Define

What is the challenge you are trying to solve? How did you identify the challenge? 

Over the years students have been asking for a way to get a better onramp for starting in the industry and getting an industry taste to see if it is really what they want to do. Industry has been asking over the years for examples of real student work to solve a real problem. Nonprofit institutions have been asking for solutions for both workforce development proof points and have been asking for ways to empower students to interact with their content, and our partner nonprofit was asking for more interactive and immersive experiences in their Discovery Center and educational programming. This surfaced the question: Does developing for holographic computing affect the motivation of high school students to study computer science? How might we create opportunities that empower students to interact with and develop immersive computing experiences in authentic and transformative ways? How might we create structures that build a pipeline on the bedrock of authentic, purposeful creation?

What personal experiences do you have with the challenge identified? 

For the last 10 years I have been building a studio environment specifically to tackle some of these problems and issues in partnership with the students and partners I have had. I don’t have a whole lot of experience making software professionally, building systems with business, or creating workflows that encourage students to make software for an end user client. I have had some opportunities to create software with a higher education institution, but I have a lot of work left to do in creating solutions in this area. I have, however, had a lot of experience in the educational environment in terms of teaching kids. I have also been working to understand and build skills for software development.

What research and data was collected to better understand the problem? 

In addition to the interviews I conducted with kids and partners over the years, I have looked at research about the future of work and predictions about the future of learning. There is a lot of research about the value of coding skills, but there is far less research about the need for students to understand the entire software development process, about the use of headsets like the Microsoft HoloLens 2 by high school students, and the opportunity/access gaps that not providing high school students access to equipment like that creates in the pipeline.

Through your research, what historical context and root causes were unearthed?  

There are a handful of root causes and historical issues that have created the landscape that has made it difficult for high school students to be included in breaking technology initiatives for a purpose. One of the first issues is how quickly the technology changes, and even though overall technology does not change as fast as people think it does, in the areas of software development and mixed reality technology is advancing very quickly (Singh, Triulzi, & Magee, 2021). This, combined with the issues of the access, lack of mentors, and stereotype threat can create barriers to students engaging in the work. It can

Works Cited:

Singh, A., Triulzi, G., & Magee, C. L. (2021). Technological improvement rate predictions for all technologies: Use of patent data and an extended domain description. technologyrates. Retrieved March 20, 2022, from http://technologyrates.mit.edu/