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Innovate to Mitigate: Environmental Innovation Challenges (2022)

Description

Current priorities in science education include efforts to engage students in scientific reasoning, use the practices of science to understand natural phenomena, and constructively respond to local and global challenges. This project responds to these priorities by engaging teams of students in grades 8–12 in competitive Challenges to design innovative strategies for carbon mitigation in, for example, transportation, agriculture or energy use. The project expands the typical boundaries of schools by enabling teams of students in multiple locations to collaborate in model-based reasoning to construct possible solutions to environmental challenges. Students and their teachers will cross disciplinary boundaries as they choose concepts from chemistry, engineering, mathematics, biology, and social science to support their innovations.

Teachers, students, project scientist-researchers, and advisors will comment in online discussion forums to help improve ideas and to troubleshoot, thus using social media and crowdsourcing to iteratively improve submissions in the competition. This early stage Design and Development study is guided by the hypothesis that competitive challenges supported by social media and crowdsourcing will engage a diverse array of students in sustained and meaningful scientific inquiry. Over a period of four years, the project will design and refine four Challenges that will engage approximately 1,000 students of ages 13–17.

NSF Award: 1908117

Discussion

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Gillian Puttick

November 13, 2023 2:38 pm

Our research over six years of Innovate to Mitigate suggests that an open challenge to students to research and develop a mitigation strategy that lowers emissions can galvanize creativity and engagement among young people, and support “3-D learning.” Further, productive talk in online “crowdsourced” discussion can support student learning of STEM concepts and practices, elicit greater levels of reasoning, and result in improved student products.  The design of the challenge is informed by research on problem-based learning and on participatory pedagogy, both new to some teachers. Nevertheless, our research has also shown that teachers can support distributed expertise, connected learning, and student innovation and agency as they implement student-centered pedagogy. Teachers report increasing comfort over time with doing so.  We’d love to hear about your experiences with problem-based teaching and learning!

Karen Mutch-Jones

November 14, 2023 6:39 pm

Thank you for sharing project work that is innovative in design and also allows students to work collaboratively on meaningful and complex problems. I imagine that this was challenging, initially, for some teachers. In retrospect, and from your data, what factors seemed to positively affect their comfort and trust in the process over time? And were there specific supports or situations that led to productive crowdsourced discussions among students? I’m also curious about indicators of student agency–what did that look like in the context of your project? I bet this was a unique and memorable experience for students and teachers alike!

Santiago Gasca

November 16, 2023 9:16 am

Reply to  Karen Mutch-Jones

Hi Karen. Thank you for your post! You are correct in guessing that there were some initial challenges for teachers. Groups varied greatly from site to site, but most students and teachers reported feeling more comfortable after submitting their abstracts and beginning the investigation phase. Teachers and students got excited about their innovations and took off designing prototypes, doing research, and beginning work on their videos and papers. Project staff had teachers meetings throughout the year to provide guidance and resources and also offered to meet student groups. One important piece of advice that seemed to work was to have students find experts in their communities that could provide guidance on their ideas. Students reached out to community college professors, family members, and other teachers.

Karen Mutch-Jones

November 17, 2023 2:52 pm

Thank you, Santi, for sharing more details about what happened in the project, over time. I imagine that shifting some of the teaching/learning to the community invigorated the project…new ideas, new ways of looking at things, and meeting new people! Did you have the sense that it felt more like a “real world” experience for students at that point? Did some students feel more empowered by it…like they could actually do something to address climate issues?

Joni Falk

November 20, 2023 12:45 pm

Gilly, Brian, Would love to hear what you learned about crowdsourcing, and how you might change the design if you were to do this again? Love this video and your work.

Gillian Puttick

November 21, 2023 8:52 am

Reply to  Joni Falk

Hi Joni – Thank you! We have found that crowdsourcing has helped students improve their projects by learning from discussion, as well as from having to think hard – and sometimes do a bit of research – about how they want to respond in their comments to others. In interview, students and teachers have reported how much the crowdsourced discussions have been novel, and much appreciated! Here’s a paper about this aspect of I2M:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360631130_Innovate_to_Mitigate_Analysis_of_student_design_and_rationale_in_a_crowdsourcing_competition_to_mitigate_global_warming#fullTextFileContent

Joni Falk

November 21, 2023 8:56 am

Reply to  Gillian Puttick

Thanks Gilly!!!

Martha Merson

November 20, 2023 8:00 pm

I am so glad this invitation to innovate is extended to high school students. How wonderful to see their creative thinking. Have you adopted any new strategies or gizmos in your home life? How are you engaging state policy makers or officials charged with helping communities prepare for and mitigate climate change?

Gillian Puttick

November 21, 2023 8:55 am

Reply to  Martha Merson

Hi Martha – While student innovations have been creative, I haven’t adopted any of them in my own home life – good idea to keep that in mind though! I don’t work directly with state policy makers or officials currently, but that may be in my future as I begin to think about retirement…What about you?