Rec2Tech Pittsburgh: Youth Survey Results

by Patricia Monticello Kievlan, The Sprout Fund

Photo: Christopher Sprowls for The Sprout Fund.

In 2014, President Obama issued a call to action that “every company, every college, every community, every citizen joins us as we lift up makers and builders and doers across the country.”

In response to the President’s call, communities across the United States are repurposing and enhancing underutilized municipal assets to transform recreation centers and other public spaces into youth-centered, technology-enabled, maker learning spaces where young people can engage with science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM).

For those people who lack reliable internet service and access to technology, these “Rec2Tech” transformations can increase digital literacy and cultivate skills connected to future employment.

In 2016, Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto, together with the Department of Innovation & Performance and the Department of Parks & Recreation (Citiparks), partnered with The Sprout Fund and lead sponsor Comcast to launch Rec2Tech Pittsburgh to demonstrate how municipal assets can be leveraged to address the “digital divide.”

During a one-week demonstration in September 2016, Rec2Tech Pittsburgh transformed five city-owned recreation centers into technology-enhanced STEAM learning centers where youth learned to use technology to express their creativity, solve real-world problems, and build job-ready skills.

Here’s a look at the experiences of the children impacted in Rec2Tech Pittsburgh.

In order to evaluate how participation in the Rec2Tech demonstration week affected youth interest in and understanding of science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM), youth at each participating rec center were asked to complete a three-question survey.

BY THE NUMBERS: Rec2Tech Pittsburgh

Photo: Ben Filio for The Sprout Fund.

A total of 105 students participated at five rec centers in five neighborhoods across Pittsburgh: Greenfield, South Side, Carrick, Lincoln-Lemington, and Beltzhoover.

The following program providers created the following programs for this week-long engagement.

• Magee Rec Center in Greenfield: Sisters eSTEAM & Citizen Science Lab presented “High-Tech Health,” where youth explored biology and medical science from anatomy to nutrition.”
• Ormsby Rec Center, South Side: Assemble & YMCA Lighthouse Project presented “Exploration & Expression,” where youth combined art making and drone photography to document their community.
• Phillips Park Rec Center, Carrick, TechShop presented “Tech Solutions for Greener Living,” where youth used engineering to create a self-watering greenhouse out of upcycled materials
• Paulson Rec Center, Lincoln-Lemington: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s The Labs@CLP presented “Game Design Studio,” where youth designed characters, built levels, and made their own video game controllers
• Warrington Rec Center, Beltzhoover, Digital Corps presented “Making & Breaking the Web,” where youth captured 360° images of their neighborhood to build a virtual reality experience

ON-SITE PROVIDER SURVEYS: DESIGN

Photo: Ben Filio for The Sprout Fund.

• Each site had five surveys for their students to take: One for each day of the week of programming. The surveys were customized to include questions unique to each site’s daily programming.
• The surveys were each three questions long: There was a question about students’ “STEAM identity”, meaning their interest in science, technology, making, art, and math; an “understanding” question related to the day’s activities; and a question asking if students would return to the rec center for the following day’s activities. The Friday surveys asked if students planned to attend the Rec2Tech Demo Party in Schenley Plaza, a large park in the center of Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood.
• Students were asked a “STEAM identity” question about their interest in science, technology, making (in place of engineering), art, and math on a four-point “smiley-face” scale from very positive to very negative. Those four ratings are characterized in the charts below as “Yes, Very Much”, “Yes”, “No”, and “Not at all”. This question was adapted from previous surveys developed surveys developed by the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University to study the experience of students in the target age range of 7–12 years old who were participating in similar enrichment and out-of-school-time programming.
• The survey was designed so that students from all five sites would encounter one STEAM identity question per day and encounter each question once. For example, students at Paulson were asked “Do you like technology?” on Monday, “Do you like art?” on Tuesday, and so on.

ON-SITE PROVIDER SURVEYS: USER EXPERIENCE

Photo: Christopher Sprowls for The Sprout Fund.

• Overall, students found the survey questions were easy to understand. Some sites — including Paulson and Ormsby — used the survey effectively as an “exit ticket” for students to complete before proceeding to dinner or a snack.
• All sites indicated that the survey tool was a little harder to use than expected. While the app used for the surveys had some useful features, it had some quirks that made it tougher to interact with than expected. It’s worth considering whether tablets were really the best fit for these surveys, especially when small slips of paper might have been more user friendly.
• Many students at Paulson answered the understanding questions incorrectly on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, but that’s likely the result of a mismatch between the survey tool and how the programming proceeded over the course of the week. CLP’s project plan was designed to differentiate instruction and let students move at their own pace, so it’s possible that the students’ answers were an accurate reflection of what they did that day and that the survey was not flexible enough to capture the range of students’ activities each day.
• Two sites captured data inconsistently. Due to unforeseen circumstances, there was only data from Magee on one day and from Phillips on two days. However, other documentation and subsequent interviews with adults who led these sites reported that programming was effective.

ON-SITE PROVIDER SURVEYS: RESULTS

Photo: Ben Filio for The Sprout Fund.

• Students overwhelmingly answered “Yes” to the aspirational “understanding” question on Monday, which invited students to indicate whether they thought they would be able to complete the week’s project. Only four students answered “No”; these students were participants at Ormsby, where staff members from Assemble indicated that they did not refer to their activity using the word “Visioning Board,” which was the word used in the project plan and in the survey, and staff members indicated that students taking the survey struggled to understand this term. Students’ unfamiliarity with this term may have contributed to this result.
• In general, students successfully answered the questions identifying each day’s activities. Some incorrect answers resulted from unexpected changes to programming: for example, some activities took place on different days than expected, and some students’ responses to questions about the day’s activities thus didn’t align with the expected “correct” answer for that day’s activity.
• Results were uneven on the “understanding” question for the end of the week, in which students were asked whether they could teach their new skills to a friend.
• Only students at Paulson unanimously indicated that they thought they could teach a friend the skills they learned during Rec2Tech week.
• About half of the students at Warrington indicated that they thought they could teach coding to a friend at the end of the week. This is consistent with the more sophisticated demands of Digital Corps programming: It may not be a realistic expectation for students to be able to teach others to code after a week of afterschool activities.
• 17 of 22 respondents at Ormsby indicated that they could teach a friend to make their own interactive visioning board. This result may be related to students’ unfamiliarity with the term “visioning board” as described above.
• Students from Magee and Phillips did not answer this question.

PARTY SURVEY

Photo: Ben Filio for The Sprout Fund.

To wrap up the demonstration week, Citiparks hosted a large-scale celebration event at a centrally-located public park facility to showcase projects created by participating youth.

More than 500 children and adults attended this Saturday afternoon party, which featured hands-on activities from more than 30 local providers, free food & music, and goodie bags for the first 300 children who arrived.

A three-question, tablet-based survey was circulated during the event to get a sense of attendees’ interests and their current engagement with programming at city recreation centers.

• 119 children responded to the survey at the Rec2Tech Demo Party at Schenley Park. 440 wristbands were distributed at the party to both adults and children, and more than 75 adults and children attended to staff showcase tables and facilitate activities. It is likely that there were children who were present who did not take the survey.
• At the party, kids were most excited to PLAY (60), then MAKE (43), then REMIX (16).
• Students who attended the party were randomly asked one of three STEAM identity questions: whether they liked science, technology, and making.
• At the party, 79 kids who took the survey DID NOT attend a rec center, while 40 did.

Photo: Ben Filio for The Sprout Fund.

So what does this mean for the future of Rec2Tech? For us, it means our community is hungry for high-quality STEAM programming for all students. We’re proud of the opportunities this week brought to just a few hundred kids in Pittsburgh, and we’re excited for Rec2Tech’s potential to transform spaces and serve communities across the nation.

You can learn more about Rec2Tech Pittsburgh at rec2techpgh.org.