NSF Awards: 1850289
Inventing, designing and engineering for all students (IDEAS) is a maker program that was co-designed by educators in three autism inclusion middle schools in New York City as well as maker educators at NY Hall of Science, autism experts at NYU and researchers from EDC and SRI. In 2019 we received funding to scale up that program to more schools in NYC. When the pandemic hit in March of 2020, some teachers were able to switch the programming to remote learning, but not many. Over the summer, we brought together teachers, NY Hall of Science maker educators, autism experts, researchers and this time students to adapt the program for remote learning and created a virtual PD experience to help teachers learn how to run the remote IDEAS maker program. Eight of our nine teacher teams have been able to host remote maker programs this year. This video tells the story of how our team worked together to keep IDEAS Maker Program going in challenging circumstances, and what the remote making experience has been like.
Wendy Martin
Senior Research Scientist
Thanks for coming to see this video about my team's experience adapting our project for remote learning. I am sure many of you have your own stories. Please share what you have learned over this challenging year!
Kirstin Milks
Kimberly Elliott
Sylvia Perez
Vice President of Education Services
Thanks Wendy! Through this project and our other maker projects at the New York Hall of Science, we have learned how important these creative learning opportunities were to participants and the positive social emotional role that it played in their mental well being during COVID. Many students in our maker projects remarked how they looked forward to participating each week and grateful for having the opportunity to apply their own creativity and imagination to their projects.
Scott Bellman
Kirstin Milks
Rosio Bugarin Pedroso
Kimberly Elliott
Kirstin Milks
Science Teacher
Hi IDEAS team and collaborators! I have a strong identity as a maker and am a neurotypical married to an autistic person. All of this is to say that I see the tremendous power this approach has in building communities and collaborations that value creativity as high social capital -- and doing so using the online design platform and blending it with hands-on experiences (so vital these past months!) seems like a strong combination!
One of the pieces of my "maker identity" that makes it most strongly into my classroom practice as a high school science teacher is finding ways for students to leverage their skills, even in simulations, to increase agency and approach the skillsets necessary for real-world problem solving. I'm curious about what data or feedback you're collecting on how these mindsets might shift for your participants, or what curricular moves might exist in your materials or future directions to allow such real-world practice.
Sarah Haavind
Rosio Bugarin Pedroso
Kimberly Elliott
Wendy Martin
Senior Research Scientist
Thanks for your question, Kirstin!
One thing that we focus on in the materials and in the data collection is the Engineering Design Process. When the program was in person, all of the teachers who facilitated the program were given a poster of the Engineering Design Process (EDP) for their rooms so that they could regularly refer to it as the kids go through the activities, noting in particular when they were testing their designs, identifying problems, iterating, and revising. When we made the remote learning version of the program, we included the EDP model in every activity, pointing out which parts of that process they would experience that session. Helping students understand that challenges are an expected and integral part of making/tinkering/engineering is a core part of the program, whether it is in person or remote, and helps them see how the steps in the process can apply to problem-solving more broadly. Knowing what to expect can help them feel greater control and agency when they face obstacles.
We have collected pre-post data using an EDP assessment (Hsu, M. C., Cardella, M. E., and Purzer, S., 2012) from students who are in maker club and who are not. Our findings have shown that students in Maker Club gain a better understanding of the EDP than those not in Maker Club. In addition, we have conducted observations of nearly every session, and focus groups with teachers and students and have seen and heard about many examples of students overcoming challenges (see our article in Frontiers in Education ).
Kirstin Milks
Rosio Bugarin Pedroso
Kimberly Elliott
Kirstin Milks
Science Teacher
I think the engineering design process is one of the best gifts we can give young people!
Kimberly Elliott
I have been excited to recommend and share this free IDEAS Maker Program curriculum produced by this partnership: IDEAS Maker Program Curriculum Guide
Kirstin Milks
Rosio Bugarin Pedroso
Wendy Martin
Senior Research Scientist
Thanks Kim! We are also working on finalizing slide decks for this program that could be used for both in-person and remote programs. Hopefully those will be available this summer.
Kimberly Elliott
Rosio Bugarin Pedroso
Principal
Love this project as it brought together many stakeholders to improve upon an amazing idea. This is a great example of how working together utilizing each person's unique skills and resources can help overcome any challenge--virtual learning. Now more than ever, after or out of school activities are essential and this program can be an example to others seeking to do similar work. I am curious to know what your challenges were and how you overcame them. What suggestions or recommendations would you give to others who want to engage in a similar effort.
Kimberly Elliott
Wendy Martin
Senior Research Scientist
Thanks Rosio! The biggest challenge in transitioning the maker clubs from in-person to remote learning was dealing with the logistics, such as figuring out:
However, thanks to a great team of researchers and teachers, we are managing! We simplified the materials that we sent and put them in string backpacks so that students could keep everything together and pull that out whenever they had maker club. We also encourage students to use a maker mindset and find things around their home that they can use in their designs. The funny thing is, one of the things that the teachers said they want to continue doing for the next year when they go back to in-person learning is having a materials backpack for the kids because it makes it easier to stay organized!
I would certainly recommend maker clubs for any kids, but particularly for those who learn differently. Making allows people to follow their interests, pursue different pathways, and explore what they want to in their own unique way. Of course, anyone is welcome to use the IDEAS Maker Program Curriculum Guide that we developed as part of this project, but there are other programs that are available from MakerEd, the Maker Space at New York Hall of Science, the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium, the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach at Tufts, and many other places. The programming doesn't have to be high tech or expensive, it just needs to be interest-driven, iterative and accepting of diverse solutions and designs.
Kimberly Elliott
Scott Bellman
Kirstin Milks
Jodi Asbell-Clarke
Nice Wendy! I love how you were able to pivot using your home networks to get the 3D printed objects to the kids. Makers are resilient and resourceful for sure :)
Wendy Martin
Senior Research Scientist
Thanks Jodi!
Sarah Haavind
Senior Research Project Manager
Cool project for equity and inclusion - kudos! Sounds like your pivot experience to remote learning was both challenging and rewarding. I'm curious if there are any elements of the remote learning you might call "keepers" and integrate into your project or future work, even after in-person learning is back. Or, if you wouldn't go that far, anything your teachers reported about their students' engagement that actually improved in the remote context. Were there silver linings?
Kimberly Elliott
Ariana Riccio
Research Associate
Thanks for your post, Sarah!
We have noticed that materials management went really well for students and teachers this year during remote learning - all students received a drawstring backpack which contained all the materials they needed to participate in club. Students were able to stay organized and could simply pull out their bag at the beginning of each session. Teachers loved this system and we have received some requests to continue with this even after classroom instruction resumes.
We also created a complete slide deck of the IDEAS curriculum for teachers to facilitate clubs remotely and are in the process of using teacher feedback to edit and polish these slides to make them available to the public. We hope to couple these materials with professional development videos/online sessions so that teachers across the country can train themselves and implement a club in their school! We are excited to use what we learned during remote instruction to help us successfully disseminate the IDEAS program to other educators.
Sarah Haavind
Kirstin Milks
Kimberly Elliott
Perrin Chick
I loved the resiliency of Afterschool programs and I agree makers iterate so well. I am wondering what were some of the challenges of the virtual maker showcase?
Wendy Martin
Senior Research Scientist
Hi Perrin!
None of the clubs have had their showcases yet, so we'll have to see what happens this. year, but the one that was done last year was very successful in that many more people (parents, teachers and administrators, museum staff and EDC researchers) were able to attend than can normally attend. The challenge last year was getting all of the students' 3D objects printed in time, shipped to the teachers and then shipped out to the students. Some student designs in Tinkercad needed to be fixed to print correctly, which not only took time for David from NYSCI to deal with, but prevented students from having an important learning experience. Since the students couldn't see the 3D printing taking place, they couldn't directly see why problems arose with the printing and learn from that to improve their own design. However, this year our NYSCI folks have been virtually visiting the clubs to provide additional guidance on designing for 3D printing, and have offered to show imperfect prints that kids make so they can see what went wrong. It's not nearly as fun as watching the printers in action but it's something!
H Chad Lane
Kirstin Milks
Kirstin Milks
Science Teacher
Maybe capturing video of the imperfect prints' printing process would help? Time-lapse seems like it might help make that important learning accessible -- even, post-pandemic, for students in remote areas?
Joni Lakin
I love the quality of this video! And it's so impressive how the program and teachers were able to adjust to virtual learning. Very cool!
Do you see taking advantage of virtual options in the future?
Wendy Martin
Senior Research Scientist
Thanks Joni!
Yes, we will definitely use the slide deck we produced to share with teachers more broadly, and we plan to take what we learned from doing virtual professional development to make short videos and materials that will allow us to have an online professional development resource to go along with the curriculum and slide deck.
Kirstin Milks
Bridget Dalton Dalton
Great project! I'm curious - what were some of the ways that you promoted collaboration (you mention that this was key to students' engagement).
Wendy Martin
Senior Research Scientist
Hi Bridget;
Thanks for your question. The students didn't necessarily collaborate on projects very much since they had their own materials and Tinkercad is not really set up for collaborative work, but students were encouraged to socialize with each other, which is something that the teachers felt that the students really needed during remote learning. Teachers did things such as starting off each session with a "controversial question" like "Cats or Dogs?" or asking which were their favorite Marvel characters or video games. This set the tone of maker club as a social club, not another class. In-person maker club was very social as well, so the teachers did their best to recreate that chatty, friendly atmosphere.
Kirstin Milks
Bridget Dalton Dalton
Thanks, Wendy. Yes, we also found that developing a friendly, casual environment was important to our remote PBL.
Toby Baker
I love how EDC is comprised of exciting teachers! I love the student engagement during Covid and how even without the digital printer, you persevered! You shipped materials to the students to continue engagement! I appreciated seeing them build new things. In IC4, we also shipped materials to the students in the US and in Kenya to maintain the level of artifact building. EDC is awesome. Thank you!
Wendy Martin
Senior Research Scientist
Thanks Toby! The IC4 team had a much bigger challenge working across all of those internationals sites, though I would imagine you already had experience under your belt with virtual collaborations that informed how you dealt with the pandemic. Great video!
H Chad Lane
Great video Wendy and team! I really like how you responded to the pandemic, both with using mail to keep the tangible aspects of making prominent, but also augmented it with 3D design tasks and 3D printing remotely. It was wonderful to be able to send kids their creations over mail, it was surely an exciting thing for kids to receive.
Wendy, your comment about it not being nearly as fun to see the 3D printer in action made me reflect on how I frequently caught myself many times in a trance watching them run! This sounds like it could turn into a pretty interesting research question.
thanks again for a great video!
Wendy Martin
Senior Research Scientist
Thanks Chad!
I love your Minecraft project, and the video! It reminds me of when my kids were into Minecraft and I would watch them create their own worlds. What a great way to teach about our world, by imagining how different it could be and what impact that would have on everything!
H Chad Lane
Monica Cardella
Thank you for your work on this project and thank you for creating this video to share your work with us!
Wendy Martin
Senior Research Scientist
Thanks Monica! Your EDP assessment really contributed to this work!