Continuing the Conversation: Engaging Industry and Students in STEM Middle Skill Jobs

continuing-the-conversation-engaging-industry-and-students-in-stem-middle-skill-jobs-3-feat-img

Discussion Thread 2: How Can We Encourage Greater Engagement of Students in Middle-skill STEM fields?

Our research has found that workforce educators face students who are diverse in preparation, background, and goals, and so engaging such a diverse group poses a constant challenge. In our work, we have found:

  • Students crave opportunities to try out their technical skills in “real world” ways
  • Much course time is devoted to the basics, and about half the time in advanced classes gives students practice in more complex troubleshooting skills
  • Relatively little time is devoted to letting students reflect on how they solve problems and weave together all the technical knowledge they are absorbing

What Do You Think?

What innovations are out there? What changes need to happen to improve the future of technician instruction? Please share your comments below.

Read more from SRI

  • An arid, rural Nevada landscape

    Can AI help us find valuable minerals?

    SRI’s machine learning-based geospatial analytics platform, already adopted by the USGS, is poised to make waves in the mining industry.

  • Two students in a computer lab

    Building a lab-to-market pipeline for education

    The SRI-led LEARN Network demonstrates how we can get the best evidence-based educational programs to classrooms and students.

  • Code reflected in a man's eyeglasses

    LLM risks from A to Z

    A new paper from SRI and Brazil’s Instituto Eldorado delivers a comprehensive update on the security risks to large language models.