AVELA -- A Vision for Engineering Literacy & Access: Understanding Why Technology Alone Is Not Enough
Abstract
Unequal technology access for Black and Latine communities has been a persistent economic, social justice, and human rights issue despite increased technology accessibility due to advancements in consumer electronics like phones, tablets, and computers. We contextualize socio-technical access inequalities for Black and Latine urban communities and find that many students are hesitant to engage with available technologies due to a lack of engaging support systems. We present a holistic student-led STEM engagement model through AVELA - A Vision for Engineering Literacy and Access leveraging culturally responsive lessons, mentor embodied community representation, and service learning. To evaluate the model's impact after 4 years of mentoring 200+ university student instructors in teaching to 2,500+ secondary school students in 100+ classrooms, we conducted 24 semi-structured interviews with college AnonymizedOrganization members. We identify access barriers and provide principled recommendations for designing future STEM education programs.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2401.14581,
title = {AVELA -- A Vision for Engineering Literacy & Access: Understanding Why Technology Alone Is Not Enough},
author = {Kyle Johnson and Vicente Arroyos and Celeste Garcia and Liban Hussein and Aisha Cora and Tsewone Melaku and Jay L. Cunningham and R. Benjamin Shapiro and Vikram Iyer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.14581},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for personal use, not for redistribution