Thank you for visiting the "Impact of Family-Community University Engineering Project" video. Our collaborative research project is currently in the third year of data collection. The included video recordings span the three year research project, including recordings by families at home and submitted to the project team via the SIBME app. We are especially interested to hear feedback from researchers and practitioners in regard to the following questions:

1. What resonates with you regarding our project? What feedback do you have for us?

2. How have you engaged with families in engineering activities at home during the pandemic? What have you found to be successful forms of engaging? 

3. How do you best support the caregiver/child team in the engineering design process in a virtual environment?

I really enjoyed your video and project.  I love the family connections. What were the most profound lessons you learned through your work? 

To respond to your questions: 

1. The family connection resonates with me.  Parents are children's first role model so I feel this is a highly effective approach to help kids develop interest in STEM/ Engineering. 

2. During the pandemic, I made supply kits for students in my programs to have real, hands-on experiences while getting instruction through ZOOM.  I think an unintentional bonus of this was that families got involved so much more than when students complete a project at school. 

3. To add to my response for 2. I think that having some intentional family projects would be wonderful to bringing the engineering design process to LIFE at home.  Asking them to be part of a zoom discussion and "debrief" after the project would add a rich layer of learning as well. 

Amber and team, this is wonderful to see.  Family connections can truly reinforce the natural and design process. Your video makes me wonder what it would be like to have family groups parallel create projects - do the same project and share results - across national or cultural boundaries.  If you have a chance, look at our video, where we have kids in different countries working on STEM projects together. I think having family activities done in parallel could be very powerful - a family in Indiana doing a project with a family in Las Vegas or Mexico or Kenya, and sharing results.  Just an idea - let me know your thoughts.  But I really like the way you make engineering accessible to families.  Thank you.

Great project. Our NOAA OER workshops have similar materials I would guess in our Teacher PD resources. Noted when we went online this year, teachers would take the materials during the first of two sessions and often build them at home with their own family for the followup. Fun stuff. Almso ade me think about the fact that most homeowners do not seem to be able to do basic repairs to their own homes. "Shop" classes have mostly gone away for many schools. Seems like another possible pathway here for your projects - maybe you already do this - connecting a project to a "life skill" as my kids called them.  Nice program.

Thanks so much for sharing information about how caregivers think of their role in their children's learning. Have you found any cultural differences in what parents assume is their role or how they scaffold these activities?

Great to meet you Eric and thanks for your interest in our project and your feedback. 

Our primary goals of the project are to learn how the program might support participation and implementation of engineering design practices in the home environments of populations living in under-resourced communities and how that might impact youth engineering identity. Further exploration looks at changes in caregivers’ views of engineering, as well as how caregivers and their child(ren) interacted with one another through the engineering design process, from ideation to final solution. 

The project has two implementation sites, one in Binghamton and one in Indiana. Families at each site are first introduced to different steps of the engineering design process through at-home engineering kits (e.g. Take-apart Toy, Amusement Park) providing accessible materials. Like in your project, families are using the same projects and sharing how they engage in the engineering design process to create a unique prototype. In Phase 2 families move into brainstorming ideas and identifying a challenge that they want to solve. They receive ongoing feedback and support and share their final prototype with the group in a showcase at the end - we hope this will be an in-person meeting this summer.

Thanks for sharing.  Family participation is being proven as more and more important for success in STEM, especially in underrepresented communities.  This project is just an example of that!

What a nice video and project... great seeing families working together, and having those 'aha!' moments that you don't often see even parents/caregivers have! Your STEM project helps students and their caregivers.

When you say "Families at each site are first introduced to different steps of the engineering design process through at-home engineering kits" I wonder if they need additional assistance - I can imagine that not all are able to or eager to follow steps. I'd love to hear more.

 

What resonates with you regarding our project? What feedback do you have for us?

I appreciated that the prompt for the engineering activity allowed kids to work on a problem in their community that they wanted to address. Having a project with personal relevance is so important. I hope that you lift up this idea for parents and caregivers.

I really like how your goal is to empower parents to feel qualified and capable of supporting their child in learning about engineering. Many parents feel that they aren't experts and don't have the experience to support their child in STEM. Your activity is showing them otherwise. In her own words, a caregiver shared her new appreciation for engineering "It's an everyday kind of experience." Yes!

I appreciated the diversity of families in the video and the use of everyday materials like cereal boxes and egg cartons. 

I would love to learn and read more about the project.

 

Like many other commenters, I also appreciate the family engagement your project provides.  In another comment you mentioned that caregivers receive separate instructions for the engineering tasks - I am wondering if caregivers received any separate information at the beginning of the project about the engineering design process, or if they learned about it by participating along with their student learner.

Thanks for sharing about your work!

Hi, Josie - thanks for your question. Our program is essentially made up of two phases - the first with distinct at-home engineering kits (those include a caregiver facilitation guide and student instructions). The second phase is the family identified and led project. Caregivers don't receive separate info about the engineering design cycle, but through participation in the kits, as well as group meetings/activities with researchers, they learn about the cycle steps and what they entail. Our aim is to have them learning and participating in this process alongside their student every step of the way. 

Bravo to all for this wonderful discussion! Thank you for viewing and adding your questions and expertise. Please share the STEM Showcase with others so they can participate in the discussion too. Let's get more educators involved in viewing these top projects. Voting and discussion ends on May 18th at 8PM EDT. (but viewing is open anytime) https://stemforall2021.videohall.com/

For presenters, what are your next steps going forward?

As you have demonstrated in this project, it is so important for families to see that engineering does not required high levels of expertise, but that it is something they can do and learn about in their daily lives. In our work, we similarly have had parents comment that they feel that these activities are helping their children develop an interest in STEM! In this project, have you observed any differences in parent-child interactions or parents' takeaways between parents who do and do not have STEM backgrounds?

One of the things we find ourselves faced with is the development of a doable engineering design problem. We love that children think big, but wondering if others have ideas on how to acknowledge and honor the child's ideas and curiosity while also narrowing their prototype to one that is both feasible and developmentally appropriate?

I really like the idea of this project and hearing from parents! In the context of COVID-19, I wonder if families were more apt to engage in STEM learning, including the engineering design process. 

I also wanted to invite to view an informal STEM experience done at University of Houston: https://stemforall2021.videohall.com/presentations/2031

Nice to meet you, Jacqueline! Thank you for your question. We have observed that families were generally excited for an opportunity to continue their STEM learning engagement at home during the pandemic using our kits; however, our study did not look into whether families were more motivated or interested in engaging in STEM learning during the pandemic. As presented in our video, both caregivers and children enjoyed the family learning experience and some expressed that this experience triggered new STEM interests.

Thank you for sharing your project. It is amazing the number of children your project was able to serve through tHSI. I am curious how your team managed to recruit the students. Were you utilizing existing partnerships with schools and other organizations?