Type. Community of Practice
Year. 2024
Summary. Community Gamechangers is a community of practice I created with the goal of training community members to create equity based STEM curriculum. I lead the design, marketing, and facilitation of this project with a focus on sustaining the work done by the NSF Rec2Tech project.
A sample of the marketing content that I developed when it was determined that we would be opening a select number of seats to the public.
The Problem. This program started when the NSF funded Rec2Tech project came to the end of it's 5 year plan. Without an extension secured yet, the decision was made to hold a 5 month long community of practice with the goal of sustaining the excellent work done by the Pittsburgh Rec2Tech educators. I designed the program as well as Digital Harbor Foundation's first mentoring program.
The Goal. The intention of the Rec2Tech project is to create a scalable model that could be used nationally to create more access to informal STEM and maker education. I aimed to align my work with these goals by creating a cohesive finished package that could be used as either a training program for new Rec2Tech educators, a final training to aid sustainability and foster institutionalized knowledge, and as a model for future communities of practice and mentoring programs.
The main content from the STEM Equity 'Workshop in One Page.' Beneath these two main sections, learners can find every resource shared within the workshop as well as resources shared by other participants during the workshop.
The Solutions. The Rec2Tech educators attending this training experience beyond our typical participants, and the following generations of educators at the rec centers will be volunteers and college students that have little to no experience. For this reason, I developed a "5+1" community of practice that is scalable to the participant's experience level.
The overall package consists of 5 main workshops (STEM Equity, Game-Based Learning, Coding to Connect, Tech in Motion, and Entrepreneurship & Design Thinking) and one additional workshop, Curriculum Changemakers, designed to facilitate a deeper dive into the planning, management, development, and evaluation of curriculum within the institution. Each workshop features one hands-on learning session and a share session where participants can present their localized, equity-based STEM curriculum.
After school STEM program leaders face challenges due to limited time and resources, reliance on volunteers and college students who move on to STEM careers, and difficulties in retaining institutional knowledge and experience. To address this, I created Workshops in One Page to summarize workshop ideas and collect shared resources (resources not pictured).
The main takeaways from the Game-Based Learning workshop displayed in one page.
