MCVT

MCVT is a research project that is developing a kit of materials and parts to support inclusive computing education and study the influence of culturally-relevant design activities and tools on youth practices, participation, and technical competency beliefs. The MCVT kit includes printed paper cards, a microcontroller, and conductive and non-conductive craft materials, and comprises Make cards (sensor and actuation), STEM Connect cards (explaining STEM content), In the World cards (showing real-world applications), and Design cards (templates for constructing projects and stories).

Learning Objective

MCVT values transparency (actual visiblity) and understanding of the inner workings of technical and computational systems through hands-on making experiments. The goal is to provide a hands-on, engaging way for learners to explore computing technologies and their real-world applications, as well as to promote creativity and self-expression.

App Components

Our target population was young learners. One of our takeaways from the research was that kids love stories and learning through them. We wanted to leverage this as science would be something new and foreign for the learners we, we needed a component that they already loved and enjoyed doing.

We wanted to base our experience on constructionist approaches, as we believe that learning happens best when you are learning by doing, engaging and exploring at the same time, and science and engineering themselves are hands on. We wanted learners to feel a sense of purpose while engaging in the activities to keep their engagement in the process so that not only do they not feel bored of purposeless while creating, but also look forward to the next project that they will be engaged in.

an important component of all stories are characters that learners can either identify with or aspire to be like. We wanted to leverage that and use the character for an important component in our learning process - the scaffolding. When engaging in making activities where learners learn while doing, it is essential to provide feedback and support throughout the process to make sure learners are not lost and the desired learning happens- we decided to give our scaffolding practice a "face" and turned it to a friend-companion for learners

One of our long-term goals was for the learners to get interested in STEM and engage in it professionally in future. We wanted learners to know throughout the experience that what they have been creating in their backyard with the help of "Quirky" is not extremely far away from the process real scientists go through. This would also help us create the link between the real world and the imaginative fictional world they are learning about science at.

Learning Agent

Meet your new friend - Quirky!  

It was extremely important for us to support the learning process by providing help throughout the experiences to the learner as well as reassurance when they are on the right path. And what better way to do it than by providing a furry friend and a companion who would model behavior for the child, provide company, and explain the more challenging concepts in an easy way.

Research

The main framework our design is based on is thick Authenticity. See how each component of the theory is illustrated in the design of our product. 

Other Guiding Theoretical Lenses

Besides basing our main design on the theory of thick authenticity, we drew from the following practices as well to make sure learning about science could be transferred to the everyday lives of the learner by using situated learning examples, helping learners develop strong mental models by giving them challenges to solve using the constructionism approach, and making sure those challenges are real-world and make sense to the learners making the process problem-based. To make the process of learning new things more comfortable, we made sure to insert cultural forms by involving components already familiar to the learners such as the storyline concept and everyday objects that they can interact with to solve the challenges from the stories.

Cueing/cultural forms

Tangible interactions with familiar materials help learners understand new concepts by seeing them with something they already know. In our case, stories play the role of cueing cultural forms as kids that age is familiar with storybooks. 

Constructionism

Learners engage in the process and build their knowledge by constructing artifacts in real life that aim to solve problems in the digital storyline. The app also uses artifacts as technologies to help learners "Think with" and expand their understanding of STEM concepts.

Learn more about constructionism reading Papert and Resnick.

Problem-based

The stories frame an open-ended authentic problem that challenges children to go through the process of engineering a solution based on STEM concepts/methods.  The problem will be introduced in stages giving learners a chance to identify critical steps that will lead them to the solution. Afterward, learners reflect on the process they went through and explain their understanding of it.

Critique

What I did well

What I learned