This study analyzed the development of an electronic portfolio (i.e., ePortfolio) program designed to promote and assess reflection and engaged learning for participants in a summer internship program. Over the course of eight weeks, 12 undergraduates reflected weekly on their internships through their ePortfolios both in writing and through…

Background: Natureculture (Fuentes, 2010; Haraway, 2003) constructs offer a powerful framework for science education to explore learners' interactions with and understanding of the natural world. Technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) designed to reveal pets' sensory worlds and companionship with pets can facilitate learners' harmonious…

Organized out-of-school time (OST) activities can provide youth with developmentally enriching experiences. Summer camp is one such activity, offering opportunities for positive youth development and, in some cases, promoting socioemotional learning, character development, resilience, and academic and career-related outcomes (Garst et al., 2011;…

A sense of belongingness in the underrepresented minorities (URM) collegiate experience requires that the student feel the university provides a safe and welcoming environment. The purpose of this study is to explore the sense of belongingness that contributes to URM's perceptions while participating in the summer programs at Kansas State…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore how sounds and attunements to particular organizations of sound collide across an English language community learning space. The activities in the paper come from a six-week summer initiative that connected middle school youth with community artists for writing songs and rap lyrics, making beats and hip-hop…

Background: Tinkering, an ad hoc approach to solving a problem, involves manipulating objects to characterize and build knowledge about a particular system in an exploratory way, often with the goal of getting some product/idea to produce desired behavior. Tinkering contrasts more deliberate activity toward understanding how a phenomenon works.…

From its inception, the Center for Gifted Education at William & Mary has been committed to the education of gifted students. Dr. Joyce VanTassel-Baska, founder of the CFGE, created a learning environment to work directly with gifted students and parents by providing diverse university-based pre-collegiate programs in both residential and…

Students who develop interest in STEM careers by the eighth grade are more likely to pursue careers in STEM (Tai et al., 2006). Interest development can happen through a variety of sources, including informal learning experiences such as out of school programs and summer camps. This study looks at one such informal STEM experience, an engineering…

This article describes the tiered mentoring approach to undergraduate research at a regional comprehensive university. In addition to mentorship of undergraduate student researchers by faculty and graduate students, tiered mentoring includes high school student researchers. The high-impact practice of student research is particularly impactful at…

Over the past several decades, the concept of critical literacy has been applied to an increasing range of multimodal texts mediated by digital technologies. Expressive forms such as fan-fiction, digital storytelling, and gaming have presented unique opportunities for understanding critical literacy practices. Within the more specific field of…

This article focused on findings of case study that explored the use of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" to supplement a service-learning project. The project was initiated in an academic orientation course as a part of a summer bridge program in order to foster a sense of belonging. Data from written reflections and a focus group centered…

The PLAYground summer camp was developed by the Playful Learning Lab (PLL) at the University of St. Thomas, an undergraduate research group with a focus on learning through play. Through a partnership with a local school serving deaf and hard of hearing students, the PLAYground was designed to provide content to the deaf and hard of hearing…

Vol. II: Short-Term Programs features eight OST STEM programs for females from across the United States that run one to three days in length, in most cases, a single day. In this book, the chapter authors describe their programs, the effectiveness of those programs, and practical implications of their program evaluation data. This book series is…

Afterschool and summer programs offer a multitude of benefits for students and families across the nation, from providing tangible resources like wraparound services to connecting students with supportive adults and peers. These programs not only deliver immediate benefits, but research also shows they bear long-term positive effects on students'…

We created a 2-week, dual-module summer course introducing high school students to environmental toxicology by teaching them quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) as a way to quantify gene expression of chemical defense proteins in response to exposure to environmental pollutants. During the course, students are guided through the various…