Implementing Design Thinking into Summer Camp Experience for High School Women in Materials Engineering

Abstract

Although women make up a significant portion of the college educated population, there remains a sizable gap between the number of men and women pursuing degrees and careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. The gender gap begins at middle school and widens considerably in later high school years. One major factor for this gap is the lack of belonging women can feel towards engineering. As one approach to developing and improving this sense of belonging, we focused on improving students' comprehension of engineering topics during a weeklong materials science and engineering summer camp for high school girls. We took a two-prong approach: a unifying paradigm and a design project. The purpose of this was to allow for transfer of learning throughout the week, allowing the students to build and showcase their own comprehension. The paradigm, the materials science tetrahedron, provided cohesion throughout an otherwise broad and seemingly disconnected field, while the design project allowed for students to implement what they learned during the week in a group setting. This approach concomitantly enhances confidence and their sense of belonging within engineering. In this paper we highlight lessons learned from incorporating this approach into our program, including our perception of its effectiveness and feedback from the girls. The preliminary results show that our summer camp is a unique and well-suited opportunity to study how comprehension can engender a sense of belonging amongst female students with the ultimate goal of closing the gender gap in engineering fields. IntroductionThere is still a sizable gap between the number of men and women pursuing degrees and careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields 1 . Over the past decade much research has been done to understand the phenomenon known as the gender gap 2,3 . This issue is complex; one main factor being gender stereotypes. By the time women reach high school; negative stereotypes are fairly well ingrained. They have received messages about gender identity and expectations, intentional or not, from parents, teachers, and even through more feminine extracurricular activities such as Girl Scouts 4 . This can lead to a more critical selfassessment in math and science as well as the belief that young women must have exceptional performance in the STEM fields in order to be successful 5 , which is detrimental and can deter women from pursuing these areas.

Perceptions of K-12 Teachers on the Cognitive, Affective, and Conative Functionalities of Gifted Students Engaged in Design Thinking

“…Technology educators have been promoting design thinking for years, including studies examining how educators implementing design thinking to teach mastery of STEM content, art, and humanities (Bequette & Bequette, 2013) and cognitive processing skills (Lammi & Becker, 2013;Shively et al, 2018). Previous studies of design thinking within curriculum and instruction suggest this pedagogical approach positively impacts the learning experiences of traditionally underrepresented populations in STEM disciplines (Kramsky, 2017;Santovec, 2012, Tyler & Johnson, 2017. In general, design thinking tasks can be approached from different readiness levels and intellectual abilities, making them a natural method of differentiation in heterogeneously grouped classrooms (Gentry et al, 2008).…”

How Outreach Camps that Incorporate Design Affects Female High School Students’ Interest in Engineering and Perceptions of Engineering Design (Evaluation)

“…The modules consist of lecture and lab combinations, with the lectures providing additional theoretical knowledge to support the hands on lab activities. Details of the specifics of this camp structure and modules can be found elsewhere [33]. This camp is run by the authors and had N=15 participants for this study.…”

“…Once again, this is a promising start, but more could be done to understand the importance of including design in camps. The motivation for this study comes directly from the foregoing literature review and our previous camp structure investigation [33], based on which we have the following outstanding questions.…”

STEM Summer Camps in the US: Knowledge and Context

“…In some summer camps, students use designed thinking and inductive reasoning to process what they learned there with what they already knew [11]. Design thinking is often mentioned as a useful tool for implementing summer camps, but there is little discussion about how well participants comprehend the topics covered or how this comprehension affects their perceptions of engineering [11]. Other summer camps used Cognitive Apprenticeship (CA) as a framework for creating the camp [12].…”