COMMUNICATION IN STEM EDUCATION: A NON-INTRUSIVE METHOD FOR ASSESSMENT & K20 EDUCATOR FEEDBACK

Abstract

The current push to educate highly qualified and productive Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) professionals typically culminates in collegiate capstone projects. These group projects attempt to prepare STEM professionals for entry into the real world as they exemplify early career group dynamics and expose the reality that communication and other soft-skills are often just as important as technical skills. Since attitudes of STEM students and early career professions are established throughout the entire K-20 curriculum, this article also provides some feedback to educators. The research presented utilized, a free cloud based collaboration tool to observe the communication habits of three senior capstone teams (n= 13 participants) and was able to predict communication success and failures through straight-forward analysis of several key parameters, including: discussion frequency, number of responses and the distribution of work over time. Key words: communication in STEM, communication assessment, senior capstones, non-intrusive soft-skill assessment, engineering education, ABET.