Breakout Sessions for Friday, April 12, 2024

In this session we will showcase a transformative initiative developed in collaboration between the Center of Science and Math Education and Chicago Public Schools (CPS). The initiative exemplifies a pioneering approach to nurturing teacher leadership within the realm of science education. With the adoption of the Amplify Science curriculum in 2019, the need for teacher leaders became paramount. The development of the Science Master Teacher Leader Academy deepens our commitment to fostering best practices and cultivating leadership capacity at the school and district levels. During this session, we will take participants on a journey through the evolution of our program, spanning multiple iterations. We will discuss the program's successes, areas of opportunity, and lessons learned along the way. Participants will gain valuable insights into effective strategies for empowering teacher leadership and driving educational excellence in science education.

Engage with the Symposium plenary speakers as they engage in discussion with participants about implications, actions, and advocacy related to ideas discussed throughout the day.

Team-Based Inquiry Learning (TBIL) is a structured form of active learning that incorporates inquiry-based learning into team-based learning. This pedagogy was primarily developed to facilitate the implementation of inquiry learning in introductory mathematics courses such as Calculus I, Calculus II, and Linear Algebra. This breakout session will introduce participants to TBIL, including how to monitor student progress and make student thinking visible in this alternative learning environment. Participants will walk away with resources to help introduce TBIL into the above-mentioned math courses and potential to develop modules or modify their own curriculum for other STEM curriculum.

By the time we are experts in our discipline, the way we approach topics and skills has become second-nature, and it is easy to forget how we learned to efficiently approach them. How do you teach students to approach a topic like an expert in the field in an engaging and active way? Here I describe my approach I based on “C.R.E.A.T.E.” (Hoskins & Kenyon, 2019) and active learning concepts (Deslauriers et al., 2019) to create stepwise guides used in lecture, worksheets, guided discussion, and independent discussion activities in an upper-level Biology course. Students iteratively gained experience in reading and writing scientific literature and reported higher gains in scientific literacy. Together we will complete a worksheet geared towards breaking down a topic in your discipline into a stepwise guide to be implemented through various active learning activities to facilitate student expertise.

After participating in this interactive 60-minute breakout session, participants will be able to:

● Identify a topic or skill in your discipline where there is a gap between novice and expertise ● Identify unconscious strategies you use as an expert in approaching the topic or skill ● Outline guiding questions or steps to scaffold the approach for students ● Brainstorm iterative active learning exercises for students to practice the scaffolded approach

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into education marks the advent of a transformative era, reshaping the landscape of teaching and learning. This abstract introduces a comprehensive presentation that explores the multifaceted applications of AI in education, breaking down the topic into three distinct parts. Part 1: Unleashing the Power of AI Tools for Personalized Learning: This foundational section sheds light on the diverse array of AI tools available, showcasing their potential impact on teaching and learning. Practical demonstrations will guide the audience through the application of these tools. By demystifying the intricacies of AI tools, educators and learners will be empowered to effectively harness their capabilities.

Part 2: Rapid Game Prototyping with AI Tools: This part explores AI and game development synergy, guiding you through using chatbots and AI tools for speedy game prototyping. Discover how AI streamlines design, making development quicker and more intuitive, illustrated with practical examples.

Part 3: Creating Intelligent Game Experiences: The last part takes the conversation to the next level, incorporating advanced AI techniques like machine learning, pathfinding, and procedural content generation for creating intelligent game experiences. It's designed to inspire educators and learners to explore innovative ways of integrating AI into educational gaming, fostering a dynamic and engaging learning environment.

In this workshop, STEM educators will be introduced to the basics of Generative AI, concentrating on prompt engineering for creating custom course content. The focus will be practicing integrating AI tools within educational practices such as planning and curriculum development as it relates to STEM subjects. The session's format is interactive, beginning with a brief informative presentation and ending with practical, hands-on exercises. Participants will actively create and refine prompts, facilitating a collaborative learning environment and fostering dialogue and interaction with peers and presenters. To ensure a productive workshop experience, participants will need access to a generative AI platform (ChatGPT, Microsoft CoPilot, Gemini, etc.) before the session and are encouraged to bring a personal computer or smartphone to the workshop. This prerequisite will enable attendees to engage directly with the AI tools during the practical components of the workshop. An exemplary activity will involve educators working in small groups to engineer prompts that the AI will use to generate subject-specific content, simulating real-world classroom applications and emphasizing the creation of educational resources.

Some options for creating or using free generative AI accounts to participate:

ChatGPT Set up a ChatGPT account: https://www.codecademy.com/article/how-to-setup-a-chat-gpt-account

CoPilot Limited version of CoPilot (no sign in needed) https://www.bing.com/chat

Gemini Sign in with Google account (you may need to use a personal email if your institution has not enabled this tool) https://gemini.google.com/

Perplexity Limited version (no sign in needed, but Sign Up is available on the homepage) https://www.perplexity.ai/

Active learning has been a new wave that has swept Math and Statistics courses recently. Active learning can come in many forms from just forming groups and working on problems to getting students in groups and up on the board. We would like to explore different ways to assess active learning and discuss the benefits of making it a part of the grade.

In this breakout session we will pose questions on the spectrum of active learning and discuss pros and cons as well as the effects of this style of learning in student's understanding of the material.

In the United States there are big shifts in science education to be more student-centered (National Science Teaching Association, 2023; National Research Council, 2012; 2015; National Academies of Science Engineering, and Medicine, 2015; Next Generation Science Standards, 2013). Educators often turn to educative curricular materials to learn about teaching in new ways (Davis et al., 2014; Davis et al., 2016). A promising way in which educative materials come to life is through co-design - an environment in which teachers, researchers, and curriculum designers come together to design curricula ( e.g. Penuel et al. 2022; Matuk et al., 2016; Severance et al., 2016). I ask: What values influence teachers' adaptations of curriculum materials? & How do the teachers’ involvement in co-designing and enacting reform-based educative materials influence their pedagogical approaches? I apply the Curricular Values framework to more deeply understand teachers’ interactions with the curricula they design and use (Pomian Bogdanov 2022; Pomian Bogdanov 2024). To answer these questions I followed 3 teachers over 4 years of them designing and enacting the curricula they designed. I apply a grounded theory approach of multiple case studies (Glaser & Strauss, 2017; Yin, 2013). To dive deeply into what curricular values each teacher advocated for and how these values shift over time. In this presentation, I will share one of these cases – Kristen. I will demonstrate how her values have shifted throughout the process of designing with other educators and teaching in her class what she designed with others. Tracing these values allows us to begin to understand teachers’ shifts in pedagogical approaches.