- Year 2024
- NSF Noyce Award # 1758437
- First Name Deborah
- Last Name McAllister
- Institution University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
- Role/Position Principal Investigator (PI)
- Proposal Type Workshop
- Workshop Category Track 1: Scholarships and Stipends
- Workshop Disciplines Audience Other:Teacher professional development
- Target Audience Co-PIs, Noyce Master Teachers, Noyce Teaching Fellows, Other Faculty/Staff, Project PIs, Undergraduate and/or Graduate Noyce Scholars
- Topics STEM content and/or convergent skills development
Goals
After attending the 2023 Southeastern Noyce Conference, and selecting the excursion to Dauphin Island Sea lab, a remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) session was offered as a 2-day, teacher professional development workshop at the university’s aquatic center. The project required planning for sessions, implementation of ROV design, and evaluation of the project. The planning phase required purchase and modification of materials. The implementation phase required designing and building the ROV and testing its movement in the pool, as well as the teacher’s ability to complete activities from an ROV challenge. Teams responded to an ROV evaluation instrument after both days of activities to gather information regarding ROV design, performance, and success. Results of the project phases will be discussed.
Evidence
After returning from the Southeastern Noyce Conference, personnel at Dauphin Island Sea Lab shared the specifications of the materials used for the ROV activity. The evaluation instrument was modified from Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) ROV competition (Marine Technology Society, n.d.) design questions. Most data collected is qualitative, with some yes/no/NA responses. Some included activities were modified from the Spanish Galleon Ship Hunt challenge (Marine Technology Society, 2024).All three groups, by their own self-rating, improved between the 2 days the workshop was conducted. The Green group focused on movement and then turning, the Blue group focused on design and then speed, and the Red group focused on design and then a mixture of design and speed (focusing on their motor placement and orientation). Among all group responses, it appears that turning was one, if not the most, concerning issue for which groups were trying to find solutions. While some groups focused on the speed of the ROV (changing the frame design and motor orientation to improve functioning), other groups focused on turning factors, considering maneuverability over speed.With regard to building the ROV, the Green group made changes to their ROV on the first day, while the Blue and Red groups took time out of their second day to work on their designs. Furthermore, when asked if they settled on an idea they found to be the best idea, each group mentioned being unsure or needing to make certain changes on the first day, while on the second day, each group was confident with their design. With regard to planning, each group mentioned that they spent very little to no time planning the first day (excluding the Red group). On the second day, though, the Blue and Red groups took a bit more time to plan and design their ROV. In terms of design, no group reported following a specific design for their ROV, designing according to ideas and fixing issues as they arose.With regard to performance, between the 2 days, each group reported that their ROVs improved in all aspects: overall performance in the water, performance after any revisions were made, speed of the ROV, and the ability to turn. The improvements were enough to be noticed by the teams working with the ROV.With regard to making changes to the ROV design, all groups reported making changes at some point during their design process over the 2 days. The groups had relatively positive results with the changes that they made, although the Blue group mentioned that their second day changes did not yield the sought-after results. Performance on the various tasks assigned to the groups was more or less positive. Although the groups seemed to struggle with many of the tasks, they ultimately found ways to counteract their difficulties and complete one to four of the tasks.
References: Marine Technology Society. (n.d.). Engineering design using ROV-in-a-bag. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vQElxw8NLky3EW2Vhl0G4SVIKAmP6HeSvvde4MXFo7RHlx4_aZZ2tRTy07HyzeGISm4xzH2i1AlQtjb/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000&slide=id.p4, Marine Technology Society. (2024). The MATE Spanish galleon ship hunt, https://materovcompetition.org/get-started/mate-spanish-galleon-ship-hunt.
Proposal
After attending the 2023 Southeastern Noyce Conference, and selecting the excursion to Dauphin Island Sea lab, a remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) session was offered as a 2-day, teacher professional development workshop at the university’s aquatic center. The project required planning for sessions, implementation of ROV design, and evaluation of the project. The planning phase required purchase and modification of materials. The implementation phase required designing and building the ROV and testing its movement in the pool, as well as the teacher’s ability to complete activities from an ROV challenge. Teams responded to an ROV evaluation instrument after both days of activities to gather information regarding ROV design, performance, and success. All three groups, by their own self-rating, improved between the 2 days the workshop was conducted. One group focused on movement and then turning, one group focused on design and then speed, and one group focused on design and then a mixture of design and speed (focusing on their motor placement and orientation). Among all group responses, it appears that turning was one, if not the most, concerning issue for which groups were trying to find solutions. While some groups focused on the speed of the ROV (changing the frame design and motor orientation to improve functioning), other groups focused on turning factors, considering maneuverability over speed. Results of the project phases will be discussed.
