Identifying and Cultivating Diverse STEM Talent through Creative Robotics

Abstract

In recent years, there has been increasing concern that the United States K-12 educational system is falling short in preparing the technology innovators of the future. Students who exhibit the intellectual curiosity and creative problem-solving talents crucial to the engineering process can slip through the cracks, going unrecognized by their teachers and therefore receive insufficient support as their education progresses.1 We provide opportunities for teachers to better recognize and support these abilities through the integration of a creative robotics activity, called Arts & Bots, into standard required middle school courses, such as earth science and health classes. In this paper we describe the partnership we have formed to evaluate the impact of Arts & Bots on teachers’ abilities to recognize and cultivate students’ engineering interests and talents and the on-going work of this three year project.