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This resource details a hands-on project for students in grades 9-12, designed for 90-minute sessions in informal settings such as after-school programs over the course of one school year. Rather than simply building from a kit, students engage in an iterative engineering design process to solve urban commuting challenges. The project serves as an engaging capstone activity for a multi-year curriculum focused on sustainability through the integration of multiple engineering disciplines. The activities were designed by undergraduates so that secondary students could get a glimpse of what a college-and-career pathway in these emerging fields looks like. 

The SUPERCHARGE (STEM-based University Pathway Encouraging Relationships with Chicago High schools in Automation, Robotics and Green Energy) Project is an NSF ITEST funded project designed to engage high school students in an afterschool STEM and engineering program. The project is led by a team of faculty and staff at Illinois State University and the University of Missouri – St. Louis. The project is guided by the STEM Learning Ecosystem framework and involves collaboration among faculty and students, high school educators, and community-based organizations at four high schools in the Chicago Public Schools district. The program aims to foster STEM and engineering identity development and sustained interest in STEM fields through hands-on learning and exposure to real-world applications. 

Broadening participation in engineering necessitates that educators take a learning-oriented stance to explore and understand the ways that learners from marginalized communities experience STEM. Students’ affective experiences (e.g. feelings of difficulty and enjoyment) are critical pieces in their access to STEM learning in general, and engineering education specifically. In addition, their beliefs about the importance of STEM and its relevance to their families and communities are also important. Research on the connections between students’ beliefs and affective experiences of STEM would contribute to our understanding about the ways that place-based affective and value-based understandings of STEM interact. This study explored the how high school students who pursue extracurricular STEM experience STEM in affective dimensions and what they believe about the importance of STEM to their families and communities. Findings from this study revealed consistent connections between the difficulties faced by students in STEM programs as related, and even valuable, aspects of what is also enjoyable about STEM. The study also revealed that students perceived the importance of the technologies (e.g. robotics, renewable energy) to their communities but they perceived that this value was not necessarily visible to members of their communities. 

The Energy Grid Card Game was designed for pre-college students (grades 6-12) to be played in an informal learning environment. The game explores the technical, environmental, and economic choices and challenges of using energy resources throughout our daily lives. Undergraduates at Illinois State University designed the activity as part of the NSF-funded SUPERCHARGE project, which seeks to improve access to STEM college and career pathways while making connections to engineering and sustainability-related problems that can be addressed in their communities. 

The following activities are examples from a unit of study that focuses on harnessing, using, and controlling energy. These activities were designed for pre-college learners in grades 6-12 in informal learning settings as part of the SUPERCHARGE project] by undergraduates at Illinois State University. The goal of the project is to promote interest in college and career pathways related to engineering, sustainability, and renewable energy technologies. 

This NSF ITEST project (Award # 2148429) at Illinois State University focuses on engaging students in four Chicago Public High Schools in an afterschool STEM program, SUPERCHARGE, where they experience hands on activities with renewable energy technologies and related sustainability-tied experiences. Between 10 and 20 students met weekly afterschool during the first year of implementation which was preceded by a planning year in which teachers provided feedback on activities and connections to the communities of the schools were developed. Four faculty were involved in the design of the project and activities and an additional group of undergraduate STEM majors were also involved in the design and pilot of all activities. Four goals frame this project and research. These are to learn how (1) high school students’ knowledge of STEM careers and STEM domains change across their participation; (2) the high school students improve their interest in STEM career attainment and their self-efficacy for career relevant skills; (3) the undergraduate STEM majors’ views about Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers develop across their participation; and (4) teachers’ knowledge of current STEM domains, skills, and careers change. To examine the impact of the programming on each stakeholder group, PEAR’s CIS-S and CIS-E surveys, interviews, activity surveys, and workshop surveys were used. Currently, the data from the first year of programming includes 21 pre-post student surveys and 10 surveys from the undergraduate designers and 9 surveys from the teachers in the program. At this time, statistical tests were not appropriate due to these small numbers, but future years will bolster these numbers, and we anticipate the ability to perform statistical tests as the data set grows. Therefore, we focus on a qualitative analysis of the surveys and interviews at this stage. 

SUPERCHARGE (STEM-based University Pathway Encouraging Relationships with Chicago High schools in Automation, Robotics, and Green Energy) is an NSF-funded after-school STEM program through which an interdisciplinary team of faculty, staff, and students at Illinois State University is collaborating with teachers from four high schools in Chicago, Illinois in the U.S. and four non-profit Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) in the surrounding communities to develop innovative hands-on activities for underrepresented students. These informal educational activities are centered on topics such as robotics, automation, and renewable energy. In the program's inaugural year, one of the four units will focus on assessing air quality, employing the micro:bit microcontroller for programming and the Kitronik Air Quality Board for sensing and data collection. All the air quality unit activities were developed by undergraduate students under the guidance of faculty advisors. High school teachers mentoring the student learners in the afterschool STEM program iteratively reviewed all activities when these activities were developed. These air quality assessment activities are outlined as follows. Activity 1: Students are introduced to the significance of indoor and outdoor air quality. They subsequently learn about air quality components, including temperature, pressure, humidity, air quality index, and CO2 equivalent. Activities 2 & 3: Students collect air quality data from different locations and visualize the collected data to comprehend variations among these locations. An extension activity is available for students interested in collecting air quality data over an extended period, allowing them to evaluate the correlation between indoor conditions and air quality changes. Activity 4: Students learn to program the micro:bit to display air quality status using LED lights on the air quality board. Activity 5: The learning unit concludes by presenting air quality conditions in their neighborhood in collaboration with their CBOs. Students can assess the air quality using the hand-held device they programmed and compare their findings to data collected by existing air quality monitoring sensors in their communities. Preliminary data collected during the testing phase indicate that the developed programs effectively display air quality. These activities were designed to help student learners comprehend coding, microcontroller technology, and data collection and visualization. In the summer of 2023, the SUPERCHARGE team organized two one-day professional development workshops. Teachers who participated in these summer workshops completed a selection of air quality assessment activities. They provided feedback, confirming that the programs on the air quality board work seamlessly. Minor suggestions were received, and the instructions were modified accordingly. This Work in Progress paper aims to document one of the first year’s learning activities of the highly collaborative after-school STEM program, demonstrate the activity development processes, and foster an exchange of ideas and feedback among educators in related fields. 

To promote interest and future choices around STEM careers, afterschool and other informal education programs have become key access points for students who may face greater challenges in entering STEM career pathways. Individual, environmental (including social), and behavioral factors each interact in ways that can promote interest and access to STEM learning and career opportunities or can limit such opportunities. Teachers, programs, and curriculum are all contextual factors that are important. Using Ecological Systems Theory, this study explored the environmental structures that influenced STEM teachers and undergraduate STEM majors’ access to STEM and compared those influences to the environmental structures they perceived related to high school students access to STEM. A potential barrier between the curriculum as it is developed, and whom it is developed by, and the teachers who are responsible for implementing it came into focus in this study. Areas of conflict between the values of curriculum developers and implementers can have consequences for learners and their STEM access. 

SUPERCHARGE (STEM-based University Pathway Encouraging Relationships with Chicago High schools in Automation, Robotics, and Green Energy) is an NSF-funded after-school STEM program through which an interdisciplinary team of faculty, staff, and students at Illinois State University is collaborating with teachers from four high schools in Chicago, Illinois in the U.S. and four non-profit Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) in the surrounding communities to develop innovative hands-on activities for underrepresented students. These informal educational activities are centered on topics such as robotics, automation, and renewable energy. In the program's inaugural year, one of the four units will focus on assessing air quality, employing the micro:bit microcontroller for programming and the Kitronik Air Quality Board for sensing and data collection. All the air quality unit activities were developed by undergraduate students under the guidance of faculty advisors. High school teachers mentoring the student learners in the afterschool STEM program iteratively reviewed all activities when these activities were developed. These air quality assessment activities are outlined as follows. Activity 1: Students are introduced to the significance of indoor and outdoor air quality. They subsequently learn about air quality components, including temperature, pressure, humidity, air quality index, and CO2 equivalent. Activities 2 & 3: Students collect air quality data from different locations and visualize the collected data to comprehend variations among these locations. An extension activity is available for students interested in collecting air quality data over an extended period, allowing them to evaluate the correlation between indoor conditions and air quality changes. Activity 4: Students learn to program the micro:bit to display air quality status using LED lights on the air quality board. Activity 5: The learning unit concludes by presenting air quality conditions in their neighborhood in collaboration with their CBOs. Students can assess the air quality using the hand-held device they programmed and compare their findings to data collected by existing air quality monitoring sensors in their communities. Preliminary data collected during the testing phase indicate that the developed programs effectively display air quality. These activities were designed to help student learners comprehend coding, microcontroller technology, and data collection and visualization. In the summer of 2023, the SUPERCHARGE team organized two one-day professional development workshops. Teachers who participated in these summer workshops completed a selection of air quality assessment activities. They provided feedback, confirming that the programs on the air quality board work seamlessly. Minor suggestions were received, and the instructions were modified accordingly. This Work in Progress paper aims to document one of the first year’s learning activities of the highly collaborative after-school STEM program, demonstrate the activity development processes, and foster an exchange of ideas and feedback among educators in related fields.