This paper attempts to reframe popular notions of “failure” as recently celebrated in the Maker Movement, Silicon Valley, and beyond. Building on Vossoughi et al.’s 2013 FabLearn publication describing how a focus on iterations/drafts can serve as an equity-oriented pedagogical move in afterschool tinkering contexts, we explore what it means for afterschool youth and educators to persist through unexpected challenges when using an iterative design process in their tinkering projects. More specifically, this paper describes: 1) how young women in a program geared toward increasing equitable
This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting.
Makerspaces and making-related programs are often inaccessible, unaffordable, or simply not available to underserved youth. This three-year, Innovations in Development project involves partnership with four Recreation Centers (two each in Baltimore and Pittsburgh) to (1) train educators in equity-oriented approaches to making, (2) create four learning hubs, (3) develop and test equity-based curricula in each space, and (4) establish a replicable Localization Toolkit for future implementation in other communities.
This NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot (named ALCSE-INCLUDES) project will develop and implement an innovative computer science (CS) education model that will provide all 8th grade students in 3 districts in Alabama's 'Black Belt' with exciting and structured hands-on activities intended to make CS learning enjoyable. The course will use an educational style called "learning CS by making" where students will create a CS-based product (such as a robot) and understand the concepts that make the product work. This hands-on approach has the potential to motivate diverse student populations to pursue higher level CS courses and related disciplines during and after high school, and to join the CS workforce, which is currently in need of more qualified workers.
ALCSE-INCLUDES Launch Pilot will unite the efforts of higher education institutions, K-12 officials, Computer Science (CS)-related industry, and community organizations to pursue a common agenda: To develop, implement, study, and evaluate a scalable and sustainable prototype for CS education at the middle school level in the Alabama Black Belt (ABB) region. The ABB is a region with a large African-American, low-income population; thus, the program will target individuals who have traditionally had little access to CS education. The prototype for CS education will be piloted with 8th grade students in 3 ABB schools, using a set of coordinated and mutually reinforcing activities that will draw from the strengths of all members of the ALCSE Alliance. The future scaled-up version of the program will implement the prototype in the 73 middle schools that comprise ALL 19 school districts of the ABB. The program's main innovation is to provide CS education using a makerspace, a dedicated area equipped with grade-appropriate CS resources, in which students receive mentored and structured hands-on activities. The goal is to engage ALL students, in learning CS through making, an evidence-based pedagogical approach expected to reinforce skills and promote deep interest in CS.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Shaik JeelaniBruce CrawfordMohammed QaziJeffrey GrayJacqueline Brooks
While the term 'failure' brings to mind negative associations, there is a current focus on failure as a driver of innovation and development in many professional fields. It is also emerging from prior research that for STEM professionals and educators, failure plays an important role in designing and making to increase learning, persistence and other noncognitive skills such as self-efficacy and independence. By investigating how youth and educators attend to moments of failure, how they interpret what this means, and how they respond, we will be better able to understand the dynamics of each part of the experience. The research team will be working with youth from urban, suburban and rural settings, students from Title I schools or who qualify for free/reduced-price lunches, those from racial and ethnic minority groups, as well as students who are learning English as a second language. These youth are from groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM and in making, and research indicates they are more likely to experience negative outcomes when they experience failure.
The intellectual merit of this project centers on establishing a baseline understanding of how failure in making is triggered and experienced by youth, what role educators play in the process, and what can be done to increase persistence and learning, rather than failure being an end-state. The research team will investigate these issues through the use of qualitative and quantitative research methods. In particular, the team will design and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions on increasing the abilities of youth and educators in noticing and responding to failures and increasing positive (e.g., resilience) outcomes. Research sites are selected because they will allow collection of data on youth from a wide range of backgrounds. The research team will also work to test and revise their hypothesized model of the influence of factors on persistence through failures in making. This project is a part of NSF's Maker Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) portfolio (NSF 15-086), a collaborative investment of Directorates for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR) and Engineering (ENG).
Georgetown County Library will improve the digital-age critical workforce skills of local young people through STEM-related digital activities. Classes relating to online STEM resources, digital video production, and app development will result in increased skills and interpersonal abilities, as well as an appreciation for the public library as a dynamic and informative place. By working with a number of community organizations, the library seeks to reach a local youth community that has historically experienced high rates of poverty and low rates of high school completion, and build on previous efforts to provide job fairs, skills training, and other initiatives.
This pathways project will design, develop and test Do-It-Yourself, (DIY), hands-on workshops to introduce and teach middle school females in underserved Latino communities computing and design by customizing and repurposing e-waste media technology, such as old cell phones or appliances -- items found in the students homes or neighborhoods. The major outcome of the project will be the creation of a workshop kit that covers the processes of DIY electronics learning taking place in the workshops for distribution of the curriculum to after school programs and other informal science venues. The PIs have implemented three pilot projects over the last three years that demonstrate the ability of hands-on DIY electronics curricula to motivate and encourage students and to enable them to acquire a deeper understanding of core engineering, mathematics and science concepts. This project would extend the approach to underserved Latino youth, particular girls of middle school age. This audience was identified because of the historically low rate of participation in STEM fields by people in this group and the particular challenges that females have in acquiring knowledge in technical STEM areas. The proposal suggests that the approach of using hands-on workshops that rely on low technical requirements -- essentially obsolete or discarded electronic equipment, primarily from homes of participants -- will encourage the target audience to experiment with items they are familiar with and that are culturally relevant. The hypothesis of the project is that this approach will lower barriers to experimenting with "circuit bending" - the hand-modifying of battery-powered children's toys to build custom electronic instruments and lead to greater participation and success of females in the target group. The project will provide free workshops in two neighborhood locations and be supported by undergraduate student mentors and volunteers and staff of two community groups that are part of the project, Machine Project and Girls, Inc. Participants will demonstrate the finished projects to the workshop group, mentors and parents. Each participant will receive a copy of the workshop handbook in both English and Spanish to take home so that parents, members of the community and caregivers can supervise and participate in future projects.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Garnet HertzGillian HayesRebecca Black