PROMOTING INCLUSIVENESS & EQUITY IN STEM Ido Yerushalmi

PROMOTING INCLUSIVENESS & EQUITY IN STEM

By Ido Yerushalmi

Practically every industry will be impacted by automation in the next 10 to 15 years (or even sooner). So, it is vital to prepare students for the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) jobs that this change is bringing about.

One of the major challenges for modern educators is increasing reach of STEM learning, inclusiveness and equity. Put simply: getting access to STEM learning to more students of all backgrounds, levels, genders, and in all types of schools. Only a few fortunate students -- about one percent -- have access to robotics clubs. The other 99 percent are held back by a number of constraints: the prohibitive cost of hardware kits, a shortage of teachers with training in technology education, and a lack of schedule time for implementing such programs.

Another cause for concern is a shown in a 2018 survey from Junior Achievement USA and Ernst & Young that found only 11 percent of 13-to-17-year-old girls were interested in STEM careers. Forbes reports that girls regularly outperform boys in exams for STEM subjects, but they are half as likely as boys to think that their best subject is a STEM subject. Incidentally, the biggest gap is in technology education, which 14 percent of boys and just five percent of girls name as their best subject. In other words, girls’ attitudes toward STEM subjects do

To rectify this, schools and communities need to build “career highways” to STEM fields by promoting STEM awareness, confidence, and efficacy through fun activities that develop students’ interest in STEM that will potentially have them considering careers in technology. This is what we’re doing with the CoderZ Cyber Robotics Learning Environment and the Cyber Robotics Coding Competition (CRCC), an online coding and robotics tournament that launched in 2017.

In its first year, the competition took place in the state of New Hampshire, with the help of the NH Commissioner of Education, and 2,600 students participated. After just one year, CRCC expanded to 23 states, with more than 45,000 students from 640 schools completing over 211,000 misions. It has also been held in Israel, Paraguay, and Vietnam. Competition sponsors have included institutions such as Oracle Academy, Cisco, Yaskawa Motoman Robotics, NBT Bank, NASA, the Air Force Association, the USA Science & Engineering Festival, and many others.

In addition to promoting real-world coding skills, tech literacy, inclusiveness, and diversity, our goal was to take a large-scale look at the efficacy of learning coding on a cloud-based coding platform and how students react to that environment. Here’s what we’ve learned:

Ease of Access Facilitates Equity

In our regular work, schools often tell us that they plan to implement a robotics program in two years. Even if they are able to adhere to that timeline, it means that two cohorts of their students will not have had the opportunity to explore the subject. However, when schools opt for virtual robotics and coding, they can simply use their existing infrastructure (namely their computers and internet connections).

That ease of access aspect was underscored by the fact that in the 2018 CRCCs, 33 percent of the participating U.S. schools were in rural areas. Rural schools typically lack funds for digital resources, or the staff required to provide their students with a lot of elective or advanced courses, but hundreds were able to take advantage of the technology learning that their state CRCC offered. The smallest rural school that participated had just 27 students, and they were able to compete with the other schools in their state without even having to travel.

Virtual Evens the Playing Field

One of the biggest challenges of robotics is the high cost of hardware. Robotics hardware needs constant updating, new hardware is often expensive, and competitions require new kits annually and also incur travel costs for participating teams. So, as with robotics clubs, the costs often constrain all but a very small number of students. Virtual robotics, while not free, is much more cost-effective since no additional or new equipment or software is required. CRCC does have regional finals, but since they are one-day events and usually nearby with no equipment required, the cost of participation is low. As a result, CRCC opens a new track of learning for even the most disenfranchised of schools.

Coding Experience is not Required

Thirty-eight percent of the schools participating in the U.S. 2018 CRCCs had no computer science curriculum, and about 50 percent of the teachers involved had no experience teaching coding. A lot of kids who had no prior experience whatsoever found that coding was something fun. We also found that tools such as scaffolding, teacher guides, and suggested solutions for teachers were sufficient for getting students to work in a self-directed manner.

Cloud Platforms Scales to any Number of Users

Our goal is to have as many students as possible participate in CRCC and that is something that web access allows because there is no user

limitation. Our first big scalability challenge occurred in Vietnam during the summer of 2018 when over 20,000 students registered for the event in 48 hours. This scaling lets the competition be school wide and not just for the few students in the robotics club.

Female Students Participate at Higher Rates Online

Our data showed that over 40 percent of the 2019 CRCC players in the United States were girls. Physical robotics programs tend to have much lower participation rates from female students, so these numbers are very encouraging; it means that girls do not feel unwelcome or threatened in an online environment.

Starting Early Boosts Participation

Educators need to introduce students to STEM education at an early age rather than when those students are in high school and have already acquired biases (e.g., being convinced that they’re not good at math) that prevent them from thinking of STEM fields as possible career options. For that reason, CoderZ League Junior focuses on students in grades five -eight, while CoderZ Leauge Pro is suited for students in grades seven and up. When we’re dealing with younger students, we see more interest and less bias or trepidation about trying out robotics and coding. That is probably another reason why we see such high female student participation.

We believe that to succeed to broaden the reach of STEM education, it is important to increase the options students have for immersing themselves in technological education and building tech literacy and 21st century skills. To that end, CoderZ is joining with CSforAll, a nonprofit Computer Science Advocacy Organization, and has offered the following commitments in partnership with Amazon: robotics instruction to 150,000 students over the next twelve months by offering free access to its virtual robotics platform for up to 1,000 teachers working in Title I schools across the US by Summer 2021.

• CoderZ in partnership with the Intelitek STEM and CTE Education Foundation, commits to empower traditionally underserved communities with better access to STEM programs.

We know that taking technology education to the cloud enables students who otherwise would not have had access to robotics and coding to explore the subject and decide if it is their calling. If we’re going to meet the demands of the coming technological advancements, providing robotics and coding access for all students is vital.

For the past six years, Ido Yerushalmi has served as the president and CEO of CoderZ.

CoderZ, part of Intelitek, Inc., is an innovative and engaging online learning environment. Developed for students in grades 2 and above, the gamified STEM solution allows students to work at their own pace, easily programming real and virtual robots from anywhere in the world. The platform enables students to acquire computational thinking, problem-solving and creativity skills, together with coding and STEM learning, all via a flexible and scalable virtual solution.

Currently, Ido serves on the board of RoboGroup T.E.K Ltd., and Robotec Technologies Ltd. He received an undergraduate degree from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a graduate degree from King's College London and a graduate degree from the University of Hertfordshire.