independent School District and experienced Jumping Jack designers. Over the course of the past year, these two teachers have worked closely with several members of the ERC (Dr. Anthony Petrosino, and VaNTH graduate students Chih-Chung Chang and Tejas Karande of The University of Texas at Austin) to adapt for use in secondary school classrooms VaNTH’s work in the Biomechanics domain. This effort has turned into a project-based human physiology high school curriculum unit, which was piloted by these two teachers earlier this year.In addition, Dr. Anthony Petrosino has begun to apply resources to the modification of existing materials from a previously funded NASA Space Grant Consortium Project, “The Mission to Mars Challange” . This program was developed for middle and secondary grades science and mathematics students using a challenge based approach consistent with the VaNTH instructional design philosophy. Initial work appears to indicate that by modifying some of these materials they could effectively incorporate more bioengineering concepts such as muscle atrophy and biomechanics.