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Build IT: Girls Building Information Technology Fluency Through Design

Melissa Koch, Marie Bienkowski, Reina Fujii, Torie Gorges, Jennifer Knudsen, Teresa Lara-Meloy, Vera Michalchik, Charles Patton, Bill Penuel, Ken Rafanan, Patti Schank

SRI International and Girls Incorporated of Alameda County (Girls Inc.) are collaborating to create and implement Build IT, an after school and summer youth-based curriculum for under served middle school girls (sixth, seventh, and eighth grades) to develop IT fluency, interest in mathematics, and knowledge of IT careers. The curricular, professional development, and assessment materials developed during this National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded three year project will be portable to Girls Inc.’s 1,500 program sites that reach more than 600,000 girls annually.

Build IT, a cornerstone of the Girls Inc. Middle School Program, is a problem-based curriculum that capitalizes on girls’ interest in design and communication technologies and incorporates performance tasks for IT fluency assessment. It provides structured interactions with IT professionals and graduate students, including having girls participate as design partners in the software engineering process. Build IT’s use of the design process to achieve technology fluency will provide new insights for research on technology fluency and potential new contexts for research focused on learning STEM concepts through design.

Build IT’s goals are to

motivate middle school girls to use technology and to strengthen and build their technology fluency.
increase middle school girls’ interest in and desire to take high school algebra and geometry courses in preparation for postsecondary STEM education and/or IT careers.
increase middle school girls’ interest in IT and pursuing IT careers.

Materials developed during the Build IT project include

problem-based curriculum developed using the Understanding by Design approach.
embedded formative assessments and scaffolds for evaluating technology fluency.
youth staff professional development materials to enhance staff capacity.
frameworks for involving IT professionals.
evaluation instrumentation and research findings.

9/2005 - 8/2010 (current)

Funders & Clients

National Science Foundation
Simpson PSB Fund
The Noyce Foundation

Partners

Hatchuel Tabernik and Associates

Publications

Denner, J., Kareem, Z., Koch, M., & Peterson, K. (2008 March,). Girls and information technology: Innovative approaches to narrowing the gender gap. The Build IT portion of the presentation at AERA 2008. New York City, NY.
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Koch, M. "Build IT Poster." (2008 February). ITEST Poster Session. Presented at NSF's ITEST PI Meeting. Washington, DC.
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Koch, M. (2008 February). Build IT data summary. Presented at NSF’s ITEST PI Meeting, Washington, DC.
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Koch, M., & Gorges, T. (2008 February). Scaling Build IT. Presented at NSF’s ITEST PI Meeting, Washington, DC.
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Bryan, M., Nemes, O., & Koch, M. (2007 February). Girls in Build IT. Presented in Reaching and Teaching the New Learner at NSF’s ITEST PI Meeting. Washington, DC.
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Courneya, J., & Koch, M. (2007 February). Sharing best practices in youth development. Presented at NSF’s ITEST PI Meeting. Washington, DC.
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Koch, M. & Penuel, W.R. (2007 April). Designing for design learning. In CHI 2007 Conference Proceedings. Workshop on Converging on a Science of Design through the Synthesis of Design Methodologies. Reading, MA: ACM Press.
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Koch, M. et al. (August, 2007). Build IT: Girls Developing Information Technology Fluency through Design. Annual Report Year 2. Menlo Park, CA: SRI International.
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Koch, M., & Nemes, O. (2007 October). Introduction to Build IT workshop. Presented at Girls Incorporated Region III Conference 2007. Providence, Rhode Island.
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Koch, M. (2006) Build IT curriculum. Featured in Consumers Guide to After School Science Resources at http://www.sedl.org/cgi-bin/mysql/afterschool/science.cgi?location=search&show_resource_id=45
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Koch, M. (April, 2006). Build IT: Girls Building Information Technology Fluency Through Design In M. Koch, J. Denner, D. Emery, & R. London (presenters) BayCHI-Kids Event: Developing girls' technology fluency. Menlo Park, CA: SRI International
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Koch, M. (October, 2006) Infusing IT/STEM skill standards in informal ITEST learning ITEST Webcast
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Koch, M. et al. (August, 2006). Build IT: Girls Developing Information Technology Fluency through Design. Annual Report Year 1. Menlo Park, CA: SRI International.
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