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Brokering in Blended Environments: Designing to Support Learning On- and Off-Line

Tue, April 12, 8:15 to 9:45am, Convention Center, Floor: Level One, Room 103 A

Abstract

Previous work has identified brokering roles played by parents (Barron, Martin, Takeuchi & Fithian, 2009) and adult mentors (Barron, Gomez, Pinkard & Martin, 2014) as important in developing youth technological fluency and identities as creators and contributors. Recent research syntheses on how to support equitable STEM learning specifically call out the need to intentionally broker opportunities for youth to participate in learning across different settings (Penuel, Lee, & Bevan, 2014).

Given the escalation of online environments for K-12 learning in both their design and adoption into formal and informal education spaces (NRC, 2009; Picciano & Seaman, 2008), and their potential for addressing digital divides by connecting youth in areas with fewer resources and opportunities to social and material supports for learning (Aspen Institute, 2014, US DOE, 2010), we are especially interested in brokering opportunities between on and offline spaces.

In this poster, we explore ways to design informal blended learning spaces to broker opportunities for youth to develop interests, identities, and experiences as young computational thinkers by moving across a face-to-face program and an online environment. Research questions include: (1) What brokering moves are taken up by youth and how do they evidence participation in new opportunities? (2) What factors influence youth recognition and uptake of brokering moves?

Context. In an attempt to tackle the well-documented drop in the number of women in computer science and engineering courses (e.g. AAUW, 2015), we designed an informal program for urban middle school girls, Digital Divas, to address aspects of community, encouragement, and prior experience that have been identified as barriers to sustained participation (Margolis & Fisher, 2002; Ainley, Hidi, & Berndorff, 2002). The program integrates online and out-of-school environments and project-based e-textiles curricula (Peppler et al., 2014) with the goal of supporting urban girls to develop creative interactive electronics, gain experience, and build confidence to engage in activity related to engineering. Specific designs to broker connections to opportunities across real-world and virtual environments include: (1) a serial narrative about fictional girls involved in a Digital Divas program that is shared in the online environment, including characters who interact with the girls through messaging and comments (played by adult mentors behind the scenes), prompting for submission of work and ideas, and (2) extracurricular scaffolded learning activities within the platform and external links to other related networked opportunities, highlighted and encouraged by adult mentors in the face-to-face program and shared with parents, inviting them as supplemental brokers of these opportunities.

We will share results from one instance of the Digital Divas program (N=34 girls), including ethnographic study of the on and offline environments through field notes, quantitative analysis of online participation from user log data, and a closer look at individual learners through surveys of interest, access, and experience (adapted from Barron, Walter, Martin, and Schatz, 2010) and focal case portraits of five girls. Results from this work have implications for designers, educators, and researchers of online learning platforms, conceptualizing ways to broker opportunities for youth to take up independent learning across networked settings.

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