An interdisciplinary approach to high school curriculum development: Swarming Powered by Neuroscience

TL;DR

This paper presents a four-day interdisciplinary virtual microseminar combining neuroscience, robotics, and computer science to enhance high school students' engagement and interest in these fields.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interdisciplinary curriculum and demonstrates its effectiveness in increasing student engagement in neuroscience, robotics, and computer science.

Findings

Student engagement in neuroscience increased by 16.6%.

Interest in robotics increased by 2.7%.

Interest in computer science increased by 1.8%.

Abstract

This article discusses how to create an interactive virtual training program at the intersection of neuroscience, robotics, and computer science for high school students. A four-day microseminar, titled Swarming Powered by Neuroscience (SPN), was conducted virtually through a combination of presentations and interactive computer game simulations, delivered by subject matter experts in neuroscience, mathematics, multi-agent swarm robotics, and education. The objective of this research was to determine if taking an interdisciplinary approach to high school education would enhance the students learning experiences in fields such as neuroscience, robotics, or computer science. This study found an improvement in student engagement for neuroscience by 16.6%, while interest in robotics and computer science improved respectively by 2.7% and 1.8%. The curriculum materials, developed for the SPN microseminar, can be used by high school teachers to further evaluate interdisciplinary instructions across life and physical sciences and computer science.