Make with Data: Exploring STEM Impact and Engagement in Student-Led and Purpose-driven Projects

We live in a data-driven age where data and the skills associated with it are in high demand in STEM fields and beyond. Many students, particularly those from groups under-represented in these professions, are given few opportunities to engage with data in a way that connects their lived experiences to scientific practices. The Make with Data project aims to address this by empowering youth to construct solutions to personally meaningful community challenges using open-source data. By putting youth in a position to identify personally meaningful projects, and anchoring them in a collaborative team of educators, data scientists, industry professionals, and community groups all with the shared aim of solving a problem in their local community, they may begin to see STEM practices as aligning with their personal identity and values.

The Make with Data (NSF #1759224) project aims to address the lack of diversity in STEM fields by engaging high school aged learners in an after-school club that uses data to identify a compelling local community challenge and to design a potential solution to address the problem. Leveraging the constructionist design paradigm and research on project-based service learning, the project will study how framing STEM practices as being a way of contributing to and improving one’s community might increase interest in and shift identity towards STEM fields.