The current research sought to examine the impact of a week-long mathematics camp on motivation and self-efficacy beliefs of participating middle school students. Middle school students participated in a one-week mathematics camp on a college campus, where they worked on authentic mathematics activities that were applied to real world concepts.…

In this exploratory study, we looked at the effect adding a choreographed song to camp had on middle-school aged campers' retention of two concepts: order of the planets with increasing distance from the Sun, and phases of the Moon listed in the correct order. We conducted pre- and post-assessments on these questions for multiple years of the…

The 2018 STEM Summer Camp was held on the campuses of a middle school in the Southeast. Students from Title I schools across the district were invited to take part in the month-long STEM program, focused on advancing content competency through Mathematics, Science, Language Arts, and STEM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics) Inquiry.…

Nearly 30 years ago, Math Corps--a summer camp for middle school students in Detroit who could benefit from mentoring and positive influences--was started at Wayne State University (WSU). In 2015, the National Science Foundation awarded an Advancing Informal Science, Technology, Education, and Mathematics (STEM) Learning grant to WSU. As part of…

Motivated by a desire to encourage girls to pursue science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) studies, librarians at the Marston Science Library (Marston) at the University of Florida (UF) developed Girls Tech Camp (GTC), a summer camp designed to introduce middle-school girls to creative technologies used in these fields. This week-long…

Mentoring is a life-long approach to building positive, supportive relationships, self-confidence and increasing academic performance. In this article, I present how a college-based summer camp, designed to engage youth in increasing interests in STEM, Healthcare, and Teacher education, by helping youth build self-confidence and career interests…

This paper reports on the design and implementation of a cybersecurity camp offered as a cybersecurity learning experience to a group of female and male high school students. Students ranged in grade level from freshmen to senior. Student demographics, including any existing pre-requisite knowledge, were unknown to camp designers prior to the…

This article captures the evolution of research goals and methodologies used to assess the effectiveness and impact of a set of mathematical educational games and animations for middle-school aged students. The researchers initially proposed using a mixed model research design of formative and summative measures, such as user-testing,…

Besides viewing knowledge about the nature of science (NOS) as important for its own value with respect to scientific literacy, an adequate understanding of NOS is expected to improve science content learning by fostering the ability to interrelate scientific concepts and, thus, coherently acquire scientific content knowledge. However, there is a…

Research evidence suggests that summer breaks contribute to income-based achievement and opportunity gaps for children and youth. However, summertime can also be used to provide programs that support an array of goals for children and youth, including improved academic achievement, physical health, mental health, social and emotional well-being,…