The Artful Craft of Improving Virtual Summer Camps in the Midst of COVID-19 (Work in Progress)

ABSTRACT

The Artful Craft of Science (TACoS) is a week-long summer camp that the University of Wyoming has provided annually for up to 80 upcoming 5th and 6th graders since 2015. The program includes a variety of activities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), including a five-day introductory computer science (CS) class. In 2020 and 2021, TACoS ran virtually due to COVID-19, revealing a unique opportunity to compare two instances of the CS section of the program. This study focuses on answering two questions 1) How does video quality impact student participation and engagement;and 2) How does the length of time that content is accessible affect how students engage with course material? Both virtual years (Summers 2020 and 2021), the CS program included five 20-30-minute videos, a corresponding website for students to follow, and physical components that were mailed to each student prior to the course. After the first year (Summer 2020), improvements were made to the CS course presentation including attention to video quality, fresh course content for repeat-attendees, and further streamlined lesson plans. In the second virtual year (Summer 2021), students were given access to course material for a longer amount of time, as content remained available for a month instead of only during the camp week. Over both virtual years, viewership data was collected from each video including the number of views per activity, the average view duration, the audience retention rate across each video, the average views per viewer, and the lifetime watch time for each video. A total of 37 (46%) parent evaluation reviews (including perspectives of their students) of the TACoS program were collected, providing insight on the overall impressions of the camp, the CS program specifically, the students' favorite project/course within TACoS, the course completion rate, the ranked comparison of parents' time spent helping their child with each TACoS program, and general parent feedback. Findings show that there was improvement in the video content which could have invited more participation in the project/course and higher student engagement with the project/course material in the second virtual year. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.