STEM for All Video Showcase

Connected Communities and Disseminated Cutting Edge Work Through Video and Discourse

Lead Staff:
Joni Falk
Brian Drayton
Project Staff:
Kathryn Hobbs
Kim Descoteaux
Quang Le
Jillian Ives

Summary

The STEM for All Video Showcase website is archived and no longer actively maintained. All archived videos can still be accessed on their website.

The STEM for All Video Showcase was a free, online, interactive film festival that featured videos from hundreds of projects aimed at improving STEM education. While the Video hall was accessible year-round, the annual Showcase festivals were used to drive visitors to the site. Viewers from around the world watched, shared and interacted with projects that were transforming science, technology, math, engineering, and computer science learning.

The Video hall platform supported open access and was designed to foster communication in ways that scale beyond traditional formats such as academic conferences. People talked directly to those behind the latest research and innovations. It was a powerful vehicle for projects to broadly disseminate their innovative work, receive new ideas and feedback, and hear from audiences interested in using their resources. It also enabled presenters to learn of related projects and to make new contacts and collaborations for future work. In 3-minute video narratives, federally funded projects shared ideas, resources, data, evidence of impact, strategies, and challenges.

Each annual Showcase event presented videos created by 150-230 projects. Some video presentations were awarded recognition on the site at the end of the event as “Public Choice,” “Presenters’ Choice,” or “Facilitators’ Choice.” This participant voting system served to increase engagement and enhanced outreach of the event through social media. After the one-week Showcase event concluded, all of the videos along with the related discourse remained available to the public online, who continued to access the Showcase throughout the year.

Research Activity

A research component examined the extent of participation on various constituencies, the benefit of participation to projects, and the success of the events in terms of dissemination nationally and internationally.

Impact

Learn more about STEM for All Video Showcase’s impact in TERC’s 2020-2021 Biennial Impact Report on page 20.

“Very quickly, I think in the space of three or four days, we got thousands of views and as an academic, it was the first time that I produced anything in my career that got such a wide readership so quickly. One real-world consequence as part of the video was to be able to enlist support that we didn’t even know existed. Some people actually wrote to me wanting to help. And eventually, they did come to help.” Michel DeGraff, MIT-Haiti Initiative