NASA STEM Engagement & Educator Professional Development Collaborative and NASA eClips™ Conduct Educator Webinar

Dr. Barbie Buckner, Educator Professional Development Specialist, and Dr. Sharon Bowers, NASA eClips™ Senior STEM Educator, presented "NASA STEM: Science and Engineering – Similar, but Different" to 27 participants on August 5, 2021, as part of the Texas State University NASA STEM Engagement and Educator Professional Development Collaborative (EPDC) series. Dr. Buckner and Dr. Bowers guided educators in comparing the Nature of Science (NOS) and the Engineering Design Process (EDP) and exploring how these processes can be integrated into classrooms and/or nonformal learning environments. Participants discovered how to engage their students to think and act like scientists and engineers through NASA and NASA eClips resources that were shared. Participants were also introduced to current and future NASA explorations that can be used to help bring real-world STEM experiences to learners. Dr. Buckner compared the EDP in the NASA eClips Engineering Design Packets to other EDPs, such as both the initial and revised NASA’s Beginning Engineering, Science and Technology (BEST) models and NASA’s JPL model. She introduced participants to a plethora of NASA resources for bringing engineering design into the learning environment to provide hands-on learning and assess learners’ skills and knowledge in nontraditional ways, such as the NASA eClips Engineering Design Packets.