Empowering Girls to Pursue STEM in Africa: An Interdisciplinary OER Program, Co-Branded with UNESCO under a new Pilot Program, Is Inspiring Students, Engaging Teachers, and Garnering Significant Stakeholder Interest :sync:

Kelly McKenna (IEEE), Maryanne Karamagi (Silver Bolt)

Discover IEEE REACH (reach.ieee.org), an interdisciplinary, pre-university OE teacher resource that bridges the Humanities with STEM and experience the dynamic nature of Science, Technology and Society, through the lens of History! IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. This cross-cutting secondary school program situates science, technology, and engineering in their social and humanistic contexts. Walk away with inquiry units (full lesson plans), hands-on activities, and short videos, that may be immediately implemented either in the classroom, or remotely.

In addition, you will learn about an IEEE REACH/UNESCO co-branded pilot program in Uganda that was implemented by local non-profits, Silver Bolt and the Smart Girls Foundation, with support from the IEEE Uganda Section and the IEEE Africa Council. The program successfully delivered REACH content, modified to meet local curricular needs, to female students, both in the classroom, and by way of a traveling classroom trailer that traveled to underserved communities. The pilot program was a success, both in way of obtaining desired learning outcomes and by inspiring students with an urge learn!

Cross-cutting UNESCO’s sectors – education, science, and culture—and meeting many of UNESCO’s OER recommendations, the program has broad application. Due to the success of the pilot, the Uganda Ministry of Education is considering an expansion of the program in country, and UNESCO is exploring exporting it elsewhere. With further expansion through these international collaborations, REACH anticipates being able to help build capacity globally, to share methodology, to support peer networks, and ultimately, to transform education in regard to gender equity and technological literacy for all students.

Extended abstract: OE_Global_2021_paper_66.pdf 📄


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This presentation is part of Webinar 04 Building capacity taking place in your local time .

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UNESCO OER Action Area: Building capacity

Language: English

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1 Like

Hi @KellyM,

This resource looks fantastic and I really enjoyed your session. I was poking around the IEEE Reach website and did not see open licenses. Did I miss those? Are any of the resources openly licensed?

Thanks for your help,
Stacy

Hi Stacy (@skatz)
My apologies for the delayed response. Thrilled that you like the resources. I welcome the feedback and would be interested in learning more about your thoughts on them.

As for the copyrights, as an entity of IEEE we have to follow IEEE protocol on copyright. You will note a link on the bottom of the website, which mainly states for education purposes to check with us.

All of the REACH resources are available to reuse for education purposes under a non-commercial, non-derivative license because we use excerpts, etc. from other organizations within the materials. The videos are under the same license. Educators can pick and pull the resources that work best for them and their classroom

Thank you for pointing out that we should consider putting on the copyright symbol on each pdf to make it clear. I will look into doing this. Many thanks for your insight.
My Best,
Kelly