Using multimedia immersion to inspire high school students to pursue stem careers

Multimedia Immersion (MI) Inspires STEM Learning is an exploratory DRK-12 project for the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the learning strand. Arts and Technology faculty at Stevens Institute of Technology (Stevens) in collaboration with Technology teachers from New Jersey and New York school districts developed, piloted, and evaluated a nine-week STEM-rich multimedia production course for high school students. The MI course is designed to: (1) actively engage teams of students to develop a personally and socially relevant storyline that guides their use of accessible audio and video technologies to create an animated video; and (2) provide guidance and learning experiences in engineering (e.g., criteria, constraints, optimization, tradeoffs), science (e.g. sound, light, energy, mechanics) and multimedia technologies (e.g., computer-based audio production, video editing and visualizations through animatics). Student surveys and an examination of work products, in conjunction with implementation challenges and successes, provide evidence for the feasibility and utility of a high school multimedia course that explicitly addresses science and engineering learning.