Through prior IES-funded SBIR projects in 2016 and 2017, the developer created an online platform, Future Engineers, to administer educational challenges for students in or outside of K12 classrooms. This project will develop a new prototype component of the platform for adult mentors who are professionals with STEM backgrounds. The prototype will include a portal for mentors to evaluate and provide written feedback to students in response to their submissions to STEM challenges that align to course content, and an interface for students to safely engage with mentors to facilitate an iterative process to refine and improve the submission to completion. At the end of Phase I, in a pilot study with 10 middle school classrooms with 25 students per classroom participating in challenges, the researchers will examine the feasibility of mentors providing and students receiving formative feedback during a challenge project, the ease of students' integrating the feedback as they iteratively refine their project, and mentors' and students' level of engagement during the process.
