Hi Lauren – Great questions! We are now wrapping up design and development, and doing some beta testing in one of our schools this summer. We will then be running a one-year pilot study with around 50 students at one middle school site starting this fall. In our third and final year (after making adjustments based on what we learn in the pilot study), we will run a larger roll out involving between 350 – 400 students at up to 8 other middle school sites in urban Atlanta, GA. Recruitment occurs within an existing programmatic structure run by After School All Stars Atlanta (ASAS). We are working very closely with ASAS staff on that, and news of the AMAYS project has already stirred some excitement at the after school sites. The AMAYS experience currently involves students meeting after school for one school year. They will work in teams and with (ATL tech sector) mentors and instructors both at the school site for a few hours each week, and within a password protected online learning environment that we have (just about) developed. The first half of the school year will involve activities designed to engage specifically our students with app building and digital media development. There will also be an end of semester showcase and possibly a developer’s contest/demo of sorts for the community that will be combined with an ASAS parents’/community day. In the second half of the school year, AMAYS teams will do something like project based learning, applying their tech, research, and collaborative skills to help them solve a relevant (environmental, health, social and/or other) problem of their choosing. There are too many design details for us to be able to properly give you the whole picture, but we hope we answered some of your questions, and we would love to discuss further with anyone interested!

Hello Brendan, you mentioned that the students are recruited through an existing after school program, which always brings up the issue of selection bias and problems with generalizability. Is this something that you’ll be addressing in a subsequent phase of this project?

Hi Roger,
You bring up a great point (and fairly common challenge) associated with selection bias and generalizability. Fortunately, we are working with a well-established and relatively large after school program. While the program doesn’t cater to the all the students in the targeted schools, the participation rates are fairly high. Undoubtedly, some selection bias remains which is why, as Brendan mentioned elsewhere, we are thinking about scalability in terms of integration of the AMAYS curriculum in school settings, not just after school, and to a broader population. With regard to generalizability, our research and development plan follows a design-based approach. The model we develop during our pilot likely will be adapted based on our findings. The aim of this iterative process is to help us create a model that “fits” across multiple settings. Neither of these contextual pieces (the size of the after school program nor the design-based approach) fully address issues with selection bias and generalizability—especially in a measurable sense—but they allow us to situate our research in a real world setting while keeping these issues in mind. I would love to hear ideas you (and others!) have for addressing these and similar challenges.

Hi Jennifer,

Great question! We will definitely be able to provide more detail on that (e.g., themes from our data) once we have run our pilot, as AMAYS activities include lots of opportunities for student input. We have, however gathered some preliminary feedback from students, teachers, and STEM/ICT professionals. ASAS students we surveyed said they would be interested in doing the kinds of STEM/ICT related activities we have designed into AMAYS, which are also 21st century skills that tech professionals we surveyed said they valued in the workplace. Students also showed some excitement about doing the sorts of things that actual STEM-ICT professionals do. Hopefully we can tap more into that by reaching out to ATL metro area professionals to mentor the students and continue to advise us. Other STEM/job pipeline related issues we have noticed students showing an interest in (in the past) have tended to be centered around issues that affect them directly (like cyberbullying and career opportunities), or the community (like brownfields, food deserts, and local geography/history). Students are also very much interested, as we might have guessed, in pop culture. We have taken this into account, and also worked with our AMAYS team members who have been STEM teachers, and worked with our advisory board to come up with a series of sample topics for the students in case they are having trouble coming up with their own during the PBL phase of the AMAYS (after) school year. If you are interested, I can shoot you an email with some of that.

Thanks Brendan, that would be great. It seems like there is a range of interests, I would be interested in learning more about the community-based projects that students have explored as PBE is an interest of mine.

We are hoping that AMAYS students will continue with other STEM activities offered by ASAS after school once their AMAYS year has finished. Now that you mention it though, it might make sense to present other affordable STEM learning opportunities in the area to participants at the end of the AMAYS year. We would also like to eventually see whether having participated in AMAYS influences participants’ affinity for or performance in STEM subjects during the school day.

Our vision for scale up (if AMAYS proves to be effective) would be extending the time students can be a part of the program, expanding the number of student participants, and eventually tying AMAYS into the regular school day. The AMAYS learning environment is also designed in a way that would allow designers the option to change the technologies and topics participants work with pretty easily.

Hi Shannon – That is an important question that has come up often in discussions about AMAYS, impact, and potential scale up. Our current design is meant to introduce students to STEM/ICT careers in middle school through an authentic and interactive after school experience. As part of scale up, we hope to extend this experience and related evaluation through high school and into college/careers. We would love to hear any suggestions you might have – thanks!

I’d also add that our design calls for AMAYS students to work with mentors from the local STEM/ICT professional community. This type of mentor support has been shown to be an important part of STEM-related growth, particularly for students from underrepresented populations.

That’s excellent! How do you go about recruiting the mentors? What’s the time commitment/activities related to what they do and do you reimburse the mentors’ efforts?

Our mentors are volunteers who are connected to the educational collaborative of the Technology Association of Georgia, one of our partners on this project. In addition to site visits, the mentors will serve as AMAYS team advisors, connecting with the students through our online learning environment.