Diversity, equity, and inclusion are part of our core values, shape our culture and drive our social life. Undergraduate's empowerment may be defined as including accepting undergraduates' viewpoints, or trying to seek them, raising the status of undergraduates through education, awareness, literacy, and training.

Undergraduates Empowerment Booster (UEB) is a model offering guidance to schools on how to promote gender equality and undergraduates’ empowerment in the workplace and community through service learning.

The UEB strives to equip undergraduates with new skills, capacities, and hands-on learning and practical strategies to apply service-learning methodology.

This project aims to bring college-aged undergraduates majoring in computer science together with middle-school students to learn about coding through digital storytelling in an out-of-school weekend program. Increasing undergraduates' pursuit of computer science is an important societal goal. The current project aims to build student's self-efficacy in and identification with computer science by having college students mentor middle-school students in digital storytelling using Python. Storytelling can increase student's interest and engagement in computer science by incorporating creativity and making coding more relatable.

UH undergraduate students serve as mentors and instructors, guiding students in the creation of digital stories, coding from scratch. They consistently apply coding knowledge and shows responsibility, participate in designing storyboard activity and clearly articulate what was learned through the implementation of the digital stories. (Connecting Learning and Engagement) and provide reflective insights and analysis of the aims of sharing coding and opinions (Community Action and Reflection).

The young students demonstrate thorough, effective and/or sophisticated application of knowledge and skills, identify proper solutions and objectively reflects upon own assertions(Problem Solving).

Every semester around 10 undergraduate students and I help around 30 young students master coding and storytelling design. Of great importance is allowing them to complete as much coding as possible. With our feedback and prompting (giving tips, strategies, cues, and procedures), the young students can achieve great projects. Gradually, they will be able to work independently and complete challenging projects. 

In fact, engaging 60 middle and high school students in weekly Saturday workshops where 20 undergraduate near-peer mentors lead programming instruction through digital stories and hands-on application activities increase student learning, curiosity, and discovery.

A website is used as a facilitative tool in supporting student learning where exercises are broken into smaller snippet of codes.

This project provides college students and school students with the conceptual framework and practical knowledge to implement successful school-based service-learning programs that emphasize problem solving, youth empowerment, social responsibility and community collaboration. Students will develop an ability to communicate effectively in a professional context and an ability to analyze a complex computing problem and to apply principles of computing and other relevant disciplines to identify solutions.

Students develop a plan for self-learning the problem solving. In the current project, the medium of digital storytelling provides a unique opportunity for students to use technological innovations to change the cultural narrative using their own voice and personal experiences.

One factor that subtly influences this project’s outcome is novelty. It advocates social responsibility components such as intercultural competence and the ability to engage effectively in communities. it is a great opportunity for college female to function effectively across cultures, to think and act appropriately, and to communicate and work with young female from different cultural backgrounds.

Moreover, mentor relatability, defined as the relationship between students’ connection with near-peer mentors, is a significant predictor of students' self-efficacy and interest in CS.

Evaluation and reflection of students will be recognized  as  a showcase  of accomplishments during a wonderful day of celebration for the last day of of the semester which is traditionally set aside for final exams. Everyone receives an award. All community partners, mentors, parents, and coaches are invited.

With the collaboration of Microsoft TEALS undergraduate student mentors will be trained with computer science pedagogical skills including culturally responsive teaching practices, problem solving, Bloom’s Taxonomy of skills, stereotype threat and implicit bias, differentiated instruction, and other topics as needed by the mentors to enable them to develop skills on how to effectively interact with and teach students from under-represented populations. 

The student learning outcomes will focus on social responsibility of the mentors and the problem solving of the mentees. Strategies for Assessing mentees’ problem solving is by giving them weekly assignments and organize an end of semester showcase of students’ accomplishments -programming and stories developed throughout the semester- (One poster per student). Assessing the social responsibility of the mentors will be done by tracking their performance and surveying the mentees about their learning connections and engagement.

The project is successfully piloted and can be further refined as a program extension option to any university/TEALS partnership, providing potential to impact over 1,000 students annually. This type of expansion could significantly increase the body of research and knowledge attained regarding the impact of how digital storytelling can be helpful to teach and learn coding through an informal STEM setting.

The goal is to emphasize the importance of putting two communities together, in the effort to get to know the community, to provide content and emotional support and encouragement and help them feel more comfortable around college students.

This experience is valuable,  given the near-peers proximity in age and expertise to their mentees,  compared to a traditional instructor (a professor or teacher) near-peers may provide an enhanced learning experience and a less stress-inducing environment for learning to code. 

Participation in informal learning programs is often the first Computer Science encounter that many learners experience. Thus, there is a need for exposing learners to the CS field. Exposure to the field is a positive way to address negative stereotypes that are often held about computer scientists. In addition, it also fuels interest in CS careers by illustrating possible futures 

Designing curriculum features as a co-curriculum activity that provide an opportunity for learners to express or share their interest with those outside of the learning environment may prove valuable in establishing a dialogue around CS and subsequently increasing the participants’ awareness of the social support and encouragement available in their immediate social environments.

The participation in this project will emphasize that programming is fun which will increase the interest of students in computer science. Besides, certain social factors may influence their positive change in interest. Some of these factors include the ability to show the stories they made to their parents, giving and receiving help, and/or the presence of the mentors. 

In addition to lowering the perception of difficulty, mentors and mentees will develop a belief in their own ability and feel more confident about their own knowledge.

She Codes, She Tells Stories: 

Role: Founder, Director 

Description: This project aims to bring college-aged students majoring in computer science together with middle-school students to learn about coding through digital storytelling in an out-of-school weekend program. Increasing young women’s pursuit of computer science is an important societal goal. The current project aims to build adolescent student's self-efficacy in and identification with computer science by having college students mentor middle-school students in digital storytelling using Python. Storytelling can increase student’s interest and engagement in computer science by incorporating creativity and making coding more relatable. Mentoring as a process of storytelling allows mentors to reach out to students' emotions, breathing life into the ideas that are authored by mentees. Building mentor-mentee relationships helps both groups feel a sense of connection and belonging in computer science. The data collected in this grant will improve our understanding of the benefits of using digital storytelling in informal settings to improve outcomes for both middle-school students and college-aged students. 

Visit the website for She Codes, She Tells Stories. 

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