From research to STEAM activity

What makes a great creative STEAM learning activity?

In the past 2 months at pK-12 at MIT Open Learning, grantees of our Day of Climate project are play-testing their curriculum activities.

Some of the questions that have surfaced in the process includes:

  • Does this activity tap into learners’ lived experiences?
  • Is it inclusive of learners of younger ages, and cultural or socioeconomic backgrounds?
  • Is the scientific phenomena being conveyed in an embodied, and maybe playful, way?

PLIX Data Gems, is in part, based on some very serendipitous community connections (Mining for Data Gems ), my many years of data science education work, and my multimodal gesture research I’ve been doing for the past 14 years. (People are multidimensional and have many interests!) I’ve been thinking about different ways to integrate two. So far, my education career has infused pedagogy into my gesture research. My undergraduate researchers have a deep and fulfilling training experience into the research field (after 2 weeks of training, they’re able to beautifully analyze and evaluate hand gestures), and I’ve also worked with collaborators in Europe to put together a training curriculum on multimodal gesture labeling (https://m3d.upf.edu )

Some of the very creative things I do in gesture research 1) deciding on labeling conventions and quantifying the very qualitative aspects of human communication, and 2) imagining, designing, and coding exploratory data visualizations. ( Speech Communication Group )These data visualizations aid the process of investigating patterns in our research data, based on different hypotheses. I find it extremely playful and fun!

Data Gems introduces that process of imagining, deciding, and designing a data tracking experience, motivated by personal data and using familiar materials like beads, charms, and string. At older ages, transitioning into visual data journaling (collecting, tracking, and analyzing) supports deeper reflections and potentially changes in habits towards personal goals.

Other PLIX activities were designed with a different ethos: What’s most exciting about the research that we don’t have yet have answers for? Tapping into researcher curiosities makes the unknown more tantalizing to explore. It means that there’s a very “high ceiling,” since even the “experts” don’t have the answers. In the face of no solutions, researchers employ different methods and practices, and that can be a very creative act.

So, reflecting on your experiences:

  • If you’ve had research experience, what was fun about it? What questions remain unanswered in the research field?
  • Or, in your personal life, what kind of questions do you seek answers to? How do you find the answers? And how much do you understand other peoples’ process of figuring out the answers?
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One of the things I learned as I’ve gone through several difference research experiences is that sometimes it’s just as much about finding the right questions as finding the right answers. Not only that, but the way you ask the question can result in different processes of answering it (or even different answers entirely!) Even though “doing things the wrong way” can be frustrating, I do find it fun to analyze where things went wrong and reverse engineer a better solution for the future.

I think this is true in my personal life as well. I like crafting. Sometimes I’ll look up how to do things “the right way” in advance. Sometimes I’ll just make it up and figure out by trial and error what went wrong. Maybe rip it apart and start it again if it went not how I pictured it. I do find this trial and error method helps me understand the problem and solution much better. I have a few friends that also like crafting, so I’ve had discussions with them before about how they got into some specific project or technique they’re exploring. Definitely know folks who fall into the former camp of “doing research” beforehand and some who just experiment and see what happens. This choice seems to be affected a lot by both self confidence and a willingness to adapt the end result to the mistakes they made along the way.

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While researching in a lab, I enjoyed working with equipment and performing experiments because it gave me a sense of responsibility and control. I enjoyed preparing materials and seeing end results from our work. In my research, I worked to optimize the process of refining plastics into luminescent carbon nano-materials, but many questions remained afterwards. For instance, we were curious if the process could be performed effectively at a larger scale in order to reuse plastics and reduce waste. We also wanted to know if our process could work for different colors and types of plastic.

Usually when I have questions, I look to google for answers. I am often curious about current events, history, and art, though I use google for everything. I typically read the AI summary of sources without looking further. Occasionally, I investigate further by reading articles and synthesizing what I read from multiple pages into an opinion.

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In the past, I conducted research in a mechanical engineering lab where I worked on modeling various origami and kirigami (origami with cuts) sheet patterns. It was exciting to learn a new modeling platform and experiment with multiple design variations to observe their effects! For instance, I varied the angle of each fold—testing 40 versus 45 degrees, for example—to determine how much additional tensile strength the material could withstand. I enjoyed exploring the wide range of variables I could adjust with just a single sheet of plastic paper, such as angle and fold size. However, the trial-and-error nature of the project made the process of identifying the optimal factors for origami folding pretty lengthy :sweat_smile:

In my personal life, I usually seek answers by finding mentors. Mentorship has always been important to me, and I often reach out to others to learn about different opportunities. For example, during my work at a public health/biomedical company last summer, I used the experience to explore whether public health was the right career field for me. I messaged some employees to learn more about their academic journey, career paths, and overall experience in healthcare. I’m a big proponent of asking questions when being unsure and not being afraid to seek outside advice from others

In these situations, I tend to seek external advice after reflecting on my own thoughts. While I recognize that some people focus more on internal reflection entirely, I prefer to combine both approaches. I also lean toward structured frameworks and timeline planning in my personal life, unlike the trial-and-error approach I explore in my research.

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