Digital East St. Louis Project

-Dr. Jess DeSpain

East St. Louis

-Population decreased 82,3666 in 1950 to 27,066 in 2010.

-Source of Project Funding: National Science Foundation ITEST

Purpose of Digital East St. Louis Project is to attract East St. Louis natives, who largely constitute under-represented groups, into STEM

Project Overview:

-Develop + test an urban place-based learning model

-Cohort of grade 6-9 participants progress through 4-week summer camps and Saturday sessions during the school year over a three-year period

-5-6 Instructors help develop + deliver content in the hopes they will take what they learn into their classrooms

Urban Place-based Education

Participants ask questions, solve real-world problems, and use field work to gather information in a local urban setting

Impacting Local Communities

1. Pairing “IRL” experiences with digital methods
2. Begin projects with a goal of listening + learning from participant experiences
3. Gauging participant technology use + needs
4. Forms of reciprocity when facing a lack of basic human needs

Middle School: age where STEM based interests often fade away, also age where web-building commonly involves playing around with text in ways that might hurt the eyes of an adult, but for the student, it is the coolest thing ever. They play with WordPress sites before working on main project.

If could start it over, prefer to work with smaller cohorts (15 at a time beginning in the summer)

Project should last 4 Years- ideally each student will be transferred into upward bound (upward bound=college readiness program for high schoolers), 3^rd year = more options, e.g. graphic novels/game design, Intrinsic based: extrinsic learning does not equal long term learning.

Biggest tension: how much control over website is given to students vs. providing a usable database

Best way to encourage extrinsic motivation: choice + presence of friends

Problems with Project: because basic human needs are not always met in East St. Louis, it has been hard to get people involved

Better luck getting people to show up by texting students instead of parents

Sharing project ideas with a group is a good way to collaborate and get fresh perspective. A few history grad students will share their digital theses projects and discuss ideas for future digital projects, the problems associated with creating a digital thesis, and look for feedback or ideas for their current projects.

One issue with creating a digital thesis is the lack of precedence. Here at SIUe, there have been few examples of master’s students creating and defending digital projects. Without that precedence, professors and students seem unsure of steps to take or defense strategies. New guidelines published by the AHA and universities like George Mason University provide an idea but they have yet to be tested at SIUe.

This session will bring researchers together to brainstorm. Talking about current digital projects will make others to think about their research in new ways. Learning about platforms for presenting research could encourage more digital work and build precedence for future work.