Abstract:

Several companies are joining other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) university leaders in a major challenge to diversify their workforce. It is a fact that the number of students who choose to pursue careers in STEM areas is very small compared to other careers. In particular, considering the gender, the difference widens even further. In this work, we present a university-industry program designed to stimulate STEM education and to foster females’ interests and to pursue and persist in STEM studies and careers. The project called Women in STEM²D (including manufacturing and design) is developed in a prestigious Engineering School in Brazil, the Aeronautics Institute of Technology, by its female students and professors. The project operates in several lines of actions, being one of them practical, with the development of hands-on activities, providing a playful experience with STEM knowledge for young girls, between 11 to 17 years old. More and more the importance of hands-on activities is irrefutable, given valuable opportunities for students to immediately practice some concepts and increasing their motivation for STEM areas. During the last four years of the project, several workshops were performed in person, given very good results. Throughout 2020, we faced the Covid-19 pandemic and, consequently, the social distance measures, with the closing of classes in schools and universities and the cancellation of all face-to-face events. In this paper, we share our experience aimed at overcoming these difficulties and continuing to provide practical activities. We addressed the problem in two parts. The first was producing and recording videos of workshops, and the other was working together with two schools and providing individual kits, and delivering them to students to conduct workshops at home. The videos showed the possibility of reaching a wider audience, helping other groups that work to encourage female participation in STEM2D areas, as well as teachers and students, to replicate the activities developed by the team. It is also an effective way of disseminating images that associate girls and science, since the videos were produced by the girls from our Institute. The videos are available on the Women in STEM Project channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/mulheresemstem2d/videos. The kits were provided to two partner schools (Escola Municipal Professora Maria Aparecida Dos Santos Ronconi and Escola Estadual Prof Estevam Ferri) of the project so that the students could pick them up, take them home and carry out the experiments and activities. In the total 250 kits were made. The results showed an efficient way, during the pandemic crisis, to continue the activities and opened opportunities for innovation and education, which can be explored to increase students in the STEM areas.

Keywords:

Facing the Covid-19 Challenge for Bright Girls in STEM areas Through Hands-on Activities