Abstract: This presentation will present milestones from two ongoing projects (Project RISE, Eradicate the Gate) that highlight research with K12 students and how engineering education can be transformed through student-generated data and assessment. What happens when students generate the data and how do we as researchers facilitate that? How forward thinking can we be as researchers to facilitate freedom in learning and its resultant creativity in assessment?

Project RISE is a transdisciplinary project for middle and high school students with an innovative curriculum integrating civics and engineering design thinking, and a new software that supports students, teachers, and researcher in unique ways. This project investigates questions about problem identification and articulation, brainstorming, and online communities. Eradicate the Gate is a recently terminated NSF CAREER award whose goal is to reduce gatekeeping by empowering learners and reverse engineering assessment. This project distributes power by partnering with students as co-designers in ways that can teach educators and researchers.