Assessing Women and Men in Engineering (AWE), funded by the National Science Foundation, is a suite of assessment instruments and supporting documents that can be used to evaluate K-12 engineering-related outreach and programming in both formal and informal settings. After creating a free account, users can access ready-made surveys that focus on assessment in a variety of areas, including persistence/leaving the engineering field, engineering students' self-efficacy, and mentor/mentee programs. Tips on collecting and managing data, obtaining Institutional Review Board Approval, and ways to apply research to practice can also be found on this web site. AWE's survey tools were created and field-tested by researchers at seven academic institutions as part of a National Science Foundation grant.
Funded by the Noyce Foundation, Assessment Tools in Informal Science (ATIS) is a database of assessments tools, including interviews, multiple choice surveys, point scale surveys, short response, long response, and drawing exercises, which can be used to evaluate out-of-school STEM activities. Visitors can add reviews of the different tools to the database. The tools were originally reviewed and collated into this database by researchers from the Program in Education, Afterschool and Resiliency (PEAR), which is located at Mclean Hospital and Harvard Medical School. PEAR plans to continuously update the database in collaboration with researchers from 4-H.
New assessment strategies and tools will be needed as teachers across the U.S. begin to implement the recently released Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and the recommendations outlined in the National Research Council report A Framework for K-12 Science Education (2012). Both the NGSS and the framework represent a new approach to science teaching, and this e-book offers guidelines on coordinating and undertaking assessment using a variety of strategies and at a variety of levels to ensure that the learning outcomes outlined in these new standards are being met.
This document builds on the work of a 2011 National Research Council report, Successful K-12 STEM Education. At the request of Congress and the National Science Foundation, a committee developed fourteen indicators based on the recommendations outlined in the 2011 report. These indicators provide a systematic way to assess student learning, interest, and engagement with STEM, educators' professional capacity to deliver quality STEM programs, and the effectiveness of policy and funding initiatives at a national level. The report discusses approaches to research and data gathering necessary to implement the proposed monitoring and progress system, which will assist educators, administrators, and policy makers in making informed decisions about the future of K-12 STEM education.
