SENSE IT - student created water quality sensors

This paper describes efforts to enrich science, technology, pre-engineering and mathematics (STEM) education through a series of educational modules where students learn about engineering and science through the design, construction, programming and testing of student-created water quality sensors. This paper provides an overview of the educational modules in which a variety of sensors are described, and are suitably simple for design and construction from first principles by high school students while being accurate enough for students to make meaningful environmental measurements. The paper also describes how the sensor building activities can be tied to core curricula, enabling the modules to be utilized in standard classes by mathematics, science and computing teachers without disrupting the semester teaching goals. Furthermore, the paper presents preliminary results of the NSF SENSE IT project, during which 37 teachers have been equipped, trained on these materials, and have implement the modules with over 1600 students.