The National Science Foundation ITEST grant, "Culturally Relevant Computing Activities and Career Readiness for At-Risk Youth", Abstract #1849849, funded the ESportsU Foundations Project (ESportsU), which was an exploratory initiative to develop a new model of STEM learning for diverse and inclusive youth (DIY) to promote student awareness of and interest in STEM careers. This award developed advanced instructional and curricular innovations and enhanced the participants capacity to participate in emerging digital media technology fields. The project created a living-learning community sleepover STEM Camp experience in the summer of 2021. Participants engaged in video gaming and Esports (digitally competitive gaming), activities with digital media industry professionals, with an integrated curriculum, fun and inspiring activities, and scaffolded support systems to help support life/play balance.

Participants were recruited from the surrounding region of East Stroudsburg, PA, with the camps taking place at East Stroudsburg University where the research was centered. Participants were DIY, who often are disconnected and disengaged from traditional school systems without access to advanced technology and training. ESportsU addressed two pressing issues in STEM career readiness, 1- commonplace misconceptions about difficulty and disconnection from STEM content and 2- widening underrepresented youth participation and social mobility for historically underrepresented populations.

ESportsU advanced the efforts of the ITEST program to broaden participation of underrepresented communities by understanding and promoting activities that increased students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in STEM. Students engaged in hands-on field experiences, laboratory/project-based entrepreneurship tasks alongside industry professionals and peer mentors. Educational content supported STEM the precursor habits of mind skills of programming, problem solving, inquiry, communication, mathematical reasoning, and data analytics driven by play based activity networks.

The student-centered project was founded on using native play spaces of culturally relevant computing (CRC). CRC is frequently used in literature and allowed us to focus on instructional equity around modern digital relationships and practices within Esports cultures. We created two summer camps, both focused on gaming and creative STEM production, game design, computer graphics, TV/video production, and digital marketing. The second camp was infused with the content and ethos of Esports with competition, collaboration, and teamwork. With students, peer mentors and instructors co-designing activities and experiences, the Esports STEM based camp developed computational thinking and computer literacy skills necessary for STEM career readiness in comparison to the traditional casual video game STEM based camp. This led us to a major outcome we call Organic STEM Learning, where students organically engage in STEM skill development incubated by their social and cultural communities.

Our external evaluators, Dr. Gerber, and Dr. Onwuegbuzie reviewed the massive amount of data that we obtained during the camps including, pre and post experience surveys, journal entries, video interviews, video data (2.3 TB), etc., and produced a comprehensive report. One of the key findings of the study was,

The Esports students reported greater gains in both attitudes towards career interests and attitudes towards competencies than did their non-Esports counterparts.

Specifically, the Esports students reported a statistically non-significant gain in attitudes towards career interests of approximately one fourth of a standard deviation, and a very impressive statistically significant gain in attitudes towards competencies of approximately one-and-a-half standard deviations.

According to their final conclusions,

our evaluation of this project has provided compelling quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods evidence that this project has great potential for increasing knowledge, skills, and dispositions related to STEM competencies and STEM career interest with marginalized youth. It is our strong recommendation that this project be scaled up to a regional and/or a national level. 

During the span of the grant, 12/10/2018 - 8/31/2023, our research team successfully created, designed, and completed the summer camps, and then shared what we found. Of course, the world changed greatly during this time, as we all experienced the massive ramifications of COVID-19. For the grant team this meant that we had to postpone the camps for a year, and the students we had trained as key members of our junior research team graduated. So, we recruited and trained new students. Also, as COVID-19 evolved, we redesigned the camp from a virtual experience to a day camp, back to a sleepover camp, but with a much more limited geographical reach. The research team also had to find a way to hold sleepover camps during COVID-19 safely, which we did, as none of the campers became sick during the camps.

Overall, it was an amazing experience for all involved, and we thank all the extraordinary help of many who supported us, and kept us moving forward, including 42 institutions and organizations and over 128 individual stakeholders. Most especially, we thank our participants who were the reason we started this journey, and whose brilliance, hard work, and excellence, inspire us to encourage them to be who they are - Unstoppable.

Last Modified: 08/31/2023
Modified by: Richard F Otto