Providing ACCESS to High-Quality STEM Learning

Office of STEM Education Partnerships (OSEP) at Northwestern University Proposal submitted to Google Chicago Office Community Grants OSEP at Northwestern University specializes in providing the support and resources needed to successfully implement cutting-edge, inquiry-based STEM education programs in K-12 classrooms. A key obstacle faced by many of the urban schools we serve is lack of access to classroom technology needed to implement our high-quality STEM programs. Thus, one of our signature programs is Project ACCESS, which provides teachers and students with much-needed technology that they can use at the lab bench or in the classroom to access on-line STEM curricula and cyberlearning resources offered through OSEP and other providers. Project ACCESS has reached 9 schools, 14 teachers, and approximately 1,140 students. This project builds on the Project ACCESS model and its success to date. Each year Project ACCESS provides mobile computer labs to STEM teachers via a loaner program. These mobile labs consist of 4 sets of 10 laptops that are rotated among 7-9 teachers per year. Along with the mobile computer lab, teachers also get training in new technology and access to new STEM teaching modules and activities that can be immediately implemented in a variety of STEM classrooms— physics, biology, chemistry, earth, physical, and life science courses, and math. This project will expand this mobile computer loaner program by adding 2 new mobile computer labs comprised of Google Chromebooks to Project ACCESS and allow OSEP to reach 6 more STEM classrooms and approximately 480 more students in the Chicago area each year. Fundamentally, this project helps to overcome a key challenge most STEM teachers face: no access to computers in the places where they teach and students learn—STEM classrooms and labs. Project ACCESS helps to “close the digital divide” for teachers and schools who do not have easy access to technology and are therefore limited in their ability to provide high-quality STEM teaching and learning resources to their students. Adding two more mobile computer labs to this program will allow OSEP to broaden student access to and deepen their experience with technology and on-line STEM programs and resources. It will also provide teachers with much-needed training and equipment that will enhance their STEM teaching.