The Mobile Making Program
Sinem Siyahhan, Edward Price, James Marshall · Advances in early childhood and K-12 education · 2023
This chapter focuses on STEM out-of-school time and describes the Mobile Making program as a university-community partnership-driven out-of-school (OST) program wherein racially and ethnically diverse university students bring materials in their own vehicles and facilitate youth's engagement and learning in maker-based STEM activities at school and community sites. The authors discuss the program model and the lessons learned about how to (a) design maker-based STEM activities for youth (grades 4th through 8th), (b) recruit and train undergraduate students to serve as near-peer mentors, (c) work closely with school sites, (d) scale this program to multiple sites, and (d) sustain this afterschool program over the years. Further, the authors share the findings from phase two of the project and discuss implications for developing and scaling maker-based STEM afterschool programs.