TY - JOUR
T1 - Impact of "algae grows the future" project on promoting engineering
AU - Jahan, Kauser
AU - Farrell, Stephanie
AU - Bodner, Cheryl
AU - Tang, Gina
AU - Cavallaro, Adam
AU - Dobkowski, Jeffrey
AU - Ferrante, Ashley
AU - Miller, Zachery
AU - Pepe, Erin
AU - Price, Samantha
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under DUE/IUSE Grant No. 1610164 and IUSE/PFE 1623053. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Funding Information:
Algae Grows the Future is a multidisciplinary project focused on creating an algae-based engineering education curriculum for K-12 and first year engineering students [1-4]. This project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and was created in partnership with the Center for Aquatic Sciences (CAS) at the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, New Jersey [5]. The CAS at Adventure Aquarium is focused on spreading the appreciation and education of marine life to the citizens of southern New Jersey, and work with the Algae Grows the Future team in order to increase public education on algae based engineering [3]. The curriculum and experiments present engineering fundamentals and scientific principles focusing on algae, and provide students with hands-on experiences using engineering activities, teamwork, and problem-solving. The value behind these experiments are that they include concepts from both the humanities and social sciences, such as ethics, gender and racial biases. The hands-on experiments conducted include growing algae and understanding the growth needs, calorimetry for the viability of algae-based foods, gas transfer, algae based gels, biofuels and electricity from algae. The goal of this type of integration between the humanities and the sciences, and the use of algae-based experiments, is to increase engineering interest and education within K-12 and first year engineering students. This project was implemented in our first-year engineering clinic course in four sections as a month long project. This project has also been carried out in middle schools near Rowan University.
Publisher Copyright:
© American Society for Engineering Education, 2019
PY - 2019/6/15
Y1 - 2019/6/15
N2 - The Algae Grows the Future project uses algae-based experiments for promoting science and engineering careers for K-12 and first year college students. Algae is a photosynthetic microorganism that is ubiquitous and has been used by many civilizations for various uses. These uses range for aquaculture feed to food for humans. In recent years the use has been expanded for biofuels, cosmetics, nutrient removal from wastewater and much more. The algae based experiments present engineering fundamentals and scientific principles, and provide students/educators hands-on experience with engineering experiments and problem-solving. The experiments also include concepts from both the humanities and social sciences, such as ethics, gender and racial biases. A subset of the modules described in this paper were tested with first-year students in engineering through the use of surveys and participation in a focus group. From the conducted surveys, it was determined that the first year engineering students had statistically significant increases in self-regulated learning strategies as well as increases in perceived confidence of learning after completion of the selected modules. These conclusions support the idea that algae-based learning promotes engineering education for students. Small focus groups of first year college students were also used to gauge student experiences from the project. The focus group found that the students were able to make better connections to their selected career path, and students were found to have a greater ability to persevere when presented with difficult engineering problems. While the study was only completed on a relatively small group size, the successful results from this group show that algae-based learning is a valuable project worth pursuing further. The overall goals for this project are to inspire students to pursue careers in engineering, as well as educate students on sustainability and the future use of renewable resources.
AB - The Algae Grows the Future project uses algae-based experiments for promoting science and engineering careers for K-12 and first year college students. Algae is a photosynthetic microorganism that is ubiquitous and has been used by many civilizations for various uses. These uses range for aquaculture feed to food for humans. In recent years the use has been expanded for biofuels, cosmetics, nutrient removal from wastewater and much more. The algae based experiments present engineering fundamentals and scientific principles, and provide students/educators hands-on experience with engineering experiments and problem-solving. The experiments also include concepts from both the humanities and social sciences, such as ethics, gender and racial biases. A subset of the modules described in this paper were tested with first-year students in engineering through the use of surveys and participation in a focus group. From the conducted surveys, it was determined that the first year engineering students had statistically significant increases in self-regulated learning strategies as well as increases in perceived confidence of learning after completion of the selected modules. These conclusions support the idea that algae-based learning promotes engineering education for students. Small focus groups of first year college students were also used to gauge student experiences from the project. The focus group found that the students were able to make better connections to their selected career path, and students were found to have a greater ability to persevere when presented with difficult engineering problems. While the study was only completed on a relatively small group size, the successful results from this group show that algae-based learning is a valuable project worth pursuing further. The overall goals for this project are to inspire students to pursue careers in engineering, as well as educate students on sustainability and the future use of renewable resources.
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M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85078767866
JO - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
JF - ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings
SN - 2153-5965
T2 - 126th ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition: Charged Up for the Next 125 Years, ASEE 2019
Y2 - 15 June 2019 through 19 June 2019
ER -