Designing Educational Family Fun With and For Rural Communities Through Public Media Partnerships

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Approximately 13.4 million children under the age of 18 live in rural areas in the United States (US Census Bureau, 2016). Rural schools enroll more students than the United States’ 85 largest school districts combined; one in six students in the rural United States live below the poverty line, and one in seven qualify for special education services (Showalter, Hartman, Johnson, & Klein, 2019). Children who grow up in rural communities often lag behind their non-rural peers in educational achievement, particularly in math and reading (Lee & Burkam, 2002; Miller & Votruba-Drzal, 2013).

This symposium addresses the MOLLY OF DENALI Rural Engagement Initiative, a project which utilized human-centered design (HCD) in the co-development of educational resources that aimed to authentically reflect and amplify rural, multicultural perspectives, while also addressing aspects of the achievement gap, focused on social studies and informational text resources for young children. The educational materials created for this project are based on MOLLY OF DENALI, the first nationally distributed children’s television series in the United States with a Native American female lead. The show, targeting children ages 4-8, follows the adventures of feisty and resourceful 10-year-old Molly Mabray, an Alaska Native girl who lives in the fictional town of Qyah, Alaska (https://pbskids.org/molly).

This symposium brings together voices from multiple public media stations and university partners to discuss formative research and design, implementation, and evaluation of the project created with and for rural families.

Sub Unit

• Technology, Media & Child Development

Chair

• Elizabeth Kazakoff Myers, WGBH

Individual Presentations

• Virtual Human-Centered Design With Rural Communities - Presenting Author: Mollie Levin, WGBH Educational Foundation

• Virtual Human-Centered Design and Evaluation from a Rural Station Perspective - Presenting Author: Timothy Wollenzien, NA

• Evaluation of the MOLLY OF DENALI Family Game Club - Presenting Author: Elizabeth Christiansen, University of Nevada, Reno; Non-Presenting Author: Kelly Morning, University of Nevada, Reno