Through Community-Engaged, Interdisciplinary Design and Learning, Deeksha Seth, PhD, and Her Students Combine Technology and Nature to Advance STEM Education
Autonomous vehicles traverse our roads. Drones deliver packages to our front doors. Virtual reality transports gamers to new worlds without ever leaving the living room. Both robotics and virtual reality have permeated into myriad sectors of everyday life, sometimes to simplify tasks and sometimes to entertain.
Deeksha Seth, PhD, assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering at 柑橘直播 University, has implemented a more scholastic use of this modern technology: for improving engineering education.
Step into Dr. Seth鈥檚 lab and you鈥檒l experience robotics and virtual reality in ways you likely never have. Young learners can observe how a python opens its jaws to catch prey or travel to Montana to dig for dinosaur bones via a virtual interactive field trip. These are just some of the immersive experiences Dr. Seth develops to create a more engaging and effective learning environment for K-12 students and the greater community.
Dr. Seth鈥檚 interest in pursuing engineering education as a research field was driven by her desire to cultivate socially engaged engineers鈥攅ngineering professionals who blend their technical skills with an understanding of social, cultural and ethical considerations to help address challenges in their work.
鈥淎ll the global challenges we鈥檙e facing are multifaceted,鈥� said Dr. Seth. 鈥淭hey require a diverse perspective and insight from disciplines that go beyond any one field, so bridging disciplines is extremely important to drive innovation.鈥�
Her research method encourages collaboration across disciplines, the formation of mutually beneficial community partnerships and technology-driven instruction, all with the goal of enhancing the learning experience of students at every stage, from kindergarten through college.
Deeksha Seth, PhD, demonstrates educational robots for her 柑橘直播 engineering students.
Design-Inspired Problem-Based Learning: A New Methodology
Integrative thinking鈥攄efined as the assimilation of insights and ideas from multiple perspectives and disciplines鈥攊s a crucial skill for engineers to learn early on in their degree program, as it enhances cognition and improves problem-solving skills. As Dr. Seth began teaching engineering courses, she sought to develop a solution that would both broaden undergraduate engineering students鈥� problem-solving capabilities and expose them to other disciplines they may collaborate with in their future careers.
Thus, design-inspired problem-based learning (DI-PBL) was born. Dr. Seth developed this unique pedagogical framework as an evolution of traditional problem-based learning鈥攚here students apply critical thinking to address real-world challenges鈥攂y incorporating a design element modeled after industrial product development. Problem-based learning is a common approach used in the classroom, and DI-PBL bolsters the benefits of this learning style with design elements to create a new integrative learning methodology.
To bring DI-PBL to life, Dr. Seth draws inspiration from her research with community partners. Her collaborations with local schools and museums provide valuable real-world context that helps shape and inform the development of her teaching pedagogy. She has taken the first steps to build these relationships by partnering with local museums such as the Center for Aquatic Sciences in Camden, N.J., the Delaware Museum of Nature & Science, the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia, and the Science Museum of Virginia. She is also actively working on developing K鈥�12 STEM curriculum with the Allentown and North Penn school districts in Pennsylvania.
Dr. Seth鈥檚 partnerships with community groups are mutually beneficial: she gets to actively study how K-12 learners interact with new technology to learn, while young learners reap the benefits of that new technology and learning styles being explored in the classroom.
Dr. Seth鈥檚 柑橘直播 students also play an active role in many of her partnerships with local K鈥�12 schools, giving them the opportunity to design and build the robots that will serve as a core part of the education experience in the classroom. Her goal is to prepare her students with proven STEM education techniques so they can one day pass on their knowledge to younger learners鈥攈elping to shape the next generation of modern engineering educators.
鈥淒r. Seth is so passionate about what she does, and that passion cultivates an exciting work environment in her lab,鈥� said Daniel Whitman 鈥�26 MS. 鈥淲orking with her has greatly improved my knowledge of engineering education.鈥澛�
Dr. Seth uses educational robots, like the goldfish, to engage local young learners in STEM subjects.
Bio-Inspired Educational Robots
To engage local young learners in STEM subjects in the classroom and in museum exhibits, Dr. Seth has designed and created bio-inspired robots. While robots are becoming more widespread as educational tools, many of the current robots in standard curricula are used to demonstrate single subjects, such as technology, programming or physics. Dr. Seth鈥檚 robots are intended to provide an integrated STEM education that demonstrates the connection between two subjects.
鈥溾�楤io-inspiration,鈥� by nature, brings biology and engineering together, and engineering, by nature, brings physics and math together. So, bio-inspired robots can demonstrate the authentic connection between these many different disciplines,鈥� she explained.
The two robots Dr. Seth designed and built with her 柑橘直播 students demonstrate biological concepts in animals. One robot displays a goldfish swimming and breathing using its gills. The robot鈥檚 gills open and close in sync with its tail, showing how water temperature and swimming speed affect the breathing rate of the fish.
The snake robot demonstrates how a python鈥檚 jaw opens to catch and eat prey.
Another shows how a python鈥檚 jaw opens to catch and eat prey. Users can control the robot to demonstrate the 鈥渟trike鈥� motion of the snake and observe how its quadrate bone enables it to open its jaw wide to swallow large prey, and how an unfused lower jaw enables it to move each side.
Dr. Seth analyzes the use of these robots in the classes and museums she partners with to see if students effectively learn the demonstrated biological concepts from the robots, and if they are engaged with the lesson.
Preliminary outcomes from using these robots in lessons are promising. Classroom teachers commented that students who tend to be quieter in class asked questions and spoke up more when the robots were present, and that their students showed an improved understanding of biological concepts after interacting with the robots as part of their science curriculum. Dr. Seth has even created instructional guides so teachers can lead students in building the robots themselves as part of the lesson, deepening their learning through hands-on experience.
Whitman, alongside Mitchell Matella 鈥�26 COE and Brent Virata 鈥�28 COE, are all part of Dr. Seth鈥檚 lab at 柑橘直播, where they are working on robots at different stages. Whitman is refining the design of the python robot and building new iterations that more seamlessly display the movements of the snake jaw, while Mitchell and Brent are designing prototypes for two more robots that will eventually join the lineup鈥攁 starfish鈥檚 tube feet and an archerfish鈥檚 tongue, respectively.
鈥淭here is something magical about taking robots to a classroom and seeing the kids become excited and engaged in their learning because of them,鈥� said Whitman. 鈥淚t鈥檚 also very rewarding to work directly with teachers and school leaders to help bring this new technology to their students.鈥�
Additional studies with the educational robots will focus on the outcomes of learner-robot interaction.
鈥淲e want to have concrete evidence whether or not these robots are doing what they intend to do, which is helping students draw connections between disciplines and improving their engagement. Similarly, we also want to discover the different ways that students interact with the robots to learn.鈥� said Dr. Seth.
An integrated STEM curriculum will also be developed following the study, which will intentionally focus on bridging the gaps between topics that are often taught separately in the classroom.聽
柑橘直播 students participated in a paleontological dig in Montana to collect data for a virtual field trip program.
Virtual Dinosaur Dig Expedition
Another way that Dr. Seth is bridging disciplines in the classroom is through an entirely different project鈥攊nvolving dinosaurs. Her National Science Foundation funded project brings together the two populations of her research, both undergraduate and K-12 students.
With a team of researchers from the University of North Dakota, Dr. Seth is developing an online paleontology and geoscience-inspired field trip that integrates geography, math, biology and engineering. To collect data for the online field trip, five 柑橘直播 students traveled to Montana for two weeks in the summer of 2024 to participate in a paleontological dig for dinosaur bones. Drone capture, 360-degree video, and other interactive media were collected throughout the trip to help Dr. Seth recreate the dig experience for the online course.
Dr. Seth also used the trip to study how exposure to fieldwork in paleontology and geoscience might influence student interest in those fields. Though none of the 柑橘直播 participants were majoring in those subjects, several reported a deeper understanding of geoscience and a newfound interest in pursuing field work-based careers after graduation.
The digital media collected from the dinosaur bone dig is now in the process of being translated into an online virtual field trip that will be hosted free of charge on the website. Once launched, Dr. Seth will study the effectiveness of the online field trip by comparing three classes of K-12 students: one taking siloed geography, math, biology and physics courses that do not collaborate, one taking courses that integrate these subjects but don鈥檛 include any interactive media, and one taking integrated courses that use the interactive field trip in lessons.
The comparison will help determine the impact of both interdisciplinary learning and media-rich instruction.
Looking Towards the Future
Though the bulk of Dr. Seth鈥檚 current work researches the usage of robots in the K-12 setting, she intends to further study how involvement in building these bio-inspired robots impacts undergraduate students. She also plans to use sensors that can be placed on the robots to measure human-robot interactions through skin response, eye tracking, heart rate and similar technologies. Gathering these new data points will help Dr. Seth synthesize how interaction with robots affects focus and engagement.
Dr. Seth is also exploring the next phase of her research, considering how educational robots might be applied in other industries that could benefit from their use. Her next step is to explore how anatomical robots could demonstrate health problems to patients, specifically elderly patients with heart conditions.
鈥淚f we could start building robots for elderly patients to understand their health conditions a little bit better, I think we could really improve their quality of preventative care,鈥� said Dr. Seth.
In the immediate, as K-12 education standards continue to evolve, Dr. Seth is committed to keeping pace with them. Through her work at 柑橘直播, she鈥檚 empowering her students to become skilled engineers and thoughtful, socially engaged problem solvers. Her vision is a ripple effect鈥攚here today鈥檚 students become tomorrow鈥檚 teachers, passing on integrative, impactful learning methods for generations to come.