Tag: URSA

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Final Post and Reflection

Click image to view poster in new tab.

This is my final blog post after working on my URSA Engage research project for the past 15 weeks. In this post are the links to the folders with all of the lesson plans I created, as well as a final reflection on my experiences.

This project was funded by the Office of Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, & the Arts with generous contributions from the College of Engineering and Office of Academic Affairs. I would like to sincerely thank Victor Villegas (OSU extension) for being a fantastic research mentor for me throughout this entire project. I would also like to thank to Dr. Darryl Thomas, Dr. Adam Talamantes, Sharon Sánchez-Aragón, Cyra Sadowl, and Mario Magaña Álvarez for helping me throughout the development of the lesson plans by offering valuable advice and feedback, as well as supporting my professional development as a part of this undergraduate research experience.

Lesson Plans

Below are the links to the folders containing each of the lesson plans that I worked on creating (please feel free to use them):

Physics Behind Flight Lesson: Link

Invent-A-Drone Activity: Link

Drone Dance Lesson: Link

FINAL REFLECTIOn

From February 2022 to June 2022, I participated in the URSA Engage undergraduate research program at Oregon State University (OSU).  In this program, I worked with OSU faculty mentor Victor Villegas to do research on creative STEAM outreach activities for students from underserved and underrepresented communities.  This project culminated in creating three lesson plans available in English and Spanish that can be used in workshops to teach K-12 students about drones, the arts, and coding.

The arts are very important to develop creativity and soft skills (such as teamwork, problem solving, and divergent thinking) in students that they otherwise would not develop through a curriculum that does not include an emphasis on the arts. I worked with my research mentor to create lesson plans to teach students about drones and coding using creative activities.  I created three lesson plans which can be used in series for a workshop or just as standalone lessons. The first lesson plan is a Physics Behind Flight Lesson that teaches students basic flight physics.  After the lesson, students create and decorate their own paper airplanes and experiment with modifying the flight surfaces to see how the modifications affect the way the plane flies.  The second lesson plan is an Invent-A-Drone Activity where students learn about how drones are used to solve real-life problems and then work in groups to design and build a drone using art supplies to solve a problem of their choice.  The third lesson plan is a Drone Dance Activity where students work in groups to code a Tello mini quadcopter to fly in conjunction with music and dance using the DroneBlocks app on an iPad.  All of these lesson plans are posted and available on this blog.

Throughout the process of developing these lesson plans, I connected with many professionals through informational interviews.  I interviewed people about the work that they do surrounding creative STEAM outreach to students from underserved and underrepresented communities and their experiences with creating curriculum to get feedback on the lesson plans.  The help and support from these individuals were invaluable to developing these lesson plans.

This was my first experience doing a project with a mentor, and my mentor was a big help and support. I met with him once a week over Zoom to check in about questions I had and to discuss my progress of the lesson plans I was creating. Aside from providing support, my mentor also pushed me to grow professionally, such as encouraging me to do informational interviews to practice my speaking and interpersonal skills. This mentoring relationship contributed to making this research project a positive experience and helped me grow as I worked on this project.

I was drawn to this research project because it was an applied research project.  I did not think I was interested in research initially, and I also do not have any prior experience working in a lab or doing research at the college level, so I took on this project to see if I could develop more interest in research.  The project was about incorporating the arts into STEM education for youth from marginalized communities, which is something that I am very passionate about.  As a person of color myself, I also desire to champion those in underserved and underrepresented communities.  Furthermore, I have always loved doing art and engaging in creative projects. Having experienced a  K-12 curriculum in my early education, I believe that more creative activities should be incorporated into K-12 education to make learning more fun and exciting.  I am glad that I was able to work on a research project that relates to my interests and allowed me to contribute to causes that I am passionate about.  I hope that the lesson plans I created can make a difference. Even though I plan to go into the field of civil engineering, I want to look into ways that I can continue to support creative STEAM outreach efforts in my future.

I presented my project at the Celebrating Undergraduate Excellence (CUE) Research Showcase in May 2022.  I created a lightning talk to present to people as they walked by my poster at the showcase, and I also got to walk around and hear about other people’s research projects.  This enabled me to be able to practice my presentation skills as well as see what it is like to present at a research showcase.  I anticipate I will be presenting my thesis for my honors degree before graduation, so I was glad to be able to have a presentation experience like this as a part of the research project.

This research experience was something very new to me, and I learned so many new things about research.  I feel that I grew a lot personally and professionally from this experience, and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to be involved with this research!

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Week 1

This week, I met with my mentor, Victor Villegas, for the first time, set up a blog, and researched STEM vs. STEAM education.

MENTOR MEETING

During the meeting with my mentor, we discussed some of the logistics about the URSA program (weekly meetings, workload, what to expect, and professional development activities). We also discussed some potential projects I can work on during the URSA program which include:

  • Producing Viva Veggie Vida videos (puppet videos in Spanish about vegetarian recipes for social media)
  • Developing an AirGlow music controller
  • Contributing to organizing and preparing a Mariachi STEAM Camp
  • Writing STEAM-related camp songs for OSU’s outdoor school program
  • Exploring any other questions or research topics I have about creative STEAM outreach
SETTING UP A BLOG

In addition to discussing potential projects, I also set up a blog. I created my first blog post where I introduced myself and reflected on my goals for the URSA program. I learned that creating blogs through WordPress is a resource available to me as a student at OSU. In addition to this resource, I also learned about student access to library research databases online.

RESEARCH ON STEM VS. STEAM

An assignment I had this week was to do research on the difference between STEM and STEAM education, so learning to access the library reseach database was very helpful. Here is a list of the sources that I looked at as a part of this research:

To summarize, I found that STEAM is a variant of STEM that includes art as a part of the curriculum. Many studies support promoting the arts as a part of STEAM to foster student creativity. Whereas STEM promotes mostly convergent thinking, STEAM curriculums encourage students to engage in divergent thinking. Encouraging students to participate in creativity-related activities also improves students’ problem recognition skills, problem solving skills, and ability to come up with creative solutions for problems. It has also been found that STEAM education especially benefits students from underrepresented and marginalized communities.

One example of a STEAM organization that I looked at is called The Wooden Floor, which promotes exploratory dance education alongside academics for students from low-income communities in Orange County, California. The organization has been nationally recognized, and students who have graduated from the program have been more likely to pursue STEAM-related majors and to enroll in higher education. Overall, I learned that encouraging creativity in education through a STEAM curriculum can have great impacts on students by allowing them to develop additional skills that they would not have developed through a STEM program.

GOALS FOR NEXT WEEK

I will meet with my mentor again next week, with weekly meetings to be continued throughout the duration of the URSA program. I will present some of the information that I collected on STEM versus STEAM education, and I look forward to learning more about the potential projects I can help out with.

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Introduction

Hi! My name is Brianna Yu (she/her), and I am an undergraduate student at Oregon State University (OSU). I am a civil engineering major in the OSU Honors College. This is a blog of my experiences participating in the 2022 Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and the Arts (URSA) Engage research program as a freshman.

URSA Engage is a 15-week research program for freshmen, sophomores, and transfer students to be connected with faculty mentors for funded research experiences. I applied to the URSA Engage program to explore research opportunities related to my passions and interests. My research mentor is Victor Villegas, and the research I am doing is about creative Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) outreach to underserved and underrepresented K-12 communities in Oregon. As a person of color who has lived experiences being a minority, being involved in this kind of research is very meaningful to me. I am passionate about the arts and engineering, so I look forward to making an impact through my involvement with URSA Engage.

I expect that participating in URSA Engage will allow me to grow both personally and professionally. Personally, I will be able to engage in my passions and interests while also doing something that will uplift others. In addition, this research experience will serve as a stepping stone for my Honors College thesis that I will complete during my senior year at OSU. Professionally, participating in URSA Engage will allow me to develop and practice skills in networking and professional development. This project will involve working with other people, which will allow me to develop my soft skills and learn how to work with a mentor on a project. Participating in URSA Engage is my first research experience. I look forward to learning a lot over the next few months!