See It, Do It, Learn It: Integrating Experiential Learning into High School Engineering Outreach Programs

Abstract A Hispanic-Serving Institution in California aims to increase the number of women and students from underrepresented ethnic and racial in engineering through experiential learning. Experiential learning is the process of learning through experience or "learning by doing." Through a two-week summer experience, the Access Summer Program to Inspire Recruit and Enrich (ASPIRE) program actively engages high school students in the learning process through hands-on projects that introduce students to computing and engineering. The project theme has been Internet-of-Things (IoT), an emerging field where physical objects are embedded with electronics to establish a connectivity between the object and the Internet. Through the program, students are exposed to basic engineering design and coding. Students learn how to use of sensors (devices that sense aspects of the environment like temperature, light and motion) and actuators (devices that act on the environment like motors and LEDs) along with programming using the Raspberry Pi (microcontroller). Over the past four years, the ASPIRE program has had over 120 high-school participants in the two-week summer program. All of the participants come from a demographic groups that are currently underrepresented in the fields of computer science and engineering. In an effort to ensure that students have the academic foundation needed to successfully complete the programs' rigorous summer curriculum, all applicants have a minimum GPA of 2.5 to be eligible to participate. The average GPA for program participants was a 3.66. Majority of the participants have no prior experience with engineering and computer science. After the 2-week program, these students reported the following results on the end-of-the-program survey, 97% reported that their knowledge of engineering was average, above average, or well above average; 92% reported that their knowledge of computer science was average, above average, or well above average; 97% reported that their knowledge of Internet of Things was average, above average, or well above average; 59% reported that their knowledge of Linux was average, above average, or well above average; 95% reported that their knowledge of Raspberry Pi was average, above average, or well above average; 92% reported that their knowledge of 3-D printing was average, above average, or well above average; 97% reported that their knowledge of Solid Works software was average, above average, or well above average, and 92% reported that the program made them confident in their ability to perform tasks that will allow them to succeed as a student in engineering or computer science. This presentation will cover the design of the ASPIRE program, program curriculum, past projects, results from annual formative and summative evaluations, and strategies for sustaining the outreach program.