STEM?

During the past year, I have been working on my masters. Kudos to anyone/everyone who has finished their masters. Geez, it's a lot of work! I am in the progress of getting my masters in Curriculum and Instruction from the American College of Education. With a few months left, I can say that I have really loved the program. I love the flexibility that an online degree offers, and I feel that I have truly become a better teacher because the assignments were super applicable to my classroom. The class that I am currently taking is centered around action research. In the next four weeks, I am going to study the effects that STEM projects have on my students' learning. Now- that may sound crazy obvious! The students are applying their newly-learning science concepts... true. The students are engaging in real-life problems... true. The students are learning engineering skills. true.true. and true. But what measurable effects does STEM have? How can you show that STEM education is amazing through hard data? I am a lover of all things STEM because I can see how awesome it is in the classroom with my own two eyes. Last week, a student was sad that he was going on vacation to the Caribbean because he didn't get to build wind turbines! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? lol! I can see that they love it and it is 1000% engaging. However, I need to be able to back up what I see with my eyes on paper with real data. Anyways, for the next few weeks, I will be posting about the advantages and disadvantages of STEM with hard data about student learning. What do you track when you do STEM projects? How do you track it?