2026 IDEA Institute Symposium GIANT Poster Abstracts
GIANT Projects Showcase |
|
1.Integrating a Computer Science + Linguistics Project into an English Classroom- Phase 2 |
|
2. Computer Science Directed Reading Program |
|
3. Assessing the Impact of Inclusive STEM Outreach with Near-Peer Mentorship in a Middle School Mobile Bioengineering Program |
|
4. Evaluating STEM Identity Development in Racially Underrepresented Elementary School Students through the St. Elmo Brady Academy The St. Elmo Brady STEM Academy (SEBA) is a partnership between University Laboratory High School (Uni High), the UIUC School of Chemical Sciences (SCS), and Booker T. Washington STEM Academy (BTW) to provide socially responsive hands-on activity-based learning opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) for BTW students. Since October 2021, SEBA has engaged nearly 300 BTW students through 38 activities supported by nearly 100 student volunteers from Uni High and UIUC. Through questionnaires and survey items since Fall 2025, our results show that SEBA volunteer engagement using our collaboratively developed curriculum, improves students' STEM interest, identity, and self-efficacy. Pending focus group interview results and similar protocols to evaluate SCS volunteer mentors' professional plans and STEM identity, we will use the outcomes of this study to inform future program improvements and showcase a model for meaningful enrichment of curricular STEM engagement at the elementary school level for similar programs nationwide. |
|
5. Fostering A Sense of Belonging In the Children of Persian-speaking Immigrants Through Multimodal And Gesture-Based Language Learning Pedagogy - Phase 2 In Phase 1 of the TooTak project, we developed a gesture-based, game-based mobile app to support Persian language learning among children in the diaspora and started testing it with the Persian-speaking immigrant families in the US. While continuing the testing with the families and getting ongoing feedback from them, Phase 2 focuses on deepening cultural relevance and expanding community engagement. In this phase, we extend the design process through sustained collaboration with educators, community partners, and diaspora families. We worked with six educators (two in Afghanistan and four in Iran) over a one-month period to evaluate the application, gathering structured feedback on content, gameplay, and user experience to improve its suitability for children. In parallel, we conducted reviews led by Afghan educators to adapt the content for Afghan children’s learning contexts. To broaden engagement and visibility, we presented the project as an exhibitor at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) Conference and shared with families at the Willowdale Nowruz Festival 2026 in Toronto. These engagements supported direct interaction with diaspora communities, enabling recruitment of families interested in participating in the project and contributing to content development. We also established collaborations with organizations such as the Teach Project Foundation and Hami Canada, both of which focus on educational equity for Iranian children. These partnerships further support co-development efforts and provide expertise in technical development, fundraising, and long-term sustainability. |
|
6. Amplifying the Voices of Marginalized Physics Students Through Focus Groups Multiple stakeholders in the Illinois Physics Department have become concerned that undergraduate physics students are becoming more disconnected from each other and to the department. To investigate this issue, we explored the experiences of 27 undergraduate physics students in 14 semi-structured focus groups. Through thematic analysis of this data, we found that limited structured opportunities for mentorship, cohort-building, and career exploration left many students feeling disconnected from department. Marginalized students experienced additional barriers, including exclusion and negative interactions in spaces designed for peer connection, like discussion sections and office hours. The Physics Faculty/Staff Diversity Committee and student organizations are using these findings to develop data-driven recommendations with the goal of enhancing belonging for all Illinois Physics undergraduates. Our future work includes supporting the adoption of these recommendations, documenting the change process, and exploring the relationship between course features and students’ socio-emotional comfort in collaboration. |
|
7. weSTEM Program Evaluation: Analyzing Belonging from Past Attendees Despite comprising half of science and engineering degree recipients, women and gender minorities remain significantly underrepresented in the STEM workforce, particularly in retention rates post-graduation. This study evaluates the impact of the Women Empowered in STEM (weSTEM) conference—a graduate-focused affinity event at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)—on the sense of belonging, career efficacy, and retention of graduate gender minorities. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, we triangulate data from longitudinal surveys and semi-structured interviews with past attendees against non-attendee attrition rates. We hypothesize that the community-specific "micro affirmations" and professional networks cultivated at weSTEM serve as critical buffers against the "chilly climate" of graduate STEM education, directly correlating with increased persistence in the field. |
|
8. Engineering for Health: A Middle School Computational Thinking and Engineering Design Curriculum Using the Micro:bit Hummingbird Kit Engineering for Health is a middle school outreach initiative designed to expand access to high-quality STEM learning opportunities for rural students through a six-week afterschool curriculum grounded in computational thinking, engineering design, and health-related problem solving. Using the Micro:bit Hummingbird Kit, students engage in hands-on bioengineering activities such as modeling targeted treatment versus chemotherapy, simulating skin cancer detection, exploring mutation patterns with programmable LEDs, and building systems that illustrate cell cycle concepts. The project is being developed through partnerships with rural out-of-school-time programs, including 21st Century Community Learning Center sites, and will use a hybrid facilitation model that combines undergraduate mentorship with local educator support. The pilot will examine how participation influences student interest, confidence, self-efficacy, collaboration, and problem-solving in STEM, while also identifying which curriculum elements are most effective for engaging rural middle school learners. Findings will inform future refinement, broader dissemination, and potential scale-up of engineering-for-health outreach models. |
|
9. Assessing AI Integration in School Education Artificial Intelligence is transforming education, yet K-12 integration remains understudied. This work-in-progress presents findings from teacher surveys and a pilot deployment of an AI-based Teaching Assistant System (ATAS) in secondary education. While 46% of high school students use AI tools for assignments, 63% identify errors in AI responses, highlighting implementation challenges. We surveyed 28 teachers across twelve schools representing mathematics, history, and art, assessing technology use, AI awareness, and implementation barriers. Following this assessment, we piloted ATAS with nine mathematics students at University Laboratory High School to evaluate real-world effectiveness and usability. Teacher survey results revealed that while 85.7% regularly used digital tools, only 28.6% reported strong AI familiarity. Despite this, 50% expressed positive attitudes toward AI integration, recognizing benefits including personalized learning (78.6%), reduced workload (78.6%), and enhanced engagement (50%). However, every respondent cited insufficient training as the primary obstacle, with additional barriers including privacy concerns (67.9%), resistance to change (57.1%), and limited funding (28.6%).The pilot study engaged nine mathematics students using ATAS over several weeks. All participants reported improved understanding (22% significant, 78% moderate), utilizing ATAS for explaining concepts (56%), homework assistance (44%), and practice questions (33%). While 78% found ATAS easy to use, significant challenges emerged: slow performance and crashes, accuracy issues with mathematical concepts, difficult input formatting for fractions and symbols, poor copy-paste symbol recognition, and limited context memory. Students also noted concerns when ATAS suggested unfamiliar solution methods. Student recommendations emphasized faster processing, better mathematical notation input, expanded context memory, improved symbol detection, and personalization options. These findings reveal critical development needs for AI educational tools, particularly in STEM domains requiring specialized notation. This research demonstrates both promise and challenges in AI integration for secondary education. While students and teachers recognize AI's potential, successful implementation requires addressing technical limitations, ensuring accuracy, improving specialized notation input, and providing comprehensive training. Future work will refine ATAS based on pilot feedback, expand testing across subjects, and develop professional development programs to catalyze equitable AI adoption that improves teaching and learning outcomes. |
|
10. Impacting High School Youth to Foster Underrepresented Identities in Higher Education Despite ongoing efforts, Hispanic and African American enrollment in higher education remains stagnant, highlighting the need for community-driven, student-led interventions. This project investigates the impact of identity-based engineering outreach on underrepresented high school students’ sense of belonging, academic confidence, and interest in pursuing STEM degrees. The High School Visitation (HSV) program, led by the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) and the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), addresses this gap by providing hands-on engineering experiences, mentorship, and opportunities for students to engage with shared identity-based experiences. Using pre- and post-program surveys, this study collects both quantitative and qualitative data to assess changes in students’ academic confidence, engineering identity, and college readiness. In addition, we track longer-term outcomes, including students’ decisions to attend UIUC. By compiling demographic data, application outcomes, and shifts in confidence and belonging into a centralized database, this project evaluates program impact and informs future improvements to strengthen the high school-to-college STEM pipeline. Based on compiled data, SHPE and NSBE student leaders have demonstrated an increased connection between students' cultural identity and their sense of belonging in Engineering fields as a result of the identity based programming. Furthermore, they have identified data-driven practices for University faculty to create their own programs that bolster the high school-to-college STEM pipeline for underrepresented minorities. |
|
11. Engaging Students in Human-Centered Design to Improve Engineering Internship Experiences for Women – Phase 2 Building on a Phase 1 research project exploring women engineering students’ gendered internship experiences, this Phase 2 project engaged students in human-centered design to improve internship experiences for women in engineering. Students enrolled in ENG 398: Design Thinking for WIE Impact Lab to learn about human-centered design practice, conduct interviews with company stakeholders and students with prior internship experience, synthesize their design research insights, and prototype solutions to improve internship experiences and professional development for women in engineering. Students will pitch their final solutions at the end of the course to stakeholders in Engineering Career Services (ECS) and Women in Engineering (WIE) to determine which solutions are most feasible for further refinement, pilot implementation, and broader adoption by corporate and campus partners. |
|
12. Increasing Algebra 1 Grades through a Joy of Math Robot (J0MIE) The J0MIE Platform will allow for a learner to transcribe math problems on the screen or two take a photo of a problem written on a sheet of paper and provide step-by-step support to help solve math problems. Given the specific problem, J0MIE can provide step-by-step to a specific area of interest. For example, if you are interested in classical music, JOMIE can provide context relevant practice problems. Additionally, JOMIE will interface with the Wolfram Research Quezzio Platform and 3rd party Ancestral Math Platform™ |
|
13. Introducing the Asphalt Road-Eo Competition A critical issue within the field of civil engineering is building a diverse workforce to serve as the next generation of civil engineers. Among the subfields of civil engineering, pavement engineering lags substantially behind in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Furthermore,most civil engineering curricula do not cover pavement engineering extensively; often it is simply a week worth of classes during an introductory transportation course. Previous studies have demonstrated student competitions as an effective supplemental tool to also build interest and improve learning outcomes in a specific field of engineering. The target population for this project are undergraduate students, with a particular focus on undergraduate students from underrepresented groups. The desired outcome of this project is to generate interest among these undergraduate students to explore careers and graduate study in the field of pavement engineering. Another outcome is to expose students in general to the research process and how to get involved in undergraduate research and later apply to graduate school. In addition, we hope to provide a framework for a low barrier to entry competition which can be replicated in other regions of the country but does not require participating universities to have extensive laboratory or computational facilities. |
|
14. Evaluating the perceived outcomes and understanding the needs of engineering and computing students in connection to the use of multi-modal mathematical lecture content The accessibility of digital course content is vital for the learning experience and success of students, especially for students with disabilities (SWD). Approaches for ensuring accessibility have been adapted and implemented in higher education. For example, the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework provides guidelines to align instructional design with multiple means of engagement, representation, action/and expression. Also, the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) standards contain guidelines on the accessibility of web content (WCAG), using four key metrics: perceivable, operable, usable, and robust (POUR).One of the primary features of digital instruction is lecture content, which is often delivered through slides. Although previous research has evaluated the usage of several UDL approaches in courses, it is still unclear about the needs and perspectives of students when it comes to lecture slides, including details such as format, usage, style, content structure, and handwritten vs. typed content. Previous UDL research demonstrated that providing accompanying digital notes containing lecture content and transcriptions improved levels of perceived learning, self-efficacy, and belonging for students with accessibility needs. Further survey-based UDL research showed the perspectives and needs of students in making mathematical content more accessible, including preferences for LaTeX-formatted math. In addition, previous UDL research explored open source computer vision models to perform processing tasks such as detecting and transcribing Math content from slides in STEM courses. Drawing from this research, we take a UDL-based approach to providing an additional resource to lecture slides. Our goal is to evaluate possible changes in perceived accessibility and learning outcomes before and after the usage of an additional UDL-based resource. This resource serves as an extension to lecture slides, by using an open source model to detect and convert Math content into its formatted LaTeX representation, which is then provided to students. Our research questions are designed to evaluate the changes in student outcomes (POUR metrics, self-efficacy, belongingness) in connection with this additional resource, how students use and interact with lecture slides, and insights into future design or implementation features for existing digital tools. Furthermore, we aim to understand student perspectives and needs in the conversion of handwritten content.We surveyed and received 236 engineering student responses across 3 courses at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in two surveys before and after providing the extra UDL lecture contents. The first survey evaluates the perceived accessibility of lecture slides using POUR metrics and metrics for belonging and self-efficacy, and investigates student perspectives on the usage and format of lecture slides, especially their needs in the conversion of handwritten content. Also, the survey asks for students’ demographics and lets students with mental, physical, and/or emotional disabilities to self report as SWD. Additionally, we identify students with accessibility needs (SWAN) as those who reported having conditions that prevented them from attending instruction without having an officially recognized disability by the university. The second survey was conducted to record the changes in the aforementioned metrics after providing the extra UDL lecture resource, as well as gather quantitative and qualitative feedback. Post survey statistical analysis was conducted on student responses to measure changes in perceived accessibility (POUR), self efficacy, and belongingness. We also analyzed student responses regarding lecture slides, needs for conversion of handwritten content, and interest in additional features to improve lecture accessibility. Additionally, we evaluated if there are any similarities or differences in responses across different demographic groups. We find that after using the additional UDL lecture resource, students overall experienced a statistically significant positive increase in robustness and self-efficacy. We identified mostly consistent patterns in how students engage with lecture slides, with the top two use cases for slides being exam preparation and homework/problem solving. Also, we identified important needs for the formatting of handwritten content, such as Math content, in alternative formats. Finally, there was an overall need to make handwritten content more accessible and to create additional accessibility-related features in the future. |