Tinkering With Digital Storytelling Activities for Families at Home

• In Event: Informal Learning Is Not Canceled: Research and Program Implementation During a Global Pandemic

Abstract

Objectives. This presentation will focus on a project launched in April 2020, after the temporary closure of Chicago Children’s Museum due to COVID-19. We are developing and testing a set of video invitations for families to engage in tinkering activities at home. Our central question is whether and how encouraging storytelling during tinkering can advance families’ engagement in engineering-rich, playful problem solving.

Perspective. Our focus on storytelling connects with recent efforts by educators and researchers to pair stories in books and hands-on activities to promote interest and knowledge in engineering and science in homes, museums, and libraries. Our work seeks to encourage families to create their own stories to motivate their engagement in engineering practices during tinkering. We are using design-based research methods to iterate the ways we invite families to engage in story-based tinkering, with the aim of maximizing families’ talk about and engagement in key engineering practices, including planning, testing, fixing, and redesigning.

Methods. The museum posts the story-based tinkering videos on their social media channels. In a parallel effort, researchers on our team recruit families who watch a video and then tinker at home while being observed via Zoom. 15 children (9 female; M age 6.87 years) and their parents have participated to date (47% White, 33% Latinx). Data collection is ongoing, and we will have many more family observations to include in our conference presentation.

Results. The presentation will include a consideration of practical issues we have encountered gathering data from families via Zoom. It will also illustrate our use of ethnographic methods to understand how children engage in storytelling during conversational exchanges with their parents during tinkering. Interestingly, we are already seeing how changes in a story can create opportunities for deep engagement in engineering. In this example, we see a 6-year-old child and parent talking about testing and trying their design and the potential need to redesign to accommodate different characters:
Parent: (child grabs other characters) I think we should just keep (original character) because those are too big and heavy, we didn’t design the slide for them.
Child: (grabs new bigger toy and places it on slide) No, I think he can work because he has smaller feet and he weighs less. (child tests new toy)
Parent: Look at the slide legs! Our legs are not strong enough (legs on slide ladder wobble)…This is an important lesson when we are designing things, we need to think about who will be using them.
Child: Ok. Let’s just use this (original character). He's waiting and says "yea!"

Significance. Our observations via Zoom are providing valuable inputs for the creation of new activities and videos for families. The work is suggesting design principles to both enhance the museum’s online offerings, and inform the creation of story-based tinkering exhibit activities when the museum reopens.

Authors

• Graciela Solis, Loyola University Chicago

• Lauren Christine Pagano, Loyola University Chicago

• Gabriela Perdomo, Loyola University Chicago

• Diana Acosta, Loyola University Chicago

• Naomi J. Polinsky, Northwestern University

• Catherine A Haden, Loyola University Chicago