positively, and over half were interested in continuing to explore the field of human-centered design [ 5].

Teachers also found the workshops overall to be highly valuable to their students [ 5]. They cited the value to their students of interacting with college students, the technology design process that they could use for other projects, and being able to ask questions about college that undergraduates are best suited for answering. They often invite us to come back, and some have requested the use of our materials to apply human-centered design for their students who are prototyping apps for their own course projects.

Neah Bay principal Jennifer Sikes highlighted the value of the close one-on-one interactions between their students and the U W undergraduates during the workshops there: “Because there are so many U W students matched with our kids… they are getting that kind of closer relationship. I know that goes a long way with learning.”

 

CONCLUSION

Using a framework for outreach
that embraces principles of hands-
on engagement in a discipline and
a co-design approach to creating
the curriculum—and that offers
service-learning opportunities
for undergraduate students—is a
strategy that can result in effective
K– 12 outreach. Critical to this
endeavor is having college educators
who are committed to the notion
of outreach. Beyond that, a lot of
institutional support is required, both
administrative and financial. The
HCDE department offers seminars
that enable undergraduates to receive
credit for outreach work and funds
graduate students to support outreach
work. K– 12 teachers welcome us into
their classrooms and advocate for
their students’ interests. To reach
underrepresented students, we
partner with other university groups,
such as the Pipeline Project [ 2].

Our efforts are most successful when the stakeholders involved (students, faculty, graduate students, departmental leadership, campus and national organizations, school teachers, and principals) can collaborate and provide support for enabling K– 12 students to have hands-on exposure to STEM fields.

We envision that educators in other fields can also engage undergraduate students in creating and teaching curricula for younger students. This type of initiative can empower undergraduate students to serve as role models to younger students, to better understand their own field, and to learn how to communicate to all audiences.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank our colleagues Christine Stickler, Emma Rose, Jennifer Turns, Jason Yip, Kiley Sobel, and Catie Baker for their collaboration, and the many HCDE students who have so passionately contributed to our outreach work.

Immense thanks are also due to
the HCDE department, especially
David McDonald, for supporting
this initiative.

CONTACT US

The HCDE team is in the process of developing a toolkit for conducting Human Centered Design Charrette workshops for K– 12 students. The goal of the toolkit is to enable other educators to adapt this outreach effort to their own needs, using our framework. Please see our website [ 1] for further information or contact us directly at [e-mail].

Endnotes

1. Human Centered Design and Engineering K– 12 Outreach Program; http://hcde. uw.edu/about/k12

2. University of Washington Pipeline Project; http://expd.uw.edu/pipeline

3. Alternative Spring Break; http://hcde. uw.edu/videos/asb

4. Makah Tribe; http://makah.com/

5. Rose, E., Davidson, A., Agapie, E., and Sobel, K. Designing our future students: Introducing User Experience to teens through a UCD charette. Proc. of SIGDOC ’ 16. ACM, 2016, 22.

 

Elena Agapie is a Ph.D. student in human-centered design and engineering at the University of Washington. She studies, designs, and evaluates technologies that help people implement positive behaviors in their everyday life. She is the student coordinator for the department’s K– 12 Outreach Program. → [e-mail]

Andrew Davidson is a senior lecturer in human-centered design and engineering at the University of Washington, specializing in physical computing and HCI. He directs the department’s K– 12 outreach program, and is also a former high school computer science teacher. → [e-mail] DOI: 10.1145/3278152 COPYRIGHT HELD BY AUTHORS. PUBLICATION RIGH TS LICENSED TO ACM. $15.00

Figure 3. Undergraduate students use examples to help engage middle school students in the design process. These examples mirror the activities the students are doing: identifying a user (Harry Potter), a user need (remembering spells), creating a storyboard (Harry Potter using an app to remember spells), creating wireframes (a prototype of an app to remember spells).