Fascinating project.  How are schools or organizations recruited to be part of this? 

This sounds like a great idea. It puts me in mind of how personal websites and Github pages now serve as dynamic, representative portfolios of work and skills for writers, artists, and technology professionals.

Are the individuals being served in this program being taught the skills to capture and present their work (e.g., shoot, edit, and publish video; put together dynamic visual and/or written summaries) or is it the function of the program to provide that service for them as a bridge to publication?

Hi Patrick,

Thanks so much for your comments and for watching the video. I love the reference to GitHub. There is guidance embedded in the tool to help authors (teachers creating challenges) and user (students taking them). Beyond this we offer regular check ins where we support use of the tool such as capturing good evidence of STEM competencies. We haven't provided specific guidance on how to capture good video but we have some of that in other work we do with teachers around their classroom practices.  We certainly could adapt that guidance to this setting and it would fit.  Sam

A great video to accompany a great idea! Thanks for sharing your work!

I’m wondering about the framework for how instructors identify and assign competencies to their students. Is there a defined set of competencies instructors are choosing from or is it totally open? Many states have recently developed Portraits of a Graduate that lays out an overview of knowledge, skills and dispositions that they want students to graduate with. It would be really powerful to find some resonance between these tools that connect with huge populations for students and this tool that pushes expectations/demonstration of knowledge beyond seat time/written assessments!

Hi Nathan,

Thanks for the question. Instructors authoring challenges select seven competencies from a list of 34. Student users then see the seven competences when they are completing a challenge and can choose up to three tied to the evidence they've uploaded as part of their challenge. These 34 competencies were distilled down from a few sources - the Department of Labor's Building Blocks Model for Occupations with a focus on STEM occupations.  From the Georgetown Center for Education, the Workforce STEM Competencies analysis and from NGSS and the  competencies that YouthBuild USA has all individual programs work on (these are generally broad career skills).  We gathered competencies from all these sources and then brought them into co-design with our partner sites to ensure alignment with the work-based learning and classroom learning and leadership activities YouthBuild programs were doing and to create plain language definitions for each competency in the tool.  We've found this process to be really central to the project and to ensure that competencies are tangible to the people we want to demonstrate them - the learners. 

Thanks again for the question and happy to share a document on our process if you want that.

This is a fine project! 

As one who was hired over ten years ago  to crosswalk CTE competencies to science education frameworks, I am pleased to see the program reaching out of the paper support with worded expectations and into the visuals of accomplishments.  Further, how can this tool be furthered to aid students build evidence from their projects to gain help with critical areas that their early interests have generated but have no mentor to guide them?   Will the STEMfolio tool be offered to projects who have this type of need?

This is really interesting! My team (Project INSITE) works with incarcerated learners and we are developing an app to assist in transitioning youth to the workforce. Incarcerated learners were mentioned in your video and I'm wondering if the STEMfolio is only being used after their release? How has it been implemented in transitioning?

Is the STEMfolio available to employers? How is it used to help youth become integrated in the workforce?

Hi Annee,

Let's talk. We just submitted a proposal that included adapting this tool with individuals who are incarcerated to support workforce development both pre and post release.  Look forward to hearing more.  Sam