Technology and Engineering Education

Our global economy and rapid rate of technological advances presents pressing challenges for our times. With technology being embedded in nearly all aspects of our lives, engineers and applied scientists need to be cognizant of the impact that those technologies have, on the individuals that use them and the societies they live within. The UN's Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, and current standards adopted by the organizations such as IEEE and the ACM, impel us to be more mindful of the need for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. They also encourage us to be more mindful of the impact of technologies on societies and the environment.

With Technology and Engineering Educatoin, we address the need for 21st-century skills among the technological workforce of the future. Our research encompasses best practices and technologies for educating engineers and applied sciences, as well as strategies for training the PK-12 teachers at the beginning of the pipeline.

The Future Workforce

A competitive technological workforce depends on a large pool of young people with diverse demographics, abilities, and cultural sensitivities. Several of our projects have focused on attracting a more diverse set of students to technology fields, starting in middle school.

BIGSCE (Branching Interactive Graphic Stories for Cybersecurity Education) was an NSF-sponsored project in which we used story-telling technologies to help middle school students to understand, and potentially become interested in, cybersecurity as a profession. This was offered as after-school and summer workshops at the "Yes We Can" Community Center in North Hempstead.

CyberMiSTS (Cybersecurity for Middle School Teachers and Students) was a follow-on NSF project that provided training for middle school teachers (who did not necessarily have a background in science or technology) that was sufficient for them to introduce their students to the subject of cybersecurity. Summer workshops were followed by half-day symposia where teachers reflected on their experiences delivering the new material to their students.

Simulations, Games, and Gamification

Simulations, games and gamification are useful tools for engaging for educating, informing, and collecting information.

We have had a number of sponsored projects in which games were used to give students practice with their skills and increased student awareness of socio-scientific issues: Energy Choices, Enviropedia, Container Chaos, Virtual Breadboard, All Together Now, and Stony Brook Shares.

We are currently exploring the potential of games for collecting survey data. An initial experiment with our Shape Shifter game provided promising results; we are taking this to the next level with Budget Hero. PhD student Jonathan Sypeck is currently working on this.