K-12-level competitive robotics is growing in popularity around the country and worldwide. According to one of the leading organizers of these events, FIRST--For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology--250,000 students from 56 countries take part in its competitions. FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) is a yearly event the organization puts…

This paper considers gendered patterns of participation in post-compulsory STEM education. It examines the trajectory of learning that takes students from A-level qualifications, through undergraduate work and into employment or further study. It also uses a long-term view to look at the best available evidence to monitor participation and…

Programmable logic devices (PLDs) are used at many universities in introductory digital logic laboratories, where kits containing a single high-capacity PLD replace "standard" sets containing breadboards, wires, and small- or medium-scale integration (SSI/MSI) chips. From the pedagogical point of view, two problems arise in these…

International postdoctoral researchers are growing in number and importance in academic research around the world. This is contextualised by a shift to international and enterprise modes of academic production. Through a multiple case study, this paper analyses the role of international postdoctoral employment in life sciences and engineering…

The concept of nanotechnology was first introduced in 1959 by Richard Feynman at a meeting of the American Physical Society. Nanotechnology opens the door to an exciting new science/technology/engineering field. The possibilities for the uses of this technology should inspire the imagination to think big. Many are already pursuing such feats…

This paper gives a short overview of the UK government's STEM agenda and then considers one aspect in depth--the STEM Advisory Forum. It explains how the Forum operates to draw together views from across the STEM community through online discussions and face-to-face events. Four examples are given of topics that have been dealt with by the Forum.…

Results of analysis of responses to a first-year undergraduate engineering activity are presented. Teams of students were asked to develop a procedure for quantifying the roughness of a surface at the nanoscale, which is typical of problems in Materials Engineering where qualities of a material need to be quantified. Thirty-five teams were…

This paper describes the authors' experience of teaching agile software development to students of computer science, software engineering, and other related disciplines, and comments on the implications of this and the lessons learned. It is based on the authors' eight years of experience in teaching agile software methodologies to various groups…

A laboratory-based class in flat-panel display technology is presented. The course introduces fundamental concepts of display systems and reinforces these concepts through the fabrication of three display devices--an inorganic electroluminescent seven-segment display, a dot-matrix organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display, and a dot-matrix…

This study investigates the use of "this" and "these" as pronouns versus determiners in a corpus of research articles in Applied Linguistics and Materials and Civil Engineering. The study reveals that authors in the two disciplines use both structures in a similar manner, with pronominal uses constituting one-fifth of all occurrences. Five types…

The topic of alternative energy is not only relevant to a multitude of issues today, it is also an effective vehicle for developing instruction that applies across a variety of content disciplines and academic standards. Since many of the issues associated with alternative energy are open-ended, alternative energy also lends itself to…

The haptic paddle is a force-feedback joystick used at several universities in teaching System Dynamics, a core mechanical engineering undergraduate course where students learn to model dynamic systems in several domains. A second goal of the haptic paddle is to increase the accessibility of robotics and haptics by providing a low-cost device for…

"Framework for K-12 Science Education" states that "children are natural engineers … they spontaneously build sand castles, dollhouses, and hamster enclosures and use a variety of tools and materials for their own playful purposes" (NRC 2012, p. 70). The "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") also…

The adoption of the English language paradigm and the subsequent implementation of bilingual policies worldwide are generating new linguistic hierarchies. These have an effect on the linguistic diversity at the sub-national level and on individuals' linguistic human rights. This article reports the results of a case study on an individual's…

Colleges and universities are being pressed to seek innovative ways to measure student learning outcomes and identify the conditions that lead to their development. Understanding how students group according to a multidimensional set of learning outcomes provides information on the extent to which institutions are meeting goals. This study…