Hey, we’re back. Actually, we never left, but MaterialsEducation.org (MatEdU) is now a National Science Foundation-funded project. We recently received a new NSF grant award to continue our work for another three years with a similar, but enhanced charter.
MatEdU is and has been focused on building a national repository, a resource center for materials technology education that creates and compiles instructional resources for the Materials Science (MatSci) community. For those of you who have used our site, you have downloaded and used our wide variety of instructional materials including labs, hands-on demonstrations, modules and papers, which are then integrated into a variety of courses, classroom settings, and even in industry. Through peer reviewed and classroom tested efforts, the MatEdU collection continued to improve and grow.
The world of materials science continues to radically influence how we develop technology solutions, across almost every aspect of the material world. We are each witnessing these breakthroughs in new nanoscale, biological, smart, and composite materials.
Serving Materials Science Technicians & Workers
The long-term goal of the project is to ensure that materials technology education meets industry standards and produces technicians who are well prepared for work across different manufacturing sectors. To achieve this goal, the project will develop and share online resources to support the materials technological education of students and incumbent workers.
For this new project, MatEdU will continue to improve and expand national access to an online collection of high-quality instructional resources including competency-based modules, presentations, labs, and demonstrations; to implement dissemination strategies that promote increased awareness of online resources, support partnerships, and expand strategic opportunities for the materials science education community; and to leverage the expertise of collaborating national partners to achieve strategic scalability of instructional resources.
During this project, technician skill gaps will be identified, instructional modules that address the skill gaps will be developed, and a handbook on materials technology education will be expanded through a joint effort of network members. The project evaluation will provide insights on how the instructional resources impact materials science education.
In addition, as we have done with our sister project, TEAMM, where we created the AM News page to capture and promote the work of national partners and allies, MatEdU is launching the Materials “MatEdU News” page to do some of the same specifically within materials science and education. Please share MatEdU News with your colleagues and students or any professional who has a deep interest in materials. Stay tuned for more updates and news.
This project is funded by the NSF Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program, DUE #2000347, that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the nation’s economy.