U411C180070
The MPACT project brings 3D modeling and 3D printing to rural youth and BIPOC youth in grades 4-7. Supplementary units provide opportunities to learn math, computational thinking, and spatial reasoning. While most materials are for use in school, the project includes units for making at home, with supports for parents. In this video, we present an overview of the project, its approach to teaching and learning content in the context of making, and the experiences of one teacher and her students using the materials.
Jodi Asbell-Clarke
Such a great story about Brian....can't wait to work together to reach these kids!!
jennifer Knudsen
Senior Principal Investigator
thank, Jodi! We look forward to the same. Like adults, 7th graders have competing priorities and we love that MPACT helps them prioritize math
Amy Alznauer
Lecturer
Good morning!
I really appreciated the time Kathryn Habib spent telling the specific story of Brian and how his engagement was transformed through this program. It is so easy for students like that (because they often are a disruptive force in the classroom) to be punished and further discouraged leading to a vicious cycle. Did you find that Brian's engagement in the traditional classroom also changed as the result of this making program? And in general, have you been able to measure the impact of this program on the student populations it's intended to reach, namely rural and BIPOC youth?
Looking forward to learning more!
jennifer Knudsen
Senior Principal Investigator
Yes, agree with you Amy. We don't know more about Brian. We met him and Katie during our c0-design phase. The evaluation with SRI is mostly quantitative. You can find out more about our impact for BIPOC and rural youth at by downloading our 2022 report at https://mpact3d.terc.edu/ (scroll down). The short answer is that we saw significant gains for all subgroups we looked at. The gains for Black students were a tiny bit lowe (but still significant,) and we are looking for ways to improve there.
jennifer Knudsen
Senior Principal Investigator
This video is about a 7th grade student using our Modify a Game for the Blind module. MPACT includes 4 modules for each grade level of grades 4-7. Each has its own making topic, a math focus meeting grade-level standards, opportunities to learn computational thinking skills and spatial reasoning. As the video points out, last year we had evidence of significant learning of all three, through an assessment co-designed with SRI (evaluator) and administered to over 1000 4th and 5th graders.
Amy Alznauer
Lecturer
That's wonderful to hear, Jennifer! I somehow missed that in the video. Could you say a bit more about how you conducted the assessment?
And do you have a list or partial list of different topics? The one presented here ("Modify a Game") is wonderful, so I'd love to get a sense of the range and scope of these projects.
jennifer Knudsen
Senior Principal Investigator
thanks for your interest again! Yes, you will find more information on the entire curriculum at that same link. In brief, each one of the modules has students create a beautiful, usable object. Some of the projects include: a bookmark (1st experience in Tinkercad) a kite, a toy for a younger child, a stamp for ink on paper, a hanging mobile for a community center (e.g.,for aged), a cube puzzle, a tangram-like puzzle, dice that work for blind and sighted people. Most activities have a focus user, but in a few for earlier grades, they make the object for themselves.
jennifer Knudsen
Senior Principal Investigator
The assessment is written, takes about 40 minutes to complete, and is multiple choice. it was administered online to classrooms full of students at the same time. The assessment was co-designed by SRI (with assessment design exoert) and our team, to ensure it was assessing the conceptual content we are addressing, and all 3 areas: math, CT, and spatial reasoning
Maria (Mia) Ong
What a powerful story by the teacher about how MPACT re-engaged Brian's math learning by inviting in his own interests and social skill set. I also loved the task of creating accessible games, which additionally invites students to consider needs that might be different from their own. Were the games "tested" by blind or visually impaired players?
Ken Rafanan
STEM Education Researcher
Unfortunately, COVID ended in-person schooling and restricted our ability to test out the designs, which would have been such an interesting experience.
Amy Alznauer
Lecturer
That is too bad! I agree, it would have been such an interesting experience. Is there any possibility for a follow-up project that could pick up where this left off and do this second phase of testing?
jennifer Knudsen
Senior Principal Investigator
Oh absolutely! there are so many questions we have about how MPACT works, beyond our current evaluation. affordances for learning math in a making project....how does that work, moment by moment in small groups? and case studies of how different students engage with the materials. Modifying the materials for more cultural relevance (we make "openings" for this with units like Design a Toy......it can be any toy that your younger friend, sibling, cousin would like..different for different cultures and locations...how do teachers do further modifications? and more!
Matthew Mauntel
This is very interesting. Did you find that having students create their own games helped you understand student thinking in a particular arena or area of thought?
jennifer Knudsen
Senior Principal Investigator
That’s another question we have no answer to at this time. But there are so many directions we intend to go in the next phases of this work, assuming the appropriate funding of course. There are many dimensions of students work that we’d like to understand better. The creativity and empathy that some of the projects require is one of those areas
Kimberly Welty
What an interesting project and I love the story of Brian and how he was able to come around to be interested in math again using his people-skill strengths.
jennifer Knudsen
Zhichun Liu
This is an amazing project and a wonderful story of Brian! I am curious about learning more about how the learning experiences were designed and how the program was implemented (e.g., teachers' role, researchers' engagement, collaborative versus individual learning experiences). Again, great job, team!
jennifer Knudsen
Senior Principal Investigator
thank you! we engaged in a co-design process with a small group of mostly rural teachers just before the pandemic. we were able to get their input, but less on how it went in their classrooms. Kathryn was a co-design teacher who was able to fit in this module. Then we went to work building all 16 modules. 4 of them are at-home units, and we had videos from 3 families as they used the units, though that helped.
Amy Alznauer
Lecturer
Hi Jennifer, So glad you are getting lots of positive feedback here for your amazing work, and thank you for this list of projects: "a bookmark (1st experience in Tinkercad) a kite, a toy for a younger child, a stamp for ink on paper, a hanging mobile for a community center (e.g.,for aged), a cube puzzle, a tangram-like puzzle, dice that work for blind and sighted people. Most activities have a focus user, but in a few for earlier grades, they make the object for themselves."
What you said here about having a focus user reminds me of another project that you might want to check out: https://stemforall2022.videohall.com/presentations/2509.html They were also interested in inspiring students to imaginatively engage with the potential user, anticipating their struggles or needs.
jennifer Knudsen
Senior Principal Investigator
thanks, will do
Andee Rubin
Senior Scientist
Great discussion here - and a great project to start with! The MPACT team has clearly learned a lot about ways to engage a wide range of students with math in a different context than they usually experience it. I wonder if you have some general design tips for the community, since many of us math educators have experienced the frustration that comes from seeing the disconnect between consequential uses of math and the ways many students experience the topic. How did you make the activities engaging while making sure the math topics were still authentically embedded? Were there particularly difficult tradeoffs that you navigated from which others could learn?
jennifer Knudsen
Senior Principal Investigator
That’s a good question. I can say a bit about our design process, and then a couple of tips at the end. Sometimes hearing someone else’s story leads to self-generated tips! It also makes for a long comment.
We started with a design conjecture about both content and making: Moving from physical object to digitally modeling that object to 3D printing and using the printed object would help students learn geometry concepts, including measurement.
We figured out our design requirements. The most basic ones were we needed to meet grade level standards for math and we wanted students to engage in a project that allowed for some creativity—and that would take it advantage of 3-D printing. These were aligned with our design conjecture
As we worked back-and-forth between those basic requirements, we added more requirements to the list. They were both design constraints and design affordances. For example, we went from “design a toy” to
“design a toy with wheels” which was an affordance both for building in more math, and a few well chosen design requirements actually frees up mental space for designing and making.
We built student and teacher written/graphical materials that supported the intertwined activities of making and learning math in a sequential timeline, making it easier on teachers unfamiliar with doing projects, particularly in math.
I suppose our most general tip is to follow a design/making process, which was the same as we supported for kids and teachers: Collect ideas, prototype, design on paper and with digital tools, make the real object. In our case went through a lot of iterations, at increasingly fine-grained levels.
Tip 2: never take your eyes off either the subject matter or the design/making. Sure, you have focus on each in turn in real time. Just keep checking in, at least mentally, on the other. You helped us in that process, Andee, seeing opportunities for bringing the math opportunity forward, through specific design constraints in the design/making.
Tip 3: Think of the module as a story, the story of designing and making something. Let the story come through in the written materials for the curriculum. As with any story, a simple structure helps.
Another tip, which may seem minor but has become increasingly important to us over our years of curriculum design: The student and teacher written materials should be attractive early on –it makes them more usable for better piloting and supports us in better designing the content. Form matters for function.
Amy Alznauer
Brian Smith
Professor/Associate Dean of Research
I appreciate your insights, Jennifer, thanks for sharing your process and what you learned as you went through it!
Andee Rubin
Senior Scientist
Thanks, Jennifer - I hope other visitors to this site take advantage of your experience and wisdom - this is a very helpful and insightful description.
Anita Crowder
Wonderful video! Our organization does informal arts-based STEM/CS programming, so I find your project really interesting. So often we get breadth but no depth when discussing outcomes, so thank you for sharing how your program leveraged Brian's assets to increase his engagement in learning mathematics!
jennifer Knudsen
Senior Principal Investigator
thank you! we thought Brian's story was important, too. Most of our evaluation, however, is quantitative---and results are good so far, we are happy to say . We hope to do more qualitative research next, to supplement the evaluation.
Kristin Flaming
I love that you are essentially creating a seat at the table for each student. That is the approach we take when teaching Passion-Driven Statistics. If every student felt like they had not only a seat but a warm and welcoming seat in their mathematics classroom from elementary on I think we would see a lot less of the "checking out."
jennifer Knudsen
Senior Principal Investigator
thank you! I will watch your video too. warm and welcoming seat and joyful classroom.
Kristin Flaming
Carol Lumm
Jennifer and Ken,
What a powerful video! You've made me wonder about Brian and hope that this experience has changed his future approach to challenging topics. Good work!
jennifer Knudsen
Senior Principal Investigator
Thank you Carol! It’s not easy to manage a longitudinal study in our field, but I share your question about Brian and the youth like him