Lessons From the World of E-Textiles for the Connected Learning Movement

• In Event: Connected Learning: Evidence in Support of an Emerging Model for Learning Across Settings Among Nondominant Youth

Abstract

Objectives
This poster focuses on after-school communities of electronic textiles (“e-textiles”) designers that create fabric artifacts that include embedded computers and other electronics (Buechley, Peppler, Eisenberg, & Kafai, 2013). These e-textiles communities are production centered, openly networked, interest-driven, peer-supported, and, importantly, academically oriented. Because of this, e-textiles communities are interesting sites of practice to inform our understanding of connected learning, especially as they are able to rupture some of the persistent cultural and gender divides that have plagued our academic institutions and STEM learning more broadly. Informed by current research with non-dominant youth as they engage in e-textile design, this poster presents lessons learned for designing connected learning environments, offering strategies to broaden participation and enhance learning outcomes.

Theoretical Frameworks
This paper shares the session’s theoretical commitments in connected learning (Ito et al., 2013) as well as draws on current learning theory, including the sociocultural and constructionist foundations of learning (Peppler & Kafai, 2007).

Methods
This paper takes a mixed methods approach to further understand the emergent community of e-textile designers and the lessons learned for the connected learning movement.

Sources of Evidence
This poster draws upon several years of ethnographic observations, common survey assessments, e-textile artifact analyses, and comparative case studies of four youth.

Results
Findings suggest that not only do these tools and materials shift the computing culture in the wild, attracting women to a traditionally male-dominated area of computing, but also rupture the gendered dynamics in out-of-school settings. We attribute this largely to the tools, materials, practices, and products of e-textiles being coded for girls, giving them permission to engage in computing, building confidence and exploring the creative ends of the materials. Moreover, our work demonstrates that e-textiles are not only effective tools for broadening participation, but offer greater transparency into STEM disciplinary content that can be discovered through informal exploration yet connected to academic goals (Kafai & Peppler, in press). Findings suggest that after creating simple and computational circuits with e-textile materials, youth significantly increased their understanding of key circuitry concepts (Peppler & Glosson, in press). Taken together, e-textiles toolkits are promising activities for learning because they open up the learning space and underscore the basics of circuitry in tangible and observable ways, making visible what is oftentimes not seen in traditional electronics toolkits.

Scholarly Significance
The e-textiles community has emerged to be the first, female-dominated computing community, blurs boundaries between persistent cultural and gender divides in computing, and serves as a prominent example of connected learning activity. This paper shares the various lessons learned from these observations for designing new connected learning environments to be more inclusive and to support high quality learning outcomes.

Authors

• Kylie A. Peppler, Indiana University - Bloomington

• Diane Lynn Glosson, Indiana University