Teaching Materials Science: Multi-Tiered Learning at a Soccer-Themed Science Camp in Brazil

Abstract

Throughout the world, increasing students’ awareness of and preparedness for opportunities in STEM fields continues to be a challenge, with international efforts facing additional language and cultural barriers. To address this need, a new outreach experience was developed to stimulate interest in STEM through a passion shared across most of the world: soccer. The curriculum Materials Science of Soccer was developed by a multidisciplinary team at MIT and taught in collaboration with local Brazilian engineering undergraduate and graduate students to high school students in Brazil. Each day of camp consisted of a series of 15-minute lectures interspersed with a variety of active learning activities and laboratories to reinforce STEM-related skills. The active learning portions were cotaught by Brazilian-MIT undergraduate pairs. Original lectures were written for the class, translated, and taught in Portuguese. Feedback was collected daily and at the end of the course. The goals of this report are to (1) provide an overview of the camp structure and copies of the activity guides as a resource for future outreach programs; (2) discuss the benefits and challenges of a multi-tiered, cross-cultural learning model offered by programs like MIT Global Teaching Laboratory; and (3) analyze the impact and outcomes from the experience on each learning group (MIT students, Brazilian college students, and Brazilian high school students) from postcamp survey data.