For some rural communities, the outdoor recreation ecosystem is an integral part of the STEM learning ecosystem that connects rural youth with STEM and STEM career pathways. Landowners and forest managers construct and fly drones to inventory, map, and monitor resources. Hatcheries monitor fish levels and sustain populations for recreational fisheries. Backcountry skiers depend on snow science and avalanche forecasts to assess conditions. Outdoor recreation that youth in rural communities are currently engaging in can be sources of opportunities and experiences for cultivating their STEM identities and career aspirations. Existing studies have shown the promise of specific, one-time interventions and discrete activities, none have situated activities in a broader ecosystem framework comprising a nascent and growing economic sector that is currently shaping rural communities.
This Pilot and Feasibility project brings together CAST, a non-profit education research organization, the University of New Hampshire (UNH), and outdoor-recreation and informal STEM community-based youth-serving organizations in New Hampshire (NH). In particular, this study will investigate the contributions of youth's participation in (or aversion of) outdoor recreation on developing high school aged students' STEM identities and considerations of careers in STEM through outdoor recreation. Researchers seek to address three questions: How can outdoor recreation be used as an informal STEM learning context to broaden participation for underrepresented rural youth who face known barriers to the traditional learning experiences necessary for developing positive STEM identities? How can outdoor recreation be used to increase the STEM career pathways for underrepresented rural youth? How do people in different positions in the STEM ecosystem view STEM as part of the future OR economy? In this qualitative dominant research study, investigators will employ experience sampling to involve 30 youth and 10 adults in rural communities in collecting their moments of engaging in outdoor recreation, and photovoice to encourage them to examine and reflect on these moments. Another group of 20 youth and 30 adults from the community will be interviewed to consider how members of the community perceives viability of outdoor recreation as a part of future STEM career pathways.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Amanda BastoniSam Catherine JohnstonAndrew CoppensJayson Seaman
The Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) will collaborate with four community organizations serving Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) audiences to research and develop a novel outdoor makerspace that engages families in STEM learning. A makerspace is a place where people work together on creative, interest driven projects. In working with BIPOC families, the project addresses three forms of historical (and present day) exclusion of community participants, including participation in the design of informal learning experiences, participation in such activities, and overall engagement in STEM. The project aims to develop activities that foster STEM learning using natural materials in an outdoor makerspace, informed through robust collaboration with local communities. This project will result in an outdoor makerspace at SMM that will include 3-4 settings (approximately 2500 square feet total) that house and support multiple making activities in an outdoor context. The proposed work will contribute to advancing knowledge through exploring how BIPOC families define learning in makerspaces and how younger children can be fully engaged in family learning. The project will share the inclusive design and community collaboration practices developed through this work with other museums, maker educators, and other community organizations that can develop or expand their own outdoor makerspaces in ways that will respect and reflect BIPOC families’ perspectives.
BIPOC families will join museum staff as contributors in the development and iteration of an outdoor makerspace and collaborators in the development of generalized design principles and dissemination of the research. Visitor-captured video of engagement in the outdoor makerspace, surveys, and memos from design meetings with community partners serve as the foundation for the process of aligning design and development of outdoor informal science education spaces with community needs and values. All research activities will be guided by a culturally responsive research framework and use strategies to ensure the multicultural validity such as video meaning-making with family research participants and member-checking instruments, data analyses, and findings with Design Partners. Project research will address three questions: (1) What are the characteristics of family learning in an outdoor nature-situated makerspace, including how BIPOC families identify and describe STEM learning and how outdoor spaces can be built to support BIPOC families’ perspectives? (2) How can the space be built to support multi-age families to engaged in making, including a focus on what design elements support preschool learner’s engagement and sustained participation by other family members? and (3) How do the design principles for making with widely available materials translate from indoor to outdoor spaces and materials? Research findings, design principles and community engagement guides will be widely disseminated to researchers, designers, program developers, informal science institutions and community organizations.
This project provides opportunities for Indigenous youth to transform and be transformed by opportunities for STEAM innovation and knowledge building. This project will create opportunities outside of the classroom to invest in youths’ engagement, and interest, and self-efficacy in STEAM by supporting explorations in community settings that value multiple languages and ways of knowing. Through this project, youth can engage in pressing community needs—such as climate change impacts, food and water security, chronic health crises, and out-migration— with community experts, elders, and knowledge holders. The project will expand the picture of what Informal STEAM learning and meaningful engagement in STEAM looks like in Pacific Island contexts. It will employ a collaborative research framework to investigate how Informal STEAM learning activities that foster intergenerational learning—particularly the exploration of traditional stories and the creation of prototypes, storytelling packages, and hands-on models that illustrate Indigenous STEAM practices—impact youths’ engagement and interest in STEAM and self-efficacy over time. By building the capacity of participants—particularly Pacific Islander youth—to become co-researchers, -evaluators and -designers, the project will cultivate spaces for participants to advocate for their interests, perspectives, and needs. This research within the Pacific region is important for fostering science literacy and broadening participation in STEAM fields since early interest in science is a potential indicator of future STEAM interest and career choices.
The goal of the project is to investigate how youth’s inductive exploration of local technologies featured in Indigenous stories impact their engagement and interest in STEAM, Informal STEAM learning, and future decision making that affect youth participation in STEAM pathways. The project will be implemented in Guam, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia (comprising the four states of Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap) and will address the core research question: To what extent does youths’ participation in STEAM-based storytelling and story exploration lead to increases in youths’ engagement and interest in STEAM and self-efficacy over time? The project approaches story exploration as a cultural and metalinguistic process to investigate a story not solely as an artifact or a process, but as a doorway to investigations of history, Indigenous STEAM, and local innovation. Two cohorts of youth participants will engage in summer and spring out-of-school programs led by elders, partner organizations, and project staff through which youth investigate storytelling, design, research practice, and service learning. Each cohort will also create digital storytelling packages and/or model kits to share with audiences through participant-designed community-level and cross-region sharing events. The project is expected to reach 140 youth and 30 elders. To measure learning outcomes, the project builds upon extant tools to gauge Informal STEAM learning engagement. Lessons about the application of these tools will contribute to the Informal STEAM learning knowledge base—especially regarding underrepresented communities in STEAM. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is the overarching theoretical and methodological framework for the project and will engage participants as co-researchers through multiple methods of observation, data gathering, and analysis. The project will also create community-driven research opportunities that advances the generation of knowledge on topics that are often left unexplored because: (1) Micronesians as underrepresented minorities are not usually at the table during research design; (2) non-Micronesian/Indigenous epistemologies are usually privileged throughout the research; and (3) there is a lack of trust when any outsider asks to look in, especially when racialized colonial histories still leave daily impacts. This project encourages all participants to consider and develop answers to this question: Stewards of whose knowledge? Research findings and educational materials and resources will be disseminated to researchers, program developers, informal science institutions, partner organizations, formal and informal educators, and communities.
This Innovations in Development project supports racially and ethnically diverse youth in learning about climate resilience in informal settings, including community centers, afterschool programs, and museums. The project aims to: (1) build the capacity of community organizations to implement youth programming on climate resilience; (2) increase youth knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy associated with climate resilience (also referred to as environmental health literacy for climate resilience); and (3) explore how collaborating research universities and community organizations engage diverse youth in informal STEM learning. Project partners include the UNC Institute for the Environment, the University of Washington-Interdisciplinary Center for Exposures, Diseases, Genomics and Environment, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Juntos NC, and the Duwamish River Community Coalition (DRCC). Juntos NC and DRCC actively engage Latino and Indigenous youth in their programming and seek to implement resilience-focused programming that supports youth science learning and leadership development.
Together, informal educators and participating youth will develop locally relevant solutions to climate impacts in their communities. Youth will interact with university-based climate scientists and educators to collect and analyze data and will participate in resilience-focused dialogue, planning, and actions in their communities. Youth will share what they learn with their families and peers through family events and teen summits. The project will engage dozens of educators in community organizations and at least 250 youth, who will share what they learn with their families and communities, reaching hundreds more people through communications and local action projects. Mixed-methods assessment will provide insight into the extent participating youth (a) develop environmental health literacy for climate resilience, and (b) take action to address resilience in their home communities. The team will assess how these outcomes vary by location, and the implications of any variation on potential for project replication. A participatory evaluation, led by an external evaluator, will provide insight into empowerment outcomes. Findings will be disseminated to professional audiences at local and national conferences; and curricular materials from this project will be disseminated through the project website.
The project will develop and research an after-school program designed to engage rural, Latinx youth in design thinking and math through making. Making is a learner-centered environment where participants design, create, and develop projects. Latinx individuals are underrepresented in the STEM workforce. The project will engage Latinx youth during the critical middle school years when young people make choices that affect their futures. The project will work with community members, after school staff, and youth as co-designers to develop and pilot the complete after school program. The program will involve Latinx youth who live in the agricultural regions of the Southwest United States with the goal of developing agency and positive identity, as makers, mathematical doers and users, and active community members. They will engage in developmentally appropriate mathematics, such as the volume and surface area of geometric shapes, within the context of informal learning projects. The program will comprise four semester-long after school projects, involving participants for 2-4 hours each week, during which time youth will design and create objects to address typical community challenges. Each project will incorporate smaller modules to enable youth with different attendance needs to participate. Real community problems (e.g., drought) and solution paths (e.g., water catchment system) will motivate the making and the mathematics. The program, co-designed in partnership with the Cesar Chavez Foundation, promises to reach 100,000 youth over the next decade. Because the program can serve as a model for others with similar goals, this reach has the potential to be expanded in many other communities.
Project research will address a gap in the current literature on mathematics, making, and community membership. The project connects community mathematics—the rich mathematical knowledge and practices drawn from communities—to educational making to both enrich understanding of school mathematics and aid in developing students’ positive mathematical and cultural identities. The project will also result in a model of professional development that can be used and studied by after school programs and researchers, contributing to the limited body of knowledge of professional development on STEM making for after school facilitators. The research design for this project will follow a mixed methods approach where quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis will occur simultaneously. Results of both strands will be brought together at the interpretation and reporting level to compare and bring out the convergence, divergence, or complementarity of findings. The research will take place in two stages (co-design and pilot) over 3 years, with an additional half year for developing communications of the findings. Research will address the following questions: (1) What are the key features of projects for integrating community mathematics, school mathematics understanding, and design/making? (2) How do facilitators support the youth in engaging in program activities? (3) What math content and practices do youth learn through participation in program activities? and (4) How do youth’s agency and identity as makers, mathematics doers and users, and community members change with participation in the program? Program research and resources will be disseminated nationally through the Cesar Chavez Foundation and by sharing project research and resources through publications and conference presentations reaching researchers, educators, and program developers.
The Northwest Passage Project explored the changing Arctic through an innovative expedition aboard the Swedish Icebreaker Oden to conduct groundbreaking ocean science research, while it actively engaged 22 undergraduate and graduate students from the project’s five Minority Serving Institution (MSI) partners and 2 early career Inuit researchers in the research at sea. Over 35 hours of training in Arctic research techniques, polar science, and science communication was provided to these participants, who were engaged in the Northwest Passage expedition and worked with the onboard science team
This guide gathers the ultimate reflections from the Erasmus+ project "Tinkering EU: Addressing the Adults." It was created for science centers, museums and other places of science education interested in exploring the potential of Tinkering for inclusive learning and engagement. It presents lessons learned about:
The co-design and the development of the activities.
Relevant elements to consider building meaningful relationships with the local communities.
The contribution the project has given to each partner’s institutional change at a wider level.
An interactive online
Mathematizing, Visualizing, and Power (MVP): Appalachian Youth Becoming Data Artists for Community Learning is a three-year Advancing Informal STEM Learning, Innovations and Development, project that focuses on community-centered data exploration catalyzed by youth. The project develops statistical artistry among young people in East Tennessee Appalachian communities and enables these youth to share their data visualizations with their communities to foster collective reflection and understanding. The creative work generated by the MVP project will be compelling in two ways, both as statistical art and as powerful statements giving voice to the experience of communities. Critical aspects of the MVP model include (1) youth learning sessions that position youth as owners of data and producers of knowledge and (2) Community Learning Events that support community learning as youth learning occurs. The MVP project has a primary focus on broadening the STEM participation of underrepresented communities of Appalachia. The project’s mission is to increase the learning and life outcomes of young people and communities of Appalachia by creating a meaningful foundation of data science and collective data exploration. The University of Tennessee partners with Pellissippi State Community College, Drexel University, and the Boys & Girls Club of the Tennessee Valley to bring together a convergent team of community members, practitioners, and professionals, with the expertise to carry out the project. The project will impact approximately 120 youth and 3800 of their East Tennessee community members. The research generated will inform how to engage community members in learning about community issues through the exploration of datasets relevant to participants.
The field of STEM education is in urgent need of knowledge about effective models to inspire community-based data exploration with young people as leaders in these efforts. The MVP project includes engaging youth with meaningful problems, building a discourse community with possibilities for action, re-positioning youth as knowledge producers within their own communities, leveraging linguistic and cultural resources of the youth participants and their communities, and implementing critical events that support substantial interaction between youth, community members, and the data visualizations. MVP builds on the idea that the design of data visualizations requires an understanding of both data science and artistic design. Research will inform the model of community engagement, examine data artists’ identities, and document community learning. The MVP model will be designed, developed, tested, and refined through three cycles of design-based research. The overarching research question guiding these cycles is: What affordances (and delimitations) related to identity and learning does the model provide for MVP Youth and community members? Data sources for the project include: fieldnotes, portfolios created by MVP Youth, youth pre/post interviews, observations of the learning sessions, a project documentary, surveys for youth and community members, interviews with community members, and audience feedback. The National Institute for STEM Evaluation and Research (NISER) will provide formative and summative evaluation about project activities. Formative feedback will be integrated into the ongoing research cycles. The research conducted will inform (1) the community learning model; (2) the integrated pedagogy and curriculum of the MVP Youth learning sessions that emphasize data science through design arts; and, (3) research on community learning and youth identity. Findings will be shared through conferences, academic and practitioner-focused journals, a video documentary, a Summit on Engaging Youth and Communities in Data, and a project website.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Lynn HodgeElizabeth DyerJoy BertlingCarlye Clark
This Innovations in Development project explores radical healing as an approach to create after-school STEM programming that welcomes, values and supports African American youth to form positive STEM identities. Radical healing is a strength-based, asset centered approach that incorporates culture, identity, civic action, and collective healing to build the capacity of young people to apply academic knowledge for the good of their communities. The project uses a newly developed graphic novel as a model of what it looks like to engage in the radical healing process and use STEM technology for social justice. This graphic novel, When Spiderwebs Unite, tells the true story of an African American community who used STEM technology to advocate for clean air and water for their community. Youth are supported to consider their own experiences and emotions in their sociopolitical contexts, realize they are not alone, and collaborate with their community members to take critical action towards social change through STEM. The STEM Club activities include mentoring by African American undergraduate students, story writing, conducting justice-oriented environmental sciences investigations, and applying the results of their investigations to propose and implement community action plans. These activities aim to build youth’s capacity to resist oppression and leverage the power of STEM technology for their benefit and that of their communities.
Clemson University, in partnership with the Urban League of the Upstate, engages 100 predominantly African American middle school students and 32 African American undergraduate students in healing justice work, across two youth-serving, community-based organizations at three sites. These young people assume a leadership role in developing this project’s graphic novel and curriculum for a yearlong, after-school STEM Club, both constructed upon the essential components of radical healing. This project uses a qual→quant parallel research design to investigate how the development and use of a graphic novel could be used as a healing justice tool, and how various components of radical healing (critical consciousness, cultural authenticity, self knowledge, radical hope, emotional and social support, and strength and resilience) affect African American youths’ STEM identity development. Researchers scrutinize interviews, field observations, and project documents to address their investigation and utilize statistical analyses of survey data to inform and triangulate the qualitative data findings. Thus, qualitative and quantitative data are used to challenge dominant narratives regarding African American youth’s STEM achievements and trajectories. The project advances discovery and understanding of radical healing as an approach to explicitly value African Americans’ cultures, identities, histories, and voices within informal STEM programming.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Renee LyonsRhondda ThomasCorliss Outley
Data is increasingly important in all aspects of people’s lives, from the day-to-day, to careers and to civic engagement. Preparing youth to use data to answer questions and solve problems empowers them to participate in society as informed citizens and opens doors to 21st century career opportunities. Ensuring equitable representation in data literacy and data science careers is critical. For many girls underrepresented in STEM, developing a "data science identity" requires personally meaningful experiences working with data. This project aims to promote middle school-aged girls’ interest and aspirations in data science through an identity-aligned, social game-based learning approach. The goals are to create a more diverse and inclusive generation of data scientists who see data as a resource and who are equipped with the skills and dispositions necessary to work with data in order to solve practical problems. The research team will run 10 social clubs and 10 data science clubs mentored by women in data science recruited through the University of Miami’s Institute for Data Science and Computing. Participants will be 250 middle school-aged girls recruited in Miami, FL, and Yolo County, CA, through local and national girls’ organizations. Youth will participate in a data science club and will learn key data science concepts and skills, including data structures, storage, exploration, analysis, and visualization. These concepts will be learned from working with their own data collected in personally meaningful ways in addition to working with data collected by others in the same social game eco-system. The project will also develop facilitator materials to allow adult volunteers to create game-based informal data science learning experiences for youth in their areas. The project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments and is co-funded by the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST), which seeks to engage underrepresented students in technology-rich learning environments, including skills in data literacy, and increase students’ knowledge and interest in information and communication technology (ICT) careers.
Researchers will focus on two primary research questions: 1) Across gameplay and club experiences, in what ways do participants engage with data to pursue personal or social goals? 2) How do gameplay and club experiences shape girls’ perceptions of data, data science, and their fit with data and data science? The project will use design-based research methods to iteratively design the game and social club experiences. To ensure that uses of data feel personally and socially meaningful to young girls, the virtual world’s goals, narratives, and activities will be co-designed with girls from groups underrepresented in data science. The project will research engagement with game data in two informal, game-based learning scenarios: organic, self-directed, social play club, and structured, adult-facilitated data science clubs. The research will use a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods including surveys, focus groups, interviews, and gameplay and club observations. Project evaluation will determine how gameplay and club experiences impact participants' attitudes toward and interest in data-rich futures. The project holds the potential for broadening participation and promoting interest in data science by blending game-based learning with the rich social and adult mentoring through club participation. The results will be disseminated through conference presentations, scholarly publications, and social media. The game and facilitator materials will be designed for dissemination and made freely available to the public.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Lisa HardyGary GoldbergerJennifer Kahn
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Centering Native Traditional Knowledge within informal STEM education programs is critical for learning for Native youth. In co-created, place-based learning experiences for Native youth, interweaving cultural traditions, arts, language, and community partnerships is vital for authentic, meaningful learning. Standardized STEM curricula and Western-based pedagogies within the mainstream and formal education systems do not reflect the nature of Native STEM knowledge, nor do they make deep connections to it. The absence of this knowledge base can reinforce a deficit-based STEM identity, which can directly impact Native youths’ participation and engagement in STEM. Reframing STEM education for Native youth to prioritize the vitality of community and sustainability requires active consideration of what counts as science learning and who serves as holders and conduits of STEM knowledge. As highly regarded holders of traditional and western STEM knowledge, Native educators and cultural practitioners are critical for facilitating Native youths’ curiosity and engagement with STEM. This Innovations in Development project is Native-led and centers Native knowledge, voice, and contributions in STEM through a culturally based, dual-learning approach that emphasizes traditional and western STEM knowledge. Through this lens, a network of over a dozen tribal nations across 20 U.S. states will be established to support and facilitate the learning of Traditional and Western STEM knowledge in a culturally sustaining manner. The network will build on existing programs and develop a set of unique, interconnected, and synchronized placed-based informal STEM programs for Native youth reflecting the distinctive cultural aspects of Native American and Alaska Native Tribes. The network will also involve a Natives-In-STEM Role Models innovation, in which Native STEM professionals will provide inspiration to Native youth through conversations about their journeys in STEM within cultural contexts. In addition, the network will cultivate a professional network of STEM educators, practitioners, and tribal leaders. Network efforts and the formative evaluation will culminate in the development and dissemination of a community-based, co-created Framework for Informal STEM Education with Native Communities.
Together with Elders and other contributors of each community, local leads within the STEM for Youth in Native Communities (SYNC) Network team will identify and guide the STEM content topics, as well as co-create and implement the program within their sovereign lands with their youth. The content, practitioners, and programming in each community will be distinct, but the community-based, dual learning contextual framework will be consistent. Each community includes several partner organizations poised to contribute to the programming efforts, including tribal government departments, tribal and public K-12 schools, tribal colleges, museums and cultural centers, non-profits, local non-tribal government support agencies, colleges and universities, and various grassroots organizations. Programmatic designs will vary and may include field excursions, summer and after school STEM experiences, and workshops. In addition, the Natives-In-STEM innovation will be implemented across the programs, providing youth with access to Native STEM professionals and career pathways across the country. To understand the impacts of SYNC’s efforts, an external evaluator will explore a broad range of questions through formative and summative evaluations. The evaluation questions seek to explore: (a) the extent to which the culturally based, dual learning methods implemented in SYNC informal STEM programs affect Native youths’ self-efficacy in STEM and (b) how the components of SYNC’s overall theoretical context and network (e.g., partnerships, community contributors such as Elders, STEM practitioners and professionals) impact community attitudes and behaviors regarding youth STEM learning. Data and knowledge gained from these programs will inform the primary deliverable, a Framework for Native Informal STEM Education, which aims to support the informal STEM education community as it expands and deepens its service to Native youth and communities. Future enhanced professional development opportunities for teachers and educators to learn more about the findings and practices highlighted in the Framework are envisioned to maximize its strategic impact.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Juan ChavezDaniella ScaliceWendy Todd
This project is expanding an effective mobile making program to achieve sustainable, widespread impact among underserved youth. Making is a design-based, participant-driven endeavor that is based on a learning by doing pedagogy. For nearly a decade, California State University San Marcos has operated out-of-school making programs for bringing both equipment and university student facilitators to the sites in under-served communities. In collaboration with four other CSU campuses, this project will expand along four dimensions: (a) adding community sites in addition to school sites (b) adding rural contexts in addition to urban/suburban, (c) adding hybrid and online options in addition to in-person), and (d) including future teachers as facilitators in addition to STEM undergraduates. The program uses design thinking as a framework to engage participants in addressing real-world problems that are personally and socially meaningful. Participants will use low- and high-tech tools, such as circuity, coding, and robotics to engage in activities that respond to design challenges. A diverse group of university students will lead weekly, 90-minute activities and serve as near-peer mentors, providing a connection to the university for the youth participants, many of whom will be first-generation college students. The project will significantly expand the Mobile Making program from 12 sites in North San Diego County to 48 sites across California, with nearly 2,000 university facilitators providing 12 hours of programming each year to over 10,000 underserved youth (grades 4th through 8th) during the five-year timeline.
The project research will examine whether the additional sites and program variations result in positive youth and university student outcomes. For youth in grades 4 through 8, the project will evaluate impacts including sustained interest in making and STEM, increased self-efficacy in making and STEM, and a greater sense that making and STEM are relevant to their lives. For university student facilitators, the project will investigate impacts including broadened technical skills, increased leadership and 21st century skills, and increased lifelong interest in STEM outreach/informal science education. Multiple sources of data will be used to research the expanded Mobile Making program's impact on youth and undergraduate participants, compare implementation sites, and understand the program's efficacy when across different communities with diverse learner populations. A mixed methods approach that leverages extant data (attendance numbers, student artifacts), surveys, focus groups, making session feedback forms, observations, and field notes will together be used to assess youth and university student participant outcomes. The project will disaggregate data based on gender, race/ethnicity, grade level, and site to understand the Mobile Making program's impact on youth participants at multiple levels across contexts. The project will further compare findings from different types of implementation sites (e.g., school vs. library), learner groups, (e.g., middle vs. upper elementary students), and facilitator groups (e.g., STEM majors vs. future teachers). This will enable the project to conduct cross-case comparisons between CSU campuses. Project research will also compare findings from urban and rural school sites as well as based on the modality of teaching and learning (e.g., in-person vs. online). The mobile making program activities, project research, and a toolkit for implementing a Mobile maker program will be widely disseminated to researchers, educators, and out-of-school programs.