With its funding for environmental literacy efforts, the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium (MASGC) supports several place-based education programs at Dauphin Island Sea Lab - Discovery Hall Programs (DISL-DHP), the Environmental Studies Center (Mobile County Public School System) and the Marine Education Center (University Southern Mississippi). When implementing these programs, we work to maximize MASGC’s investment by providing opportunities to as many students as possible.
Many of these programs employ “tried and true” pedagogy or teaching strategies that are well known to engage students. However, we do not always have the resources – time, money and personnel – to conduct research to demonstrate that our education programs are successful at increasing literacy and to determine the extent and way that they are impacting students. By a fortuitous confluence of circumstances at DISL-DHP, we have that opportunity with some aspects of our STEM program focused on ROVs.
The ROV Program at DISL
Now ubiquitous, ROVs, or remotely operated vehicles (also considered underwater drones), are used to explore, research and work in underwater environments ROVs came to public awareness in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. For days and days, many of us watched live ROV footage of the oil and gas mixture spewing from the broken wellhead thousands of feet deep in the Gulf.
For a year prior to the spill, Discovery Hall Programs had begun to develop a hands-on experience class for middle and high school students focusing on ROVs. After the spill, funding from the Gulf of Me xico Research Institute through our colleagues at Florida State University allowed us to move into high gear, and by 2012, we were teaching students (and teachers) how to build, fly and use ROVs in a new class titled “ROVing the Gulf.”
Now in 2022, our ROV program has grown to include not only this original onsite class, but also STEM: ROV teacher workshops, ROV-build workshops for students and teachers, numerous ROV-related classroom activities, two student ROV competitions (MATE and SeaPerch, both part of international ROV competition programs), a variety of outreach activities and most recently, a “library card” ROV kit program.
In this newest program, titled Go ROVing, teachers can check out kits to have students build ROVs in their classrooms, returning the kits after a few weeks thereby saving their time prepping materials as well as the investment in ROV parts and pieces. Over the years, we have used a variety of assessment and evaluation strategies to track student learning and impacts, but I will share just one result with you today.
Proving student learning
One of the tools informal educators use to assess student learning is known as a pre-test/post-test. Essentially, we ask students how much they know before a program and do the same assessment after they participate in the program. The pre/post-test is a common strategy in informal education (as opposed to classroom instruction) as our focus is on experiential (hands-on) learning and our time with students is typically short.
However, as with any type of assessment, there are limitations to this technique and therefore in the conclusions that can be drawn. The most common limitation is sample size, that is the number of students participating in pre/post testing. However, in the case of the ROVing the Gulf class, our dedicated group of educators not only taught the class but administered the pre/post-test over many years (2013-2019) such that we now have had 2,326 students who have taken the class and participated in pre/post testing. And with graduate student Liz Hoadley’s help, we have been able to demonstrate that students are increasing their environmental literacy and that there is a gender difference in the extent to which students gain in knowledge.
Specifically, after participating in the ROVing the Gulf class at DISL-DHP, the data showed statistically significant increases in content knowledge by all students (an average of 60% on the pretest compared to an average of 82% on the post-test – See Panel A). This pattern was consistent across school type (public vs private) and grade band (upper elementary, middle school, high school).
When we analyzed the data by gender, we found that the difference in pre/post test scores was greater for females than males, that is female scores improved significantly more than those for males. This result, known in education literature as closing the gender gap, was irrespective of school type or grade band. (Please note that we do give students the opportunity to identify themselves as non-binary. Those data have not been included in this analysis.)
In addition to investigating other impacts of the class on students (beyond knowledge gain), we are currently exploring a number of hypotheses as to why this might have happened. The class is taught with a team approach, that is students work in teams to design, build and fly the ROV. Perhaps the team approach gives females an edge in learning.
The class is also very hands-on. We give the students a few design constraints but then let them design, build, and fly their own unique ROV. Perhaps the hands-on focus of the class is the key that engages female students more successfully than males.
Perhaps it is the ocean context for these engineering ideas and practices that engage females. Hopefully, ongoing data analysis will answer this question, and we can share the answer with you in a few months!
Some Sea Grant programs, including Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant, are recognizing the importance of dedicating resources to demonstrating that Sea Grant-funded education programs are achieving success in their goals and are now investing in research on educational practices and programs as a part of research portfolios.
Meet the author
Tina Miller-Way, Ph.D.
Assistant Director for Education
Tina Miller-Way serves as the assistant director for education for the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium (MASGC) and is a former chair of the national Sea Grant Education Network. She has... Read more
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