Context & Target

Co-PIs White and Cho will be primarily responsible for carrying out our broadening participation in computing and engineering plan (BPCEP); and BPCEP activities will involve all PIs and co-PIs. The BPCEP target audience will be pre- and early-high school aged girls. The Society of Women Engineers
suggests that only 13% of engineers in the workforce are women and only 26% of computer scientists are women. However, data suggest that in elementary and middle school, girls are better represented in science classes and have success in these classes. By the time they reach college, the number of girls
self-selecting into engineering and computing majors is much closer to the workforce percentages. This challenge is referred to as the “leaking STEM pipeline” and a wide range of research on girls’ identification with careers in computing and engineering suggests that interventions prior to or very early
in high school are essential to maintain career interests in careers in computing and engineering. Although programs like high school veterinary science and agricultural programs, 4H (a youth program sponsored by the Extension Service), and FFA (the Future Farmers of America) have some computing and engineering focuses, these activities are often completely divergent from agricultural (and particularly animal agricultural) activities, meaning participants/students often need to pick between the animal activity or the technology activity. Our efforts will seek to eliminate the need for this discrete choice, ideally resulting in a broader availability of exposure to the linkages between animal activities (high proportion of pre- and early-high school female participation) and computing/engineering exposure. Virginia Tech is well suited to focus on this target population because of our Land Grant status and existing relationships with 4 high schools (classes of 15 to 20 girls in each school), 4H (state membership: ~96,000 girls; national membership ~3 million girls), and FFA (national membership ~350,000 girls) activities through the Extension mission.

Strategy and Resources

The strategy for our CPCEP will focus on accessible, generic introductory experiences targeted at female agricultural students in the pre- and early-high school years. We will also offer more targeted follow-up experiences for students who have participated in the initial workshop that will integrate across our research teams and expose young women to the broader agricultural applications of computing and engineering. Activities and evidence supporting the selected activities are as follows:
Activity 1: Day-long workshops in computing and engineering. All project PIs and co-PIs will work together to develop curriculum for two different types of generic, accessible workshops designed to engage pre- and early-high school students in computing and engineering. The Virginia Tech team will develop a stand-alone curriculum for a sensor-based workshop, where students will build their own wireless sensor node. This curriculum will require $20 per student in materials and supplies and an additional $60 per location to support a LoRa base station. Students will learn to solder a LoRa radio and a BME280 weather station chip to a generic microprocessor, upload code to the microprocessor using Arduino software, and access the weather station data on the ThingSpeak platform. We expect that we can realistically serve 12 students per workshop day, meaning workshops will require $300 in materials and supplies. We expect to hold 6 workshops per year, geographically stratified across the state to minimize travel expenses.
Activity 2: Follow-up workshops targeting applications of computing and engineering. A consistent theme within the research on stimulating student interest in CCE (Careers in Computing and Engineering suggests continued exposure in a wide variety of settings is important. Another consistent theme in work evaluating reasons for student lack of success in computing and engineering disciplines is a lack of ability to conceptualize applications for fundamental learning requirements (e.g., mathematics, physics, etc.). To address both these themes, we will hold follow-up workshops for “graduates” of our one-day activities, and for students unable to attend the one-day activities. We will recruit students to these follow-up workshops through contact information collected at the one-day workshops and through continuous 1communication and networking with teachers and youth organization leaders. These workshops will focus on demonstrating the research applications of computing and engineering by integrating participants into our research tasks. The workshops will be broken down into 4 stations: 1) wireless sensor nodes; 2) data security; 3) networking; and 4) animal behavior. The animal behavior station will demonstrate how cows can be trained to cooperate within sensor networks. The data security will demonstrate the negative consequences of poor data security in wireless sensor networks. The networking station will use example networks to allow students to communicate secret messages over distance. Finally, the wireless sensor node station will demonstrate the construction and use of wireless sensor nodes developed for the research tasks. Because these workshops make primary use of material developed as a part of the proposed research, we do not expect additional funding needed to run them. A minimum of 2 workshops will be offered at each test farm during the second and third summers of the project. We expect to be able to offer up to 8 workshops at each location, depending on interest and availability.

Prior Work

Co-PI White has previously held numerous workshops for middle and high school students leveraging either the public schools network or the 4H and FFA networks. Feedback from these workshops indicated that students respond well to a project-based approach, where they are presented at the beginning of the day with the target they will create during the workshop. From this feedback, our sensor building activities were designed based on this feedback.

Measurement and Dissemination

We will track three primary outcomes: skills development; interest in computing/engineering; and general impression of the workshop. To track skills development, we will use a pre-test/post-test approach to determine how the workshop impacted durable skills. As a part of the post-test, we will also request
feedback on interest in computing/engineering careers and on the workshop in general. As we get feedback on the workshops, we will iteratively update concepts/pieces which require improvement. As described in the management plan, White and Cho will be responsible for carrying out the BPCEP at Virginia Tech with assistance from the other project co-PI’s and students. White and Cho will work with the outreach offices at Virginia Tech to recruit target students and work through existing Extension connections with schools and youth programs. In Activity 1, workshops at Virginia Tech will be led by White, Cho, and the project graduate students. Over the three-year timescale, the responsibility of hosting these workshops will transition to experienced graduate students as a part of professional development for these students. In Activity 2, workshops will be a collaborative effort among project personnel. White will lead the animal behavior station, Ha will lead the wireless sensor node station, Cho will lead the data security section, and Kumar will lead the networking station. If travel to workshops becomes impractical or impossible (e.g., in the event of continued challenges with the COVID-19 pandemic), remote education will be used to cross-train the graduate students of each PI on leading each station to enable additional flexibility in staffing requirements to hold these workshops. With regard to dissemination, participants for the workshops will be recruited in participation with local partner organizations (see letters of collaboration) and through outreach offices at each university. To broaden the potential impact of the programs, the workshop curriculum from Activity 1 will also be made freely available to middle- and high-school teachers through curriculum exchange websites and outreach activities.

Contingency Plan

Given the uncertainty in our global climate with regard to potential resurgence of the COVID-19 global pandemic, our team has also prepared a contingency plan for our BPCEP. In the event that quarantines and social distancing measures continue for the lifetime of the project, we will take the approach used by
several museums and provide short, openly available, online videos in place of workshops. We will host sensor-building and animal training watch parties to walk through sensor design and deployment. This video content will be curated online as a part of Virginia Tech’s webpage and advertised through our
outreach services specifically to target middle- and high-school aged girls. Although we fully 2acknowledge that in-person interactions are preferable for these activities, we are committed to the objectives of this plan and anticipate the ability to work toward the stated goals irrespective of social distancing or quarantine requirements.