Our projects and research shape the STEM education field by introducing innovative curricula and improving student access to STEM.
We support more than 60 active projects every year, and our high-quality, innovative research is based on the understanding that for STEM, real-world application matters. We inspire, motivate, and create life-long learners by helping students connect what they are taught in the classroom to the world around them.
These projects and our research are designed to encompass a wide range of subjects and disciplines within STEM education and teaching methods to expand accessibility for all eager minds.
Make Connections is a collaborative, multi-year effort to develop, evaluate, and nationally disseminate an English/Spanish math program for young children and their caregivers.
EdGE and Virtual Space Entertainment (VSE) developed Martian Boneyards—a game of scientific collaboration in the HD, MMO environment Blue Mars—and researched how adult players developed science inquiry skills through solving the science-based mystery.
The Math in the Making project asks the question: Can we leverage participation and success in making to help someone who thinks they aren’t very good at math come to see themselves as mathematically competent?
Researchers are studying the development of implicit computer skills through a 3D puzzle-based game called May’s Journey.
The Meaningful Math project studies and aims to improve the data, statistics, and numeracy supports for consumers of news media.
MMTP supports the improvement of STEM teaching and learning in a large, urban district, by providing experienced teachers with opportunities to earn micro-credentials as they acquire additional content knowledge for teaching, engage in classroom-based action research, and assume instructional leadership roles.
MPACT brings 3D design, making, and printing to students in California’s agricultural region, in service of learning mathematics, spatial reasoning, and computational thinking.
MSPnet.org is an online professional learning network created to serve NSF’s MSP (Math and Science Partnership) program. It facilitates the sharing of strategies, challenges, resources, and expertise within and across MSP projects.
MIaFS addresses a largely under-studied population, in this case Faculty of Color in STEM (FCS) who are also Gender and Sexual Minorities (GSM), through the use of methods rarely used in STEM education research, namely participant-generated Arts-Informed Research (AIR).
This fellowship will result in two case studies that explore the persistence of Native American women in computing and technology higher education.