Innovative mars exploration education and technology program: Development of an informal learning curriculum (Work in progress)

Abstract

The Innovative Mars Exploration Education & Technology (IMEET) program is being developed with the goal of inspiring students, specifically students of underrepresented populations, to learn science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) content. IMEET is a 3-year project funded by NASA to develop and implement real-world informal STEM education content for high school students and teachers. The content is taught in science museums, planetariums or similar Informal Education Institutes (IEI) where participants collaborate on hands-on projects that engages them in engineering design and manufacturing processes. The curriculum teaches key principles of systems engineering, robotics, digital design and manufacturing, and social product-development using cloud-based infrastructure using Mars exploration as the central theme. This paper briefly describes the IMEET Program including the first-year deployment of the curriculum in summer camps at four participating IEIs. The paper concludes with the preliminary results of the Year 1 evaluation and outlines the work to be done in Years 2 and 3.