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  1. In this design-based research project, researchers and activity developers across four institutions are investigating how narratives can evoke empathy and influence girls’ participation and engagement in museum-based engineering design activities. The project involves the development and testing of six pairs of engineering activities. Through iterative development of these activity pairs, we have refined a conceptual model defining how engineering activities can incorporate a variety of narrative elements to support empathy and engagement. In addition, each pair includes one version of the activity with narrative elements, and one without — for example, children design a vehicle that can move over different textured surfaces (non-narrative) or that can help someone travel around the world across different landscapes (narrative), allowing us to examine how narrative elements influence girls’ ideation and persistence in iterating their designs. We analyzed the number of children who participated in each version of the activities, average hold times, and detailed observations and follow-up interviews with girls between ages 7-14 who tried the activities with their families. Results showed that narrative versions invited greater participation among both girls and boys, and that different narrative elements (such as characters and settings) evoked different aspects of empathy (such as affective responses and cognitive perspective-taking). We discuss the implications of the results for the design and facilitation of inclusive engineering design experiences in informal learning settings. 
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