NSF Awards: 1825076
This four-day convening provided a forum to (1) exchange innovative ideas and share challenges and opportunities, (2) connect practical and research-based expertise and (3) form cross-institutional and cross-community partnerships. Participation-based activities included design-based participatory activities, demonstrations of works in progress, creative pitching, lightning talks, hands-on design activities, and an ‘unconference’ style synthesis of bold ideas. Participants experimented with distributed learning technologies. Focus areas for the workshop include (1) inclusivity of learning spaces that invite multiple perspectives and full participation, (2) documenting learning in ways that are linked to outcomes and impacts for all learners, (3) implementing the use of new technologies in diverse settings, such as the workforce, (4) interpersonal interactions and peer-to-peer learning that may encourage a STEM career-path, and, (5) collecting and analyzing data at the intersection of people, the learning environment, and new technologies at multiple levels. Outcomes of the convening serve to advance knowledge regarding critical gaps and opportunities for equitable STEM learning. The workshop culminated in a synthesis of design principles, assessment approaches, and tools that will be shared widely. Partnerships arising from this effort will pave the way for sustained efforts that span research and practice communities. Outcomes will address research and development of the next generation of digitally distributed learning environments.
Gregory Rushton
Director, TN STEM Education Center
Thanks for sharing your project with us! Do you have any drafts or preliminary findings from your conference regarding the 'synthesis of design principles, assessment approaches, and tools' that you mention in your abstract? I'm very interested to read this if it exists...?
Angela Gunder
Jill Castek
Associate Professor
Hi Gregory,
Thanks so much for your interest in our project and your prompts and ideas. Yes, we're working toward synthesizing principles and practices that surfaced during our workshop and we're also working on a draft of useful resources. I'll be sharing some of the key ideas during discussions this week and I'll also point the audience toward the CIRCL center website https://circlcenter.org/projects/ where findings from our workshop will be available in their full form. Stay tuned, and thanks so much for your interest and enthusiasm for this work.
Much appreciation!
Angela Gunder
Jill Castek
Associate Professor
Hello Everyone,
My name is Jill Castek and on behalf of our interdisciplinary team, workshop participants, and partners from the University of Arizona's Office of Digital Learning and STEM Learning Center, we'd love to engage in conversation with you about designing for equity in STEM education. We are very excited and honored to be a part of this innovative showcase.
Our convening in Feb. 2019 at Biosphere 2 sparked conversations that amplified voices from across several sectors of STEM education including libraries, museums, community spaces, non-profits, media producers, research centers, higher-ed, digital learning scholars, faculty, and K-12 educators.
Our convening prompted conversations around several key ideas for designing for equity. I'd like to open the door for us to discuss a few of them in this forum:
Our project team welcomes your thoughts, ideas, questions, and connections. We're really looking forward to sharing ideas with you!
Angela Gunder
Betsy Stefany
The site is a treasure and I appreciated the concept of bringing people in to experience the location, respecting that all of us have varied experiences. Our project base was NH which is another extreme environment. We’ve been involved with building seasonal contrasts, collecting contrasting data, visuals and experiences. I wonder if you have an online type of dashboard where we can continue to see how your site and building interact.
Angela Gunder
Jill Castek
Associate Professor
Hi Betsy,
Thanks for your interest in our project. Your focus on extreme environments sounds incredible and much needed in the field. I love your idea about an online dashboard and the opportunity to share data, visuals, and experiences. Our project is a one-year preliminary effort that we hope leads to a larger project like the one you're describing. Hopefully we can write a proposal to make the focus area happen. Let's keep in touch!
Angela Gunder
Monae Verbeke
Senior Research Associate
One of the ways our team is trying to incorporate principles and practices of equity and inclusion is by encourage underserved urban young adults to lead the design aspects of a new learning tool. We've done this by forming advisory groups, and meet frequently with the youth. However, we've also had difficulties within the team in incorporating the youth's advice over the intuition of the designers. Have you had any similar issues?
Travis Tangen
Angela Gunder
Jill Castek
Jill Castek
Associate Professor
Hi Monae! What a great thread and an important question. Your efforts to convene advisory groups let youth lead is a fantastic idea. I understand the challenges in acting on the advice as well. It's always a balance between what's doable and what's practical in the circumstance given limited resources. The conversations that surrounds these actions are as valuable and important as the ultimate actions. I look forward to sharing additional perspectives and learning what others might have tried in similar circumstances. Let's keep seeking advice from our community here.
Angela Gunder
Erin Turner
I really enjoyed your video Jill - what an exciting conference you hosted! I am very interested in this topic and look forward to talking more about what you learned about designing fro equitable stem learning environments. Thanks for the opportunity to learn more about your work!
Erin
Angela Gunder
Jill Castek
Associate Professor
And thanks so much for your work too, Erin. I'm following the comments on your video with great interest. What a great set of questions and connections!
Angela Gunder
Becca Schillaci
Research Associate
Hi Jill. Thanks so much for sharing your work! I'm curious about how participants learned about the convening or how did your team select participants?
Angela Gunder
Jill Castek
Associate Professor
Hi Becca. We contacted practitioners, researchers, librarians, teachers, and STEM leaders nationally. From there, we used a robust form of snowball sampling where we asked for suggestions from all colleagues and early signers-on. We were persistent in reaching out until we reached our maximum (given limited funding) and available time to plan. Luckily, we drew in an excellent cross-section of participants. It's always a challenge with schedules during the school year and the limitations that introduces. We're very pleased with the dialogue that took place and in the process of synthesizing all the ideas that surfaced. Looking forward to sharing with the field soon through the CIRCL website https://circlcenter.org/.
Angela Gunder
Becca Schillaci
Bridget Dalton
I was fortunate to be able to participate in this wonderful gathering of folks from varied disciplines and perspectives. The experience was quite generative and the findings report that Jill mentioned should be quite helpful in advancing the goal of designing for equity and increasing access and participation in STEM. The conversations and presenters contributed to my own thinking about how to bring multimodal composition and maker education together, so that students are designers of communication.
Angela Gunder
Jill Castek
Jill Castek
Associate Professor
Great to see you online Bridget. You are always such an inspiration. You brought so much generative thinking to the event that we're still synthesizing and writing up to disseminate broadly. There are so many synergies in this field and hopefully with shared thinking and events like this Showcase and future workshops we'll find more ways to innovate and collaborate. Looking forward to keeping in touch.
Angela Gunder
Esperanza Zenon
The STEM Equity @B2 project was a community-college-from-nowhere instructor like me's dream come true. To be in such a breath-taking location, in the company of such knowledgeable and creative individuals was a true blessing.
I learned something from every single person that I interacted with.
All I can say is thanks for inviting me.
Please keep in touch.
Jill Castek
Associate Professor
Thanks so much Esperanza for your many, many contributions and opportunities to learn with and from you! I'm so grateful to have met you and I'm excited to find new ways to collaborate!
Further posting is closed as the showcase has ended.