A project of the Afterschool Alliance.

The Impact of Afterschool STEM: Build IT

Year Published: 2016

Build IT is an afterschool and summer curriculum for middle school youth to develop fluency in information technology (IT), interest in mathematics and knowledge of IT careers. In this selection of evaluation data from the 2012-2013 school year, participants demonstrated gains along three major categories of youth outcomes—interest in STEM, capacity to engage in STEM, and finding value in STEM.

Program Description: Build IT is an afterschool and summer curriculum for middle school youth to develop fluency in information technology (IT), interest in mathematics and knowledge of IT careers. The program—co-developed by SRI International and the Girls Inc. of Alameda County—is designed to engage girls and African-American and Latino/a youth.

Scope of the Evaluation: National

Program Type: Summer, Afterschool

Community Type: Urban, Suburban

Grade level: Middle School

Program Demographics: 95 percent girls, more than 80 percent of whom are African-American and Latina, and the majority of whom are from low-income households.

Program Website: https://www.sri.com/work/projects/build-it

Evaluator: Hatchuel Tabernik & Associates

Evaluation Methods: Staff collect ongoing outcomes data through performance tasks, concept surveys and attitude surveys. Evaluation data is collected during specific research projects and includes participant, facilitator, staff and parent surveys, as well as interviews and observations with youth and facilitators.

Evaluation Type: Non-experimental

Outcomes:
Below is a selection of evaluation data reported by the program around three major categories of youth outcomes—interest in STEM, capacity to productively engage in STEM, and finding value in STEM. These outcomes are an excerpt from a 2016 Afterschool Alliance paper, "The Impact of Afterschool STEM: Examples from the Field."

Interest: I like to do this
  • Retention was often 100 percent at sites that had girls and parents commit to girls' active participation in Build IT.
  • Girls reported a statistically significant increase in their confidence in math, belief in its usefulness, and plans to take computer courses.

Capacity: I can do this

  • Girls showed statistically significant improvements in their understanding and use of the computer engineering design process, as it is embedded in every curriculum unit as a method of problem solving.
  • Build IT motivates girls to use technology to strengthen and build their technology fluency, and participants achieved statistically significant improvements in frequency of computer use, computer skills and conceptual understanding of computing.

Value: This is important to me

  • Interviews document that participation has made a noticeable difference in how girls view technology careers. Many who initially reported IT as solitary and boring later reported that they found IT to be collaborative, fun, intellectually stimulating and a possible career.
  • Girls showed statistically significant improvements in knowing what classes to take in high school to prepare for an IT career.