CO-designing media to foster joint peer-to-peer engagement, promote engineering learning, and expand reach to young children

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant award to the WGBH Educational Foundation, under the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) and Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) programs (CFDA 47.076, STEM Education), provides $2,150,688 to co-design media focused on fostering peer-to-peer engagement, promoting engineering learning, and expanding reach to young children. The key products include a PBS Kids interactive digital series called "Team Hamster!" that helps youth use engineering skills to solve problems, and an impact study involving approximately 120 children and their caregivers to investigate promising peer-to-peer joint media engagement practices for engineering learning and exploration. The research aims to determine effective design features of digital games and supporting videos to promote media-based peer-to-peer engagement around engineering. Findings will address best practices for participatory co-design processes to develop digital engineering games and videos that expand their reach.

Abstract

Successful peer-to-peer practices in informal science learning (ISL) are often not well defined, but further investigation has the potential to help uncover how to motivate and scaffold children's joint learning in science and engineering. Team hamster!, a PBS kids interactive digital series that helps youth think creatively and use engineering skills to solve problems with everyday tools, will be used to achieve the goals of this project. One goal is to investigate how engineering media can be intentionally CO-designed with children from diverse, economically disadvantaged backgrounds in order to foster peer-to-peer engagement and learning. These naturally occurring, peer-to-peer interactions could be investigated to determine which hold the most potential for fostering learning in science and engineering. Additionally, this project seeks to provide a new standard for how producers can CO-create media that reflects the interests, habits, and lived experiences of the children they aim to serve. Given the media habits of today's children, who often view videos, play video games, and discuss strategies and preferences with their friends and siblings, team hamster!'s 35 million digital game plays and 55 million video views can have a significant reach and impact on the youth who are served. The project uses a participatory CO-design approach with four groups of collaborators: youth, media designers, youth development experts, and stem experts. There will be an impact study utilizing an experimental-control/pre-test-post-test design, with equal groups of approximately 120 children and their caregivers. Data from technology probes will be analyzed to create profiles of youth usage, with a focus on peer-to-peer engagement. Research will be used to address these questions: 1) what peer-to-peer joint media engagement practices are most promising for fostering engineering learning and exploration among diverse, economically disadvantaged 5 to 7 year-old children, and how might new design features of digital games and supporting videos promote these practices? 2) what design features of digital games and supporting videos best promote media-based peer-to-peer engagement around engineering learning and exploration? 3) to what extent do the digital games developed through this project foster engineering learning and exploration? 4) what are best practices for developing a participatory CO-design process, occurring both online and in person, that is centered on the creation of digital game features and supporting videos that expand the reach of digital engineering games? This type 5, research in support of wide-reaching public engagement with stem, project is funded by the advancing informal stem learning (aisl) program, which supports projects that: (a) contribute to research and practice that considers informal stem learning's role in equity and belonging in stem; (b) promote personal and educational success in stem; (c) advance public engagement in scientific discovery; (d) foster interest in stem careers; (e) create and enhance the theoretical and empirical foundations for effective informal stem learning; (f) improve community vibrancy; and/or (g) enhance science communication and the public's engagement in and understanding of stem and stem processes. The project is CO-funded by the innovative technology experiences for students and teachers (itest) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts, and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (stem) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers. 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.