Increased public awareness of neuroscience often results in requests to neuroscientists to share their knowledge with lay audiences. This Feature showcases Internet-based resources to help neuroscientists explain their work to the general public and K–12 audiences.
The COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting health and safety concerns caused the cancellation of many engineering education opportunities for high school students. To expose high school students to the field of neural engineering and encourage them to pursue academic pathways in biomedical engineering, the Center for Neurotechnology (CNT) at the University of Washington converted an inperson summer camp to a fully online program (Virtual REACH Program, VRP) offering both synchronous and asynchronous resources. The VRP is a five-day online program that focuses on a different daily theme (neuroscience, brain-computer interfaces, electrical stimulation, neuroethics, career/academic pathways). Each day, the VRP starts with a live videoconference meeting (lecture and interactive discussion) with a CNT faculty member. The online lectures are supported by at-home learning resources (e.g., text, videos, activities, quizzes) embedded within a digital book created using the Pressbook platform. An online bulletin board (Padlet) is also used by students to share artifacts and build community. Program evaluation will be conducted by an external evaluator. A summative survey will collect information on participants' experiences in the VRP and will help inform future iterations of the program. Although significant time was required to create a digital book, the VRP will reach a larger audience than the prior inperson program and resulted in the creation of learning tools that can be used in the future.
is the Engineering Education Research Manager at the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering at the University of Washington, where she is also a doctoral student and graduate research assistant in Learning Sciences and Human Development. Previously, Kristen worked as an educational consultant offering support in curriculum design and publication. She received her M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction (Science Education) from the University of Washington.
Neural engineering is an emerging field of high relevance to students, teachers, and the general public. This Feature presents online resources that educators and scientists can use to introduce students to neural engineering and to integrate core ideas from the life sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, computer science, and engineering into the classroom.
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