Mentoring by Design
STEM Practices
STEM practices (such as designing experiments or defining requirements) is a phrase often used to describe the set of reasoning and problem-solving skills that scientists and engineers use to understand the natural world and to solve problems. These practices are highly valued in the workforce, although they are often put under the umbrella of critical-thinking or problem-solving skills. In a series of interviews with mentors from the Akamai Internship Program, we identified the specific practices that were most valued by observatory and industry employers, which included: designing within requirements, defining a problem, and supporting a solution by evaluating tradeoffs (Seagroves & Hunter, 2010). Employees who are good at these practices are better able to adapt to rapid changes in technology and are often more successful.
Learning STEM practices
A key component of learning STEM practices is not just doing them, but also engaging in cycles of practice and feedback. To accomplish this, we encourage mentors to focus on one STEM practice that:
- Will be challenging
- Will be done multiple times by intern
- Is valued in the field within which the intern is working
Once a STEM practice is decided upon, the mentor can identify the subtle and challenging aspects of it, common mistakes, and what it looks like when a person is successfully using the STEM practice. This “unpacking” or decomposing a complex skill into components is an important part of developing mastery (Ambrose, et al., Chapter 4, 2010).
Choosing a STEM practice for the intern to learn
Mentors are encouraged to choose from STEM practices that are valued and fairly common in their field. Akamai Internship Program mentors often focus on STEM practices such as:
Designing within requirements
This could be designing something mechanical, a new function to software; or designing a process, such as the best way to measure something,
Optimizing a system
This could be a built system or a natural system
Defining requirements
When the end point of an intern’s project is to define requirements because it will be hard to just get to that point and there won’t be time to go beyond that
References
Seagroves, S., & Hunter, L. (2010). An Engineering Technology Skills Framework that Reflects Workforce Needs on Maui and the Big Island of Hawai’i. In Learning from Inquiry in Practice (Vol. 436, p. 434).
Ambrose, S.A., Bridges, M.W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M.C., Norman, M.K. (2010). How Do Students Develop Mastery? In How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. Jossey-Bass.
Leaders and Funding
This website is based on the work for the Akamai Workforce Initiative led by the Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators at University of California, Santa Cruz.
Development of this website was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the National Science Foundation (AST#1743117 & AST#2034962), and the Hawaii Community Foundation.
Address
Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators
Mailstop: UCO/Lick Obs ISEE
1156 High Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Email: isee@ucsc.edu