HAS (Highschool Aerospace Scholars): Transforming the highly interactive, hands-on, week-long, team challenge for an online learning world.

Abstract:

Designing and implementing a week-long, face-to-face, highly interactive, hands-on team challenge is a difficult task. Since 2010, HAS (Highschool Aerospace Scholars) has been developing and refining the model based on stakeholder feedback, careful evaluation, and observations. In 2020, there came a new challenge – Covid-19. Transforming the highly successful HAS face-to-face program into a world with social distancing and closed NASA centers forced the team to be creative and innovative. The four-month effort culminated in a novel approach to engaging learners. The approach layers a number of independent technologies onto a base course management system (Canvas) to help facilitate student interaction. Technologies utilized include Padlet (virtual notebook and sharing platform), Goosechase (scavenger hunt game for science content), Pronto (communication tool and live platform), Flipgrid (video recording and sharing), badgr (badges for recording progress and rewards), and social media including Twitter using the hashtag #NASAHAS. The decisions to choose these particular technologies were driven by a desire to make interaction as seamless as possible across all aspects of HAS online. In this talk, we will show how each component was integrated, explore the pros and cons associated with the choices made, and examine what we can learn from what worked well and what did not. Additionally, by critically analyzing feedback from all stakeholders, we hope to shed some light on the many possibilities that transitioning from traditional face-to-face settings to virtual engagement can afford.