Navigating Infrastructure in Informal Learning Ecosystems (Poster 4)

• In Event: Advancing Understanding of Infrastructuring in the Learning Sciences

Abstract

Introduction
As learning sciences researchers, it is easy to get lost in the design of curricular materials, creating innovative assessments, and formulating generative prompts to engage youth in deep thought about any number of topics. What we sometimes overlook, however, are many of the questions and considerations related to the technological and relational infrastructures that arguably determine whether or not a given learning experience will make its way into the hands of learners. This poster presentation will chronicle several of the infrastructure-related challenges and successes that surfaced during a one year partnership with a local parks and recreation organization. Moreover, it will highlight the relational work of supporting and overseeing the effective use of technological infrastructure.

Context and Methods
Throughout 2021 and 2022, the author and their research team partnered with a local parks and recreation district to develop and deliver physical movement and computer science-related experiences for K-12 youth. These experiences included both after-school and summer sessions where youth could explore computer science through sports. More than 500 youth participated and they are supported by approximately 50-100 adult staff members.
The findings that are featured in this poster are autoethnographic and reflect strategies that were developed to address the variety of infrastructure considerations that arose during the year.

Findings
The experiences that we designed for these youth had several technology components. Youth were invited to use technology to extend their thinking and consider the realm of possibilities for designing sports-related wearables using microcontrollers, sensors, web cameras, and smart watches. The research team provided these technologies, while a community organization provided iPads for each site. This seemed to constitute all the necessary materials that youth would require. However, throughout the year-long set of activities, considerable relational work was needed to effectively utilize the different pieces of technology. Some examples of this relational work and their associated roles included dispelling park staff misperceptions of the technologies, helping them troubleshoot WiFi and login problems, repeated phone calls with the iPad providers technical support staff and app developer support staff to determine why programs were not working properly, and working with the organization to develop new activity work flows when certain parts of the technological infrastructure were no longer available. All of these were aspects of this work that fall outside the purview of community partners, but may not normally constitute parts of the researchers traditional design process.

Significance
Infrastructure plays a significant role in the learning scientist’s ability to effectively conduct research. Attending to this might involve a number of different strategies, and researchers taking on a collection of different, unplanned roles. Alternatively, researchers and their community partners might consider investing in people infrastructure that can support the many relational aspects of supporting technological infrastructure. At the same time, one strategy that this research team has adopted, is to design for uncertainty in infrastructure. For these reasons, our most recent activities assume minimal technological infrastructure, and/or that organizations may not have the bandwidth to utilize the infrastructure present.

Authors

• Marcelo A.B. Worsley, Northwestern University

• Vishesh Kumar, Northwestern University