This study collected data from a five-week summer camp that provided programming workshops and engineering-based group activities to girls in grades 6-11. The camp was part of the actions designed to increase girls’, especially minorities’, participation in computer science and engineering. All activities were designed to ensure that learning took place in a constructivist environment. With the collection and analyses of survey data, the objective of this study is to examine whether and how a constructivist learning environment impacted adolescent girls’ STEM interests beyond their gains in STEM knowledge and self-efficacy.
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Engaging girls in learning engineering through building ubiquitous intelligent systems
Women make up only 28% of the workforce in STEM fields. It’s important to engage more girls in learning STEM; however, girls’ interests in STEM careers keep declining. It is well studied that the lack of sense of belonging underlies gender differences in STEM differentiation and achievement. Researchers have found that secondary girls’ sense of belonging declines as they age. To enhance secondary female students’ interests and self-concept in computing and engineering fields, the UNLV ITEST project sets the focus on engaging Girls in Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (GUIC) through a constructivist learning environment. In the GUIC Summer Camp, 40 secondary female students will take three-week training courses in Arduino & Internet of Things and Robotics Design and conduct two-week engineering project development in tiered teams co-mentored by STEM teachers and college student mentors. Based on the active learning method, the training courses are designed with interactive lectures and hands-on labs/activities. The engineering projects in ubiquitous intelligent systems are designed to connect computing & engineering concepts with real-world problems. Project demo results and students’ feedbacks have confirmed the effectiveness of the project activities in enhancing female students’ interests and self-efficacy in learning engineering and STEM. The unique constructivist learning environment is helpful in improving female students’ sense of belonging in STEM.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1949585
- PAR ID:
- 10405715
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proc. IEEE Int’l Conf. Teaching, Assessment, and Learning (TALE)
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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The core component of this study was a five-week summer camp that provided Arduino and robotics workshops and group activities to girls in grades 6-11. All activities were structured to ensure that learning took place in a constructivist environment. The camp was designed as a program to increase girls’, especially minorities’ participation in computer science and engineering. Key elements of camp participants’ STEM interest, self-efficacy, and contextual factors were measured both before and after the camp. With the collection and analyses of the survey data, our present study is to examine how constructivist learning environment may impact adolescent girls’ STEM learning and interests.more » « less
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The purpose of the study is to explore and theorize the constructivist learning environment for secondary female students’ STEM learning. The study was built on a funded program featured a tiered-team structure, hands-on experience, and interactive mentorship for engaging female students from Grades 6-11 in a five-week Summer Camp to learn Arduino programming & Robotics Design and integration of these tools to conduct projects in ubiquitous intelligent systems. In conducting this study, we used the case study method to provide a more multifaceted perspective on the camp, and how these perspectives inform an understanding of how the project’s features impacted the students. All 37 female students participated in the survey, and eight participated in the interviews. The findings indicate that students were able to heighten their self-confidence and motivation. The themes of the learning environment were identified: knowledge enhancement, STEAM experience, as well as support and encouragement. The program had significant impacts on students’ identity related to STEM identity, motivation and interest, and self-confidence. It also significantly impacts their sense of belonging, including peers' and mentors' sense of belonging. The study provided research evidence for designing STEM learning projects to enhance female STEM learning.more » « less
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This is a quantitative study that examines how constructivist learning in a summer camp impacted middle school and high school girls’ STEM knowledge, self-efficacy, and ultimately, their interests in future STEM learning and growth. An online survey was used to collect information from thirty-one girls at the end of a five-week summer camp. The results are mostly confirmative of past studies that used student-centered project-based authentic STEM learning with significant gains in students’ understanding of STEM, self-efficacy, and interests in STEM for future development. The unique contribution of the study, though, is the finding that, when given the opportunity to engage in active learning and problem-solving, girls’ interest in STEM subjects could be substantially boosted; the constructivist learning environment along with their gains in STEM knowledge can compensate any insufficiency in self-efficacy in this regard. This study provides insight about the importance of instructional approach in STEM education.
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