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CURRICULUM, INSTRUCTION, AND PEDAGOGY article

Front. Educ.
Sec. STEM Education
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1446205
This article is part of the Research Topic Evidence-Based Outreach/Service-Learning to Improve Health-Related Self-Efficacy through STEMM Education View all 11 articles

Evaluation of Content Knowledge and Instructor Impacts in a Middle School Outreach Program: Lessons from Brain Explorers

Provisionally accepted
Peter J. Vollbrecht Peter J. Vollbrecht 1*Carolyn E. Cooper Carolyn E. Cooper 1Joseph A. Magoline Joseph A. Magoline 1Thomas M. Chan Thomas M. Chan 1Kirsten A. Porter-Stransky Kirsten A. Porter-Stransky 2,3
  • 1 Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, United States
  • 2 University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, Greenville, United States
  • 3 Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, Kalamazoo, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Despite general agreement that science outreach is important, the effectiveness of science outreach programs on participants' learning often is not assessed. Brain Explorers is a neuroscience outreach program that allows medical students to partner with Biomedical Sciences faculty to develop lesson plans with learning objectives, interactive experiments for middle schoolers, and assessments of learning. These lessons are then implemented through a community-level intervention in which medical students teach their lesson plans to middle schoolers and assist them in performing activities to reinforce the concepts. Importantly, the efficacy of these active learning interventions is assessed. Throughout the program's evolution, a variety of different forms of assessment have been utilized to examine student understanding. While the goals of outreach programs are varied, here we have focused on the evaluation of content knowledge gains laying out three unique evaluation methods including post-event, immediate pre-and post-event, and spaced pre-and post-event evaluation. Specifically, using Brain Explorers lessons as examples we explore the practicality and feasibility of various learning assessments in outreach programs, begin to examine the impacts of participation in these programs on the medical school instructors and encourage others in the field to implement assessment of their programs.

    Keywords: stem education, outreach, assessment, Evaluation, k-12

    Received: 09 Jun 2024; Accepted: 03 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Vollbrecht, Cooper, Magoline, Chan and Porter-Stransky. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Peter J. Vollbrecht, Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.