Remote Reach: Innovating K-12 Education in a Time of Social Distancing and Beyond

ABSTRACT

In the face of the COVID-19 crisis, parents and educators were tasked with the enormous responsibility of creating a dedicated learning environment for their students at home. While shifting to an online medium was challenging, it provided a unique opportunity for AIChE at UCLA to support K-12 students through its new Remote Reach project. In Remote Reach, designing and delivering personalized interactive lessons to students has proved to be a rewarding and enjoyable experience for members involved. The prospect of online education has enabled our chapter to establish several connections with schools and community groups and develop a new approach to outreach. This year, our chapter's Remote Reach, was a year-long project that was dedicated to helping elementary and high school students learn and get excited about STEM topics while learning from home. We partnered with 3 main schools, 2 elementary schools and 1 high school. For each elementary school, we had a team of 5-10 AIChE members make and present a unique STEM module biweekly to 100+ students. Topics were chosen based on teacher, school, and member input and were designed to include demos, videos, and interactive content. The goal was to facilitate learning and discussion amongst the students using different mediums, rather than just our members lecturing them. These biweekly modules gave the elementary students the opportunity to learn new topics on a regular basis and become comfortable with our members. For the high school, we designed modules that would teach them about what ChemE's do and how wide-ranging our careers can be with videos and an interactive Process Flow Diagram activity. At this workshop, we will introduce innovative ways our chapter has served hundreds of students in the Greater Los Angeles community online, and how all student chapters can grow their own outreach programs in this ever-changing climate. Additionally, we will detail how Remote Reach's techniques can be utilized in both an in-person and online format to best serve your community as guidelines change. © 2021 American Institute of Chemical Engineers. All rights reserved.