Achievement

In collaboration with the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA), IGERT graduate students mentored a group of high school students through the process of creating work for a highly successful digital arts exhibition at SMoCA. Our research question was: can novice high school students learn enough new technology, science and art skills to create a successful digital art show in a short period of time, and in working towards their aesthetic goals, would they learn other broadly useful STEM skills? We believe that skills such as computational thinking, collaboration, creativity and innovation, and information literacy can be taught in a highly effective way by using aesthetic challenges as a motivation. This fall we are expanding this test program into a regular course for two partner high schools and working with education experts from our IGERT to develop quantitative instruments for measuring this form of project-based learning.