Making a Difference: Engaging Young People in Engineering and Computer Science through Computational Making and Social Entrepreneurship

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This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase student motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM). This project will implement and research the effects of a nine-month, after-school Making program for 13-15 year olds from the New York Hall of Science's (NYSCI) immediate neighborhood of high-need recent immigrants. Building on lessons learned from NYSCI's ITEST-funded Innovation Institute on participant perceptions of computer science and engineering as STEM career pathways, the project will investigate: (1) How specific aspects of the program influence participant perceptions of the relevance, usefulness and accessibility of computer science and engineering as potential academic and career pathways, and(2) Through collaboration with NYSCI's INCLUDES-funded national network of out-of-school Maker Spaces, how to adapt, implement and study the revised version of the Innovation Institute at scale in future years.The proposed research will deepen understandings of factors, designs and practices that encourage and motivate students to pursue and persist in education programs or pathways that prepare them for STEM occupations. In the program, early adolescent immigrant youth will have the opportunity to deeply explore a social inequity in their community that is personally relevant to them and use the practices and problem-solving approaches of engineering and computer science to develop potential solutions for this issue. The hypothesis is that by developing solutions to a relevant community issue, participant perceptions of the utility of using engineering and computer science approaches will increase. The project will be well positioned to have a broader impact on multiple audiences because of the involvement of the NSF INCLUDES Designing for Diversity Network. In addition to the eight Maker Space sites, the Network also includes a National Leadership Team that represents corporate, philanthropic and non-profit organizations that are leaders in the Maker movement.Academically motivated but underrepresented youth, including immigrant youth, often place a high priority on pursuing careers that can help them to give back to their communities, but many of these youth do not perceive engineering and computer science to be relevant career pathways in relation to their desire to serve their communities. The project will investigate how informal education institutions can organize specific features of their programming to help young people make measurable shifts in their perceptions of the relevance, usefulness and accessibility of engineering and computer science as a potential career pathway that can help program participants address the social challenges that are of personal importance to them. This research project will be grounded in two implementations of a nine-month, out-of-school-time program, which will be organized around the theme of understanding and responding to quality of life issues in NYSCI's immediate neighborhoods through the use of computational tools to develop sustainable, high-impact solutions that benefit the community. The project will serve a total of 50-60 youth from NYSCI's immediate community, produce and disseminate program curriculum materials, and lay the groundwork for a scale-up implementation and study of the program via the NSF INCLUDES Designing for Diversity Network. The project's early stage research strategy includes a rich variety of qualitative and quantitative measures to develop evidence of promise that the revised Innovation Institute model has significant potential for success in a scale-up to other sites. Measures will include video observations, digital portfolios, pre-post participant interviews, and analysis of student design solutions.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.