For STEM faculty seeking to enhance their courses with high-quality STEM educational materials, ATE Central's STEMLink offers an efficient solution. STEMLink integrates directly into a campus Learning Management System (LMS) and provides access to thousands of applied STEM resources created through the NSF Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. In this Q&A, ATE Central's Edward Almasy shares how STEMLink supports educators by streamlining access to curriculum materials.

In your own words, can you describe what STEMLink is and why it’s beneficial for the ATE community and other educators?

STEMLink makes thousands of high-quality applied STEM educational materials created via the NSF Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program available directly within campus learning management system (LMS), for use by educators and students in courses and classrooms.  It allows educators to easily leverage the amazing wealth of in-depth expertise, knowledge, and experience brought to the table by ATE grantees, to save them time and improve outcomes for their students.

We created STEMLink for two reasons:  1) increase and widen the impact of ATE-created materials, and  2) provide the creators of those materials with hard data on their usage, that they could then share with NSF and other stakeholders, to help demonstrate the impact of their work.

In service of that second goal, the STEMLink service also serves (aggregate and strictly-anonymized!) usage data back to the ATE community, that they can share and use in their formative evaluation efforts, to help guide their work going forward. The end result is a win/win situation, where curriculum users get a continually-expanding and improving range of materials for use in their classroom, and curriculum creators get a continuous stream of feedback on what STEM educators across the country find useful and valuable.

What makes STEMLink content different from other online educational resource platforms available? 

STEMLink offers three big advantages:  1) STEMLink materials are created by literally some of the best applied STEM educators in the country,  2) those educators often work closely with industry to ensure that the materials they create are aligned with current industry needs so that the knowledge and skills learned will help students land good jobs, and  3) it puts those materials directly into the LMS on your campus, ready for your use.  And a fourth significant advantage: STEMLink is all completely free, to you and to your institution.

ATE grantees can also share (and STEM educators can leverage) their applied STEM education expertise in another way, as STEMLink Publishers. STEMLink Publishers create and share curated collections of educational materials focused around particular applied STEM topics, that educators can incorporate as a whole or in part into the courses they're managing and teaching.

Can you share some examples of the types of materials that are included in STEMLink?

The resources available through STEMLink span the breadth and depth of the ATE program, from Nanotechnology to Aquaculture to Machining to Microcontrollers to Industrial Automation to Data Visualization and more.

Can any campus install STEMLink and are there costs associated with using it?*

STEMLink is entirely free to you and your campus, and can be installed into any LMS running one of the major platforms (Canvas, Blackboard, Brightspace, Moodle) in just a few minutes. There are videos that walk through LMS installation on the STEMLink website.

What's next for STEMLink?

A big focus for us right now is on improving and extending the STEMLink Publisher facilities, to provide more ways for subject experts in the ATE community to share the work they've done in curating and collecting targeted sets of resources to cover a specific topic in the classroom.

But we are continually working to improve the STEMLink interface based on feedback from the community, to make it easier to find and use exactly the right applied STEM materials for your courses, and would very much appreciate any thoughts you might want to share or questions you might have about the service!

STEMLink provides free access to trusted materials that support both teaching and student success. To learn more or bring STEMLink to your campus, contact the ATE Central team at [email protected].