An Active Learning Approach for Inclusive and Diverse Workforce in Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence
Abstract
Maintaining and cultivating a diverse, world-class Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) workforce is critical for maintaining the superiority of the United States Navy and beyond. One important limitation of the existing STEM education approaches is the lack of balancing the need for broad technical skills and essential human teaming dynamics/effectiveness skills, which aretwo fundamental components in workforce development, especially in the area of autonomy and artificial intelligence (AI). One key challenge is thedevelopment of appropriate platforms to train/educate students with rich hands-on STEM topics in autonomy and AI. Another key challenge is to expose students with different and real-world human teaming dynamics/effectiveness experiences. The goals of the project are to overcome the two challenges via developing a new active learning STEM education approach that promotes self-motivated and self-managed active technical skill and teaming skill developmentthrough learning from internships, lab projects, and competitions. Specifically, the project will focus on three essential thrusts: (1) Diverse Hands-on STEM Topics: build students# rich hands-on skills to improve their technology awareness; (2) Human Teaming Effectiveness/Interaction topics: createan active learning environment for students to learn, apply, adapt, and optimize their teaming skills towards teaming awareness; (3) Testing, Evaluation, and Board Impacts: Test, evaluate, and improve the active learning STEM education approach for broader impacts via participation in competitions and students# internships/jobs in national labs and industrial companies. In short term, the project seeks to create a more efficient active learning STEM education approach that balances the needs for technical skill development and human teaming effectiveness development. In long term, the proposed STEM activities aim to provide some fundamental guidelines and principles for a sustainable and scalable engineering workforce pipeline, which are critical forfuture Navy and DoD missions.Approved for Public Release
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Apr 12, 2023
- Source ID
- N000142312323
Entities
People
- Yongcan Cao
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Texas at San Antonio