Cheryl, what was one of the things the project did to improve its culturally responsive pedagogical techniques? What was most effective? 

Thank you, Megan! The guitar build is a 15 week curriculum building off of work by another ATE project, Sinclair College's STEM Guitar Project. The STEM Guitar project has lesson plans and also offers PD trainings, you can access it here: http://guitarbuilding.org/

Hi Debra, thanks for your interest! Every lesson in our curriculum is attached to specific learning objectives. Through project outcomes, quizzes, and class discussions it becomes fairly obvious whether or not students are learning the skills we are aiming to teach. Beyond skill-sharpening, we are also out to change students attitudes about STEM and to increase their interest and exposure to technical careers. We measure this outcome through the S-STEM Survey which we administer as a pre and post test before and after the course.

In addition to the interdisciplinary challenge was the alignment of learning outcomes across projects. We developed a grid of our core learning outcomes to make sure they were incorporated in each of the hands-on projects.

At Santa Fe College we have industry advisory committees for all of our Career & Technical Education (CTE) programs.  When we launched the GRRATE project our local chamber of commerce had an Advanced Manufacturing Taskforce which provided guidance and early input on the project.  We then assembled a project steering committee consisting of subject matter experts, including CTE faculty, local employers, and school board representatives which provided guidance on the curriculum development portion of the project. Our chamber of commerce is still actively involved on our GRRATE Advisory Committee and has helped us to connect to relevant employers as the project progresses.

Hi Daniel, great questions! Our PI team identified a handful of local employers in technical industries in our area and asked them for representatives to participate in our annual advisory committee meetings. This group includes a representative from the Gainesville Chamber of Commerce as well as individuals from industry, educators from the local schoolboard, and administrators from our community college. As far as feminist and anti-racist frameworks-we put a lot of intention and time into professional development for the faculty that teach this course, seeking out conferences and summits that use feminist and anti-racist pedagogy to influence culturally responsive teaching. In my own experiences teaching project based learning (PBL) courses , I've found that it is easy to get swept up in focusing on the PROJECT while neglecting the PEDAGOGY. We realized quickly that no matter how cool and engaging the PBL project is, if it is taught by a faculty person who inflicts microagressions, has a fixed mindset, is unaware of their privilege and bias, doesn't include diverse representation, etc. it can fall flat with the students that we aim to serve. Having a diverse faculty team well-versed in inclusivity tactics can be as or even more effective than the shiny projects we offer that initially draw students into the program.

Thanks for the detailed responses, Cheryl and Chelsea.

I have some projects in mind that will require connections with local employees and hadn't thought about the camber of commerce as a central link. This is very useful!

Great work here and thanks for both prompting and addressing this notion of needing diverse faculty, empowered with professional development related to anti racist and feminist framework, to bring intention into the the lived experiences of others. Really inspiring.

We've been inspired by other projects that we have seen over the years and wanted to be sure to include the inspirational quality to this work. We inspire students to try new things through this course and we'll be able to see the results of this work in the years ahead!

Thank you Jennifer... this video used many of our classroom photos and you can see the pride in the students as they work on their projects. They really take ownership of their work!

Positive experiences for our students help connect them to the learning. It has been exciting and enriching to see student's learn and grow in this hands on learning project.

Thank you for your comments. The students really take ownership of their projects because of the time and attention each project requires. It is so rewarding to see students work collaboratively. Project based learning immerses students in the curriculum and students gain confidence in their problem solving skills. 

What amazed me is the students that came back to campus after the semester was over to complete their projects. Even though they'd already be assigned a grade for the class, they were motivated enough to still complete the project.

Thanks, Katherine! First, let me mention some of the highly effective trainings we attended: The Racial Equity Institute's Groundwater and Phase I trainings (https://www.racialequityinstitute.com/), The Inclusive STEM & CS Summit (https://www.inclusivestemcs.com/), and Diversity Edu's online trainings for faculty and staff (https://diversityedu.com/). We have also developed a culture of sharing articles & news on the topics of inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility and talking as a team about these issues. It helps that our PI, Cheryl Calhoun, is the college's Dean of Access & Inclusion, and that our leadership team is woman-led and racially diverse. A few examples of what this pedagogy looks like in application: 1) making space for diverse representation in the classroom. For example, I may be a white woman, but when I talk about the history of guitar design I talk about Bo Diddley and show examples of his hand crafted guitars, if I pull supplementary videos from online into the course, I prioritize content that includes people of color, etc. 2) relying on my growth mindset training when I offer praise to students in the classroom and when grading. Praising students for growth and learning, for failing and then finding workarounds, for persistence, rather than "natural talent" or smarts. 3) Avoiding bias and microagressions in my language and actions in the classroom, recognizing that students may be facing stereotype threat and that the way I talk to them and treat them can make their experience better or worse. Giving lots of indidivual attention to my students and showing them that I value their input and that their life experiences, backgrounds, and diverse identities are a strength to our classroom. These are just a few examples, but I do find that these tactics help students gain a sense of belonging as the semester progresses.

Bravo for giving individual attention to students and showing appreciation for their valuable input and life experiences, backgrounds, and diverse identities. Any pedagogical approach(es) for addressing gender equity? Thanks in advance for sharing.

Thank you, Joselina. Our approach to gender equity in the classroom is much the same as what I described above for racial equity: representation and culturally responsive generative themes, growth mindset praise, compensation for stereotype threat and implicit bias, awareness of privilege and power dynamics, etc. For example, when teaching guitar design history, I talk about Sister Rosetta Tharpe's role in popularizing the electric guitar and St. Vincent's modern guitar design that is meant to better fit curvy bodies. The fact that 3/4 of our faculty are women makes a big impact on stereotype threat too-it is helpful for my female students to be taught by a woman who has built several guitars. That representation provides immediate evidence to students that gender plays no role in a person's success in completing the guitar build. 

We have found many ways to add artistic elements to each project. When students personalize their projects in this way they connect even more to the guitar, or rocket, or robot. They take pride in their project and share creative ideas with classmates to enrich other student's work. 

For this project, we built in a pre/post survey looking at attitudes towards Math, Science, Technology and Engineering. We also ask questions about their future career intentions. Unfortunately COVID interrupted the data collection. We're now back on track with a solid spring semester data collection. We should have some results to publish soon.

For our next project, we'd like to incorporate a longer view following up with both student academic progress and job placement. We're collaborating with Career & Technical Programs to incorporate the course into their degree programs which will also help us to develop a longer term view of impacts.

Thanks, Kara. That is a good question. Our external evaluator, Susan Warshaw, is actually working on setting up a focus group for our staff to share our experiences working on the project over the past three years, and I imagine we will be able to answer this question accurately following that discussion. As an instructor in the project, I can speak for myself that the PD I experienced in this project informs my teaching in all subjects moving forward.

Thanks, Candice. Most of our students are community college students, some are dual enrolled high schoolers. We did offer a pilot summer camp version of this curriculum in 2019 to 60 Upward Bound high schoolers as well. This summer, we are providing an abbreviated summer camp version of the curriculum for high schoolers through our city's housing authority summer program. We have offered demonstrations based on our curriculae at science fair type events for k-8 (a science fair, a girl scout STEM event at the natural history museum, and a Girls Rock Camp summer program), but we are yet to try the full 15 week curriculum out on pre-high school students. It would require significant modification to do so, but I think it could be adapted to work well for K-8.

Thanks, Alex. We have a few ideas for sharing the best practices we've learned over the last 3 years of this project with other schools. We are currently working on a second grant application that would allow us to expand the project to other colleges. If that grant is successful we hope to scale up to provide professional development to other educators so that our curricula can be shared.