Industry and Community Engagement in a High School Bioscience Course

Abstract

iCREATE is an NSF‐funded project at Northern Arizona University designed to engage community partners in a high school bioscience course to positively impact the number of students interest in pursuing bioscience‐related careers. The project integrates community collaborations, innovative course design, and modern technologies to engage students in an authentic problem in their community: the monitoring of infectious diseases. A high school level bioscience course has been designed and implemented in collaboration with local and regional partners including university faculty and graduate students, leading‐edge STEM industry partners, community organizations, and local school collaboratives. Project partners engage students in examining community needs regarding the authentic problem of tracking the spread of influenza across the region. Subsequently, students work with project partners in an effort to design innovative, technology‐rich solutions to address the problem. The university and industry partners bring current knowledge in bioscience and technological understanding of geospatial technologies to the classroom. An iterative outcome‐focused approach to development that is consistent with the major tenets of design‐based research is being used to refine the course design and generate new findings about effective experiences for impacting student interest in STEM learning and careers. A quasi‐experimental research design will be used to evaluate the promise of the intervention during a pilot test that will take place during the final year of the project.Support or Funding InformationiCREATE is an NSF‐funded.