High School Students’ Use of Paper-Based and Internet-Based Information Sources in the Engineering Design Process

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education continues to be a national concern. In the State of the Union address in January 2011, President Obama called for 100,000 new STEM teachers over the next decade. The Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) investigated the academic achievement of 15-year-old students from 60 countries and five education systems in the areas of math, science, and reading. Results of the 2009 study indicated that the U.S. students were ranked 23rd of 60 countries involved (Fleischman, Hopstock, Pelczar, & Shelley, 2010). Published in 1983, A Nation At Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform called for improvement of education at the secondary levels (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). The report demanded more emphasis on science and mathematics at both the primary and secondary level, creating the academic foundation for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education.