Importance

Diving into the Ocean Twilight Zone (OTZ) is an innovative STEM program designed to equip high school students with adaptable skills, knowledge, and exposure to multiple careers to meet the rapidly evolving U.S. workforce needs. The OTZ is a little explored region of the world’s oceans that is considered to be of significant scientific, commercial, and strategic importance. There is heightened urgency to deepen our understanding of this critical environment, which is driving rapid innovation in engineering, science, and technology.

This project is developing three monthlong experiential OTZ learning activities that integrate cutting-edge authentic marine science content, much of which is collected and developed by OTZ researchers, with real-world datasets, robotics, coding, engineering design thinking, and collaboration. Activities are scaffolded on the award-winning Scoutlier learning platform and created so they are flexible enough for both middle school and high school students. They can be used in science, engineering, and computer science classes, for career technical education pathways, or during afterschool programs.

Each Ocean Twilight Zone activity includes sustainable, low-cost robotic systems (microbits) and videos that introduce OTZ STEM career role models. Students explore solutions to authentic OTZ problems. The program culminates in a capstone event for students to virtually pitch their challenge solutions to a panel of judges consisting of researchers and scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) of Newport, Rhode Island. Student winners travel to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where they go on a short research cruise, present posters and their robots to WHOI and NUWC scientists and engineers, and tour the robotics and biology labs.

The project is being piloted in Rhode Island and will expand throughout Southern New England. Our long-term goal is to create a more technologically capable, culturally sensitive, diverse STEM workforce.

Research

We are investigating the following questions:

• Does the OTZ program broaden student interest in ocean science STEM careers, increases student awareness of careers within these fields, and motivates students to pursue more technical pathways, particularly among racial minorities and girls?
• Does the OTZ program improve student science achievement and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) technical and soft skills?

In addition, we are examining how student STEM identity evolves, particularly among racial minorities and girls.