Thank you!  I love how you are using personal experience and narrative to broaden STEM involvement. The ability for students to communicate their own stories gives them their own voice. Go Ducks!

This looks like a great idea. Have your team considered using/integrating social media platforms to share these videos and connect with a bigger audience?  (e.g., Instagram, tiktok)

Thanks for the feedback. We're still in the early stage of our work...but we will eventually share selected versions of the materials via social media.  

What a great idea and I am sure you have many inspiring stories to share! What are your plans for determining the broader impact of this work and how are you disseminating these stories nation- and worldwide?

This is great! We run a near-peer research mentoring program with HS and undergrad students too and find that both the HS students and the undergrads are impacted. How long do the HS students work with the undergraduates? In what ways does the undergrad mentor? Towards the development of a research project? Or do they implement lessons? 

This is a wonderful project! I think the video approach is so appropriate for the young people we are trying to reach. I would love to see your research results and how these videos help students identify with studying science and, ultimately, science careers. Kudos! well done!

Thanks!

Science and humanity WILL be better when diverse voices and perspectives are represented! Yes! I love the authentic nature of the personal videos. They do a powerful job of communicating what you call the heart of the project -- relationships. 

What had you thinking that a digital storytelling, near-peer relationship approach would be an effective lever for increasing STEM interest and participation as opposed to, say, something more focused on learning and instructional design?

Thank you. Our PI team was inspired by the work of David Yeager at the University of Texas Austin on short-term interventions through the use of video storytelling. I've noted the effectiveness of near-peer mentoring in my Journalistic Learning Initiative research, in terms of how student publication teams foster leadership, role-modeling, and autonomy-support. (See the video section: http://journalisticlearning.com)

This is an amazing program! It is uncanny how much what you are doing mirrors the approach of our Cal-Bridge video this year. We called our video "Student Voices" because we wanted to create a way for as many people as possible to hear directly from the students about the impact the program has on their lives, which is what you are doing as well. 

The concept of near peer mentoring also really resonated for me. We recently started a peer mentoring program in Cal-Bridge to facilitate the more advanced scholars in the program helping and guiding those who follow.

I really admire your professionalism in how you approach the problem and would very much like to talk with you offline about it, to see if we could expand our video work to come up to the level of yours. My e-mail is alrudolph@cpp.edu. If you had time to chat, I would love to hear from you (after this week).

P.S. In addition to this NSF video, we will be making public a half dozen scholar interviews on our soon to be launched YouTube channel. You will be able to reach it starting next week from our website: www.calbridge.org.

I love how you use video to document near peer interactions to inspire budding scientists across the country! This is such an innovative project. Thank you for sharing your work!

Fascinating project. The idea of having the videos created seems to have great potential. I'm a little unsure of the connections within the project. There is a high school/undergraduate student dyad. There is also separately a video team, right? Do the dyad members have a role in the video production (i.e. other than being the subjects)? Is the video team somehow also linked in to the STEM learning (in addition to producing the video)? I'm really interested in how all the pieces fit together. I'm a science educator who has been doing some work with a colleague in Communications. We've explored documentary as a learning tool, and also for civic engagement--small stuff compared to what you are doing, but related. 

I'm also wondering about the documentary approach that you take. Are the documentary crews part of a class? At what level? Are they using any specific approaches to documentary filmmaking?

I’m pleased to see you’ve found a way to disseminate the near-peer experience.  I’m curious how you recruit your high school students, they seem to be very charismatic and enthusiastic.  It’s refreshing to see someone so excited about learning about worms

Love this idea of connecting STEM and storytelling. I wonder if the students have input into what makes it into their video stories? Our new NSF project involves getting young children and families to tell stories while they are engaged in STEM activities in a museum. Our idea is that personalized stories can be a powerful tool in advancing STEM learning and interest. 

Hi Catherine, 

They compose and ask questions, and also shoot and contribute vlog footage.

This is an interesting implementation of near-peer mentoring. I look forward to seeing how this project impacts STEM involvement!

Ed, exciting project. One thing we've run across in the past is that high performing kids are sometimes perceived by other kids as somehow "not applicable to my experience."  How are you using this strategy to overcome the perception that the elite from my community can't represent for me?

Hi Ed, I really fascinated by your use of documentary filmmaking here. I wonder if any of what you're doing makes it way back into the regular classroom--either formally or informally. Do you know if any the HS teachers' students picking up on any of the storytelling and/or filmmaking that their students are experiencing? That may be outside the scope of your project, but it seems a great opportunity to seed some new ideas into classrooms.

Ed, Thank you for the description of near peer mentoring and a video spotlighting the student engagement. The connection of high school students through intentional pairing with a mentor was a powerful framework to increase diversity in STEM. The student's voices supporting the program highlighted how powerful those experiences can be for an individual. 

Thank you for your feedback.

A wonderful project...very powerful for our youth!

Look forward to hearing more as your project progresses. And great to see this in my own backyard!

Thanks!

Fantastic.  Could tell before reading up above that someone'd work'd in LA biz!  Opportunities on every level - stories (shot by students) of students mentoring student scientists for sharing with younger student scientists to the whole world!  

Is there a survey that students complete when it comes time for course/elective selection? As a fan of David Yeager, there are some great surveys one could administer for motivation, mindset, goals, interest, content, etc.  Will email you. 

Am excited for your presence on social YT, IG, FB, TikTok, eTc...  As an open ended source of pure reactions and discussions threads, with no prompts necessary, this is great in situ research with an invaluable data set.  Looking forward to learning more. Inspiring.  Thanks for sharing.

What an inspiring project! How were the mentors (undergrad researchers) recruited and did they receive any training to be a mentor? 

Thanks. See my extensive answer to Ed Robeck above who asked the same question.

Wonderful project! I love how this is at the interface of research, storytelling, and science communication. 

Thanks!

Thank you for sharing. I fully believe in mentoring. Having been a Cub Scout, Boy Scout leader, and a girl scout leader I saw mentoring at its fullest. It is great to see STEM working.