Reflective Decision-Making in Elementary Students’ Engineering Design

By Elissa Milto, Director of Outreach

A key feature of engineering design is collaborative, deliberate decision-making that takes into account information about design options. K‐12 students need opportunities for this kind of decision-making if they are to meet the learning standards for engineering outlined in the Next Generation Science Standards. We conducted a qualitative study investigating how urban elementary students enact reflective decision-making in a formal engineering design curriculum in order to propose and operationalize a definition of reflective decision-making among elementary students. While the term reflective can mean many things, we allude to reflection that occurs during the engineering design process, or decision-making with a reflective stance.

Continue Reading May 16, 2018 at 10:47 am Alison Blanchard Leave a comment

Position Announcement: Post-Doctoral Researcher

The Center for Engineering Education and Outreach invites applications for a full-time postdoctoral scholar to work on studying teacher learning in K-12 engineering education. The initial appointment is for the academic year 2018-2019, renewable for up to two years total.

Continue Reading May 7, 2018 at 10:37 am Alison Blanchard Leave a comment

CEEO Summer Design & Engineering Workshops for Kids

University Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) has an exciting list of research based Design and Engineering Workshops (DEW) for kids during the summer of 2018. We have a variety of different themed workshops for all different age ranges! Your child will be immersed into the world of engineering and walk away feeling empowered to be an engineer of the future. Our workshops have inspired many students to go into the engineering field. Maybe your child will become an engineer too! All workshops are held on the Tufts campus in Medford.

Continue Reading May 2, 2018 at 6:55 pm Alison Blanchard Leave a comment

CEEO Graduating Students and Award Winners

CEEO Graduates 2017-2018

Jessica Swenson, PhD Mechanical Engineering
Kerrianne Marino, MS Human Factors Engineering
Sam Woolf, MS Mechanical Engineering

Continue Reading May 1, 2018 at 11:26 am Alison Blanchard Leave a comment

Tufts School of Engineering Students in STOMP

The Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) is excited to engage 62 Tufts students from a variety of academic disciplines with STOMP this year. STOMP partners pairs of Tufts University students with school teachers in the greater Boston area, Medford, Somerville, Arlington, Everett, Malden, and Boston, to create and implement engineering curricula in the teachers’ classrooms. The Tufts students collaborate with teachers to bring new technologies and innovative activities to the classroom, working to meet the Science, Technology and Engineering component of the Massachusetts Frameworks in creative and engaging ways. Currently, STOMP is in the following grades, 1 kindergarten classroom, 6 third grade classrooms, 16 fourth grade classrooms, 16 fifth grade classrooms, and 4 middle school classrooms.

This year, STOMP employs 30 engineering students from each engineering department and across years.

Continue Reading April 24, 2018 at 10:29 am Alison Blanchard Leave a comment

Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach to Host the LEGO Education Symposium and Tufts STEM Education Conference

On June 5th to 7th, 2018, Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) will be hosting the LEGO Education Symposium in conjunction with the Tufts STEM Education Conference at Tufts University. The CEEO is a leading innovator in K-12 engineering education and is excited for the opportunity to bring together passionate educators and researchers over the course of the two events. Since its founding in 1996, the CEEO has worked towards bridging the gap between research and practice in engineering education by bringing new and innovative research and practices directly to educators and students. With various faculty, researchers, and students represented from engineering, math, chemistry, child development, and education, the Tufts STEM Education Conference will feature talks, hands-on workshops, and exhibitions of some of the latest research and innovations in K-12 STEM Education happening at Tufts University.

Continue Reading April 9, 2018 at 11:20 am Alison Blanchard Leave a comment

TEEP Cohort 2

by Magee Shalhoub, Program Administrator

Teacher Engineering Education Program (TEEP), teep.tufts.edu, is for practicing elementary, middle, or high school teachers who are seeking to change or expand their approach through the integration of engaging hands-on engineering principles in their coursework. The program is a flexible, affordable, and designed to fit a busy teacher’s lifestyle. All four courses are online, allow participants to work at their own pace, offer 16 total hours of graduate credit, and have a low student-to-instructor ratio. Participants are provided a rich environment of video tutorials, online office hours, and peer feedback as they progress through the program.

Continue Reading March 13, 2018 at 6:12 pm Alison Blanchard Leave a comment

Post Campaign Update

by Laura Fradin, Education Specialist

This past fall the Student Outreach Mentorship Program (STOMP) ran a crowdfunding campaign to help support the work it does in local elementary and middle schools. Our goal was to raise $5000 to support lesson development and implementation, and materials purchases. We raised $5,170 from 75 donors. These donors were friends, family, teachers, and alumni of STOMP. This money helps sustain a program that means so much to Tufts students and the local community.

Continue Reading March 13, 2018 at 10:54 am Alison Blanchard Leave a comment

Billund Builds Nature 2018: Teacher and Administrator STEM Workshop

by Susan Bitetti, Education Specialist

This past November/early December, Tufts CEEO hosted Billund Builds workshop, a week long study tour for 36 educators and administrators from Billund, Denmark in collaboration with the Capital of Children. The CEEO faced an exciting challenge of addressing the needs and challenges of not just educators but also those of administrators and principals from pre-school through middle school.

Continue Reading March 6, 2018 at 10:37 am Alison Blanchard Leave a comment

LEGO WeDo Afterschool Enrichment

By Sarah Matheny, TEEP Teacher Graduate

Sarah Matheny, Science and Design Thinking Teacher from St. George’s Independent School, Germantown, TN, shares her work with kindergarten and first grade students in an afterschool enrichment project with WeDo 2.0.

I was a student in Tuft University’s first Teacher Engineering Education Program (TEEP). While working through the program I could not get enough of the LEGO NXT system we were given for prototyping solutions. I saw the platform as having endless engaging applications. I wanted to bring this quick build problem solving to the younger students I teach.

Continue Reading February 14, 2018 at 10:06 am Alison Blanchard Leave a comment