A virtual STEM outreach program for elementary and middle school students during COVID-19

Abstract

Gender inequality has been a persistent problem in higher education and industry in the STEM fields in the United States. While progress has been made in the last decade, there is a potential for increasing inequality in the time of COVID-19 with the inability to engage students in a face-to-face forum. In order to introduce elementary and middle school students to robotics and STEM, a monthly, virtual online outreach curriculum, mostly led by female students has been developed to stimulate student excitement and encourage girls to get involved in the fields of science and technology. Robotics is used as a conduit to teach and stimulate interest in STEM. A fun, hands on, and interactive curriculum for a series of educational online workshops has been developed, covering the engineering design process, competitive robotics, 3D CAD tutorial, programming, and robot mechanics. Our findings suggest that in elementary school, girls and boys are approximately equally interested in STEM. The outreach workshop appears to be a useful way to encourage and engage boys and girls in STEM virtually during COVID 19.