Exploring affinity toward engineering in underserved youth during a summer physical computing workshop

This project performs a collaborative art-based engineering project for 5th - 8th grade students in Sacramento to introduce engineering principles. My goal in providing this workshop is to explore the following question: Does exposure to engineering practices through a collaborative workshop which utilizes art and physical computing increase affinity toward engineering professional practice among 5th - 8th graders in an underserved community? Physical computing projects encourage students to imagine, design, and build in the intersection of creative exploration and engineering. Utilizing familiar craft-based materials such as paper with coding and circuits can bridge the gap between the known world of arts and crafts and the unknown world of engineering-based design. Since students enroll into the workshop to create a collaborative digital art display versus enrolling into a strictly "coding" workshop, their unfamiliar or intimidating feelings towards engineering may be alleviated. During the workshop, students utilize arts and crafts with microcontrollers, sensors and LEDs. They are tasked with incorporating principles within the engineering professional practice domain to design, code, apply electronic fundamentals, and basic craft designs to create the final art display. The cumulative resulting art installation is an immersive, interactive pixel light show display. I examine the students' development of self-efficacy and engineering affinity by surveying the students before and after the workshop. I perform analytics to see if their responses to the survey questions and prompts increase in using engineering terms and principles and how their self-efficacy rating changes in various categories.