STEM-A-THONS
The Mission
The STEM Education Alliance committee at the College of William & Mary received a grant funded by the Department of Defense to create STEM activities to teach students K-12 in the Hampton Roads region. In its fifth and final year of the grant, the committee decided to provide these resources to an online platform, partially due to the pandemic.
Adapting to an Online Environment
The pandemic brought an enormous amount of devastation to our world in 2020, but students, teachers, businesses, and employees quickly learned to adapt to an online environment.
Prior to the pandemic, the STEM Education Alliance at the College of William & Mary created STEM activities to teach students K-12 about various topics. However, derailed in its final year of their grant funded by the Department of Defense, the original team saw an opportunity to offer these activities online, broadening the reach these activities held and expanding the longevity of the project.
User Stories
Educators
In developing the design for stemathons.org, we kept convenience and efficiency in mind for educators. The purpose was to help make educators’ lives easier rather than more complicated. As the grant was focused on the Virginia Beach City Public School System, we decided to use Google Sites, as it easily integrates Google features. We curated the lessons based on a bottom-to-top pedagogy to help educators start their units with our activities. We created videos, instruction guides, and lesson plans with virtual, in-person, and hybrid options for any educator to incorporate into their teaching seamlessly.
Students
With the bottom-to-top pedagogy, we wanted to ensure students of all levels of understanding would benefit from the activities. We also ensured all activities were A.D.A compliant and included transcriptions for all videos published on our website along with alt text on every image. Our color scheme was also specifically selected to accommodate color blind students. For each activity, we kept in mind the age group intended and chose activities that would teach the students and keep them entertained. As students were working from home, we wanted to make the most of their experience. We curated our website to have a wide range of activities for every student to enjoy. We also adapted them to ensure every student would have the materials needed, considering not having the same access to items they would in a classroom.
The Process
Migrating Online
The activities were originally designed for in-person learning and the first years of the grant were spent visiting schools to teach students these lessons. When moving them online for the pandemic, not all of the activities could transfer, as they required material that could not be distributed to students individually. We had to adjust the activities, and create new ones, to accommodate the new environment.
Publishing
We tested our newly updated activities through demonstrations with elementary, middle, and high school educators to ensure they could be implemented into their curriculum. This allowed us to speak one-on-one with educators to find their needs and implement them into our activities and adjust activities to benefit the student’s experience.
My Designs
Video Editor
Beyond developing the website, I also created the PowerPoints and edited the videos for each lesson. Many of the graphics, charts, and images were designed and edited by me, but the overall slides were created by SlidesGo.
Visit for K-12 activities