After DECtech wrapped up for the semester, the Instructors and Teaching Assistants met to offer feedback to improve future lessons. While everyone agreed that they enjoyed teaching in person more (as pictured above), we also acknowledged that online classes allowed us to reach girls in different areas, including ones who don't live in Colorado. Therefore, we concluded it is essential to continue some online classes to ensure we don't cut off opportunities for girls in more remote areas to learn about STEM. However, we also recognized the difficulties of teaching online and agreed that it would be best to have some Instructors and Teaching Assistants that focus on online learning only. This would allow them to adapt in person lessons into formats that function well online.
Another topic that we reflected on was how effective teaching the girls who were in groups was. These groups of girls attended DECtech sessions after school, together in a classroom, with a teacher present. The biggest concern with this method of teaching was that the group of girls would split off into their own environment while working on the activities, which made it difficult for the online Instructors and TAs to help them. However, there was a major benefit to a teacher being present with them because she was able to help them hands-on. Additionally, they seemed to have a lot of fun working on the activities together. Therefore, during our meeting we proposed creating videos of the lessons and demos of the activities that could be played in a classroom setting. These videos could be used with groups of girls staying after school and be supervised by a teacher. Another reason this would be effective is it would help ensure the groups of girls doesn't distract other online learners. We hope to implement this idea next Fall.
Not only did the Instructors and TAs give feedback, but we also collected feedback from the students. To avoid listing out too much data, I'm going to just include information from the age group that I taught, which was the 3rd and 4th grade girls. From 49 responses, 85.7% of the 3rd and 4th grade girls said they were "More Interested" in STEM after attending DECtech and 12.2% said they were "The Same". This means that out of 49 girls, only 1 said she was less interested in DECtech after attending our sessions, which is a remarkably low statistic. Not only that, but 69.4% of the girls said "Yes" and 28.6% said "Maybe" to being interested in joining DECtech again. I was thrilled about seeing these results because it means that the work we are doing (even if it is in a small way) is helping make girls more interested in STEM. While this validation is unnecessary as I thoroughly enjoy my job teaching girls about STEM, it is thrilling to know they enjoy learning about STEM too.