Lessons Learned from Development and Implementation of a STEM Service Learning Project

What questions and conversations do 3-way multi-level blended STEM teaching partnerships generate? Participating college faculty reflect on their scholarly teaching of cooperative problem-based learning designed to empower college STEM majors to foster development of scientific habits of mind in young students. Themes include mentoring techniques, feedback mechanisms, and emerging signature pedagogies for this type of college internship experience. In the service learning partnership explored in this session, college interns teach a semester-long inquiry-based enrichment program which places 5th graders in the role of science sleuths. Science faculty teach pedagogy to their college interns while partnering with them to design pedagogy, labs, and science mysteries based on the specifications, formative, and summative feedback from elementary teachers. The college interns guide their 5th grade students to generate hypotheses, perform experiments to test these hypotheses, interpret lab results, and propose a solution to a science mystery based on their results. The faculty panel will engage in interactive reflection with the audience exploring questions and emergent themes based on summaries of stakeholder surveys and focus groups. Lessons learned from this teaching and learning experience will be presented in an interactive format designed to explore generalizability and pose new questions in the ongoing research

Updates from and Lessons Learned in Delivering a Service Learning Course to Enhance Elementary STEM Education in Gwinnett County

Georgia Gwinnett College’s (GGC) School of Science and Technology (SST) is continuing a science investigation partnership with a local elementary school. College interns use hands-on investigations to help 5th grade students solve a science mystery. Updates on progress since last year’s presentation, including the design and delivery of a new science mystery involving elementary chemistry and physical science, as well as program modification based on participant feedback will be presented

A Service Learning Course to Enhance Elementary STEM Education in Gwinnett County

Georgia Gwinnett College’s (GGC) School of Science and Technology offered a Service Learning course in collaboration with Gwinnett County’s McKendree Elementary School. GGC STEM majors conducted 20 hours of inquiry- based, hands on science activities in 5th grade classes. The 5th graders presented the activities and results of their investigation to their parents at Family Science Night