Sure. Our project is structured as a community-based design research partnership. Partner institutions include the Seattle Public Library, Highline School district, and the Pacific Science Center. Individual staff within those organizations have developed strong relationships with families directly or with community organizations that have strong relationships to families. For example, Seattle Public Library has a long-term partnership with a community housing organization—where families with unstable housing histories are provided with long-term housing. Their partnership allows us to run the 5 session program in the building where the families live—which has made a big difference in terms of family participation. Of course, it can still be a challenge for many of the families to make it to all five sessions—but most of them get quite excited about the opportunity and are able to make it work. If they miss a session or two, we assure them that it is alright and assign staff to help catch them up when they return. We have launch with a shared meal and have childcare services available for the really young children. Those pragmatics also matter. Many parents really respond positively to having a sustained opportunity to collaborate and learn with their children. Over time word about the program has also spread within the community (and helps with recruitment), so running multiple sessions within specific community settings has been important. This has also allowed us to help build instructional capacity within particular locations to offer the program and engage families in this way. 

Thanks for sharing this video! I had a similar question to Timothy's. It looks like the project has had a lot of success by having community based organizations be part of the project team, particularly when it comes to spreading the word about the program to families. I wonder if you have encountered any challenges in "selling" the program or perhaps related topics (the importance of STEM careers, etc.) to family participants?

Hi Anne! Thank you for watching our video and for your question! We incorporate storytelling in a variety of ways in the workshops, both as a way to model and spark thinking about how participants tell stories. As a children's librarian, I often share a picture book read-aloud at the beginning of the workshop that has something to do with design, engineering, problem-solving, or community-building. Many of our sessions feature a Native oral storyteller who tells stories from Washington-area tribal legends and he speaks about the importance of oral storytelling and drawing your own meaning from story. Pacific Science Center invites scientists working in various fields to come and share their personal stories of their work, as well. We also have a host of activities that help to center storytelling throughout the workshops, but another very important component is the design prompts for the family projects. All of the prompts ask families to tell an important family story, either about a shared memory or experience or an imaginative story about the future. The work is then focused entirely on using materials to build out that shared family story. We are always thinking about ways to incorporate and center storytelling in engineering projects. Thank you so much for your question!

I'm glad we can broaden your thinking about technology and storytelling! Your questions about challenges with partnerships and relationships is a great question and one we have repeatedly found ourselves thinking about as well. I feel I can only answer for the Pacific Science Center on this particular question. I think some of the biggest challenges were in having both a common vision and finding common language for that vision. I think all of the partners have been incredibly excited about this project and that really helped it get going. Once we better understood each partners preconceived notions about equity-oriented family-based stem learning we were really able to rely on each other to bring our best strengths to the project and learn from each other. As we continued with the project and even still, we find interesting challenges in the language we use. It turns out that between our different institutions we were using terms very differently and occasionally misunderstanding each other because of the way we speak about the project. Ultimately it has been an interesting insight for me into the ways that everyone thinks about and approaches this type of work. As we have worked together for so long it really has enabled some amazing iterative design through having so many opinions in the room.

We also came at the work differently based on our professional / institutional histories. I remember early on our library partners were surprised that we were going to spend so much time co-designing the program experience together through a collaborative inquiry process—and that we were going to learn how to enact the program together over multiple iterations. The learning scientists were bringing a participatory design-based research approach to the work that was different from other program development models the other partners had experienced previously. I think we have learned to do that collaborative work quite well over the past few years across something like 20 enactments in various sites. But we needed to develop our shared capacity to do co-design (and the associated practices and arrangements)—and also develop the trusting relationships and collaborative practices that provide a foundation for that mode of work.

This is fascinating work, Carrie.  What are you finding in your data?  In particular, I am curious if you are finding that the materials influence the storytelling process (or if you can tell from your data).  Have you made changes to the design of your workshops over time to further facilitate and support the storytelling practices?

Thanks Julia! I guess I'll flip your question and say that we are finding that the stories influence families' work with the materials--and that this is one of our key findings. When we put storytelling at the center of the workshops, families innovate with the technology and materials to achieve aesthetic ends in order to tell their story. 

As far as changes in the design, yes! Many changes to not only further support storytelling but to support the integration of stories with the technology. It is easy to have the technology "take over"--our urge to make it about learning how to do X, Y, and Z to code the robotics components is an easy script to fall into. What we have worked hard on is ways to make sure that pedagogically, we are always linking the stories to the learning, design thinking, and practices that are also goals of the project. 

Thanks for the great questions!

Thanks for your kind comments, Linda! We took a lot of time developing these supports knowing that folks are busy. Libraries in general are moving more toward spending time outside of the physical branches, knowing that there are many seen and unseen barriers that keep people from using library services. The most crucial piece is definitely the community relationships and we've been so fortunate to have solid, trusting partnerships behind this project. 

These are great questions! Most families come for all 5 sessions-the workshops are designed to build on one another and culminate in a presentation/celebration at the end. That said, 5 weeks is a big time commitment for families, and we do have families who skip a session and we always support them in coming back. 

We have a parent meeting at the beginning of the first workshop session to be explicit about the goals of the workshop centering around family learning (rather than just youth learning). We have found that many parents who come to the workshops are, themselves, interested in learning how to code. Over the course of the 5 weeks, we find family members taking on different roles and organizing themselves in different configurations. We have found parents taking the lead on organizing the work, but sometimes kids take the lead. We have many situations where it is a mom with kids at the workshop--and mom and kids work together to build and code. So to answer your question, we are documenting the different ways that families use their existing practices of decision-making, or organizing--which does include someone taking the lead one week who may not take the lead the next week. 

As far as your question about males vs females taking the back seat or lead, we at first were very aware of giving the kids "equal time" in front of the computers--until we realized the unique ways that all family members were contributing to their projects, and learned to see all of those ways of making and doing as valuable. 

Thanks for the great questions!

Thanks so much for watching, Bridget!

Hi Maureen! Thanks for the question and for the link to your project video. It was great to learn more about that crucial work you are doing. We are coming to better understand the multifaceted roles for storytelling in our work. It is a central design / focusing practice for our programs. This design move leverages the storytelling practices of the families and their communities (Indigenous and non-Indigenous, in somewhat different ways) and connects directly to the professional expertise of the librarians serving as facilitators—so that storytelling itself can be better understood by the families. Having families design a robotic or e-textile that aestetically depicts a consequential story provides a strong platform for them engage in the STEM / computing practices being introduced — and for other STEM / computing practices they bring with them culturally. They are often re-living shared memories or re-generating community stories — providing richly contextual design goals for the ART/STEM design work. We have found that centering the design on stories also leads families to cherish the computational pieces of art that they end up producing—it becomes a signifier of their personal or community history—which is very powerful. I also wonder if my colleagues see other aspects of story-work playing out.

I agree with Jamie's observation above, in general and on storytelling more specifically.  It is exciting to see this kind of effort.  Somehow I feel a geographical kinship to the project today, since I am in Spokane for daughter's graduation, though I know two very different parts of the state.  I am interested in trying to adopt some of these strategies on our project - different structure, but many similar goals.

Congratulations on your daughter's graduation, Eric! That's awesome. It is great to hear that you find the approach helpful. Let's us know if you want to talk through any of the details. I look forward to learning more about what you have been up to recently.