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Encouraging Puerto Rican High School Students to Pursue a STEM Career Through an Anatomy & Neurobiology Outreach
Author(s) -
GonzálezSolá Maryví,
RosarioCanales Martín
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.29.1_supplement.693.6
Subject(s) - outreach , test (biology) , psychology , medical education , mathematics education , gerontology , medicine , ecology , biology , political science , law
Often Puerto Rican high school students are unaware of the opportunities in sciences. Furthermore, many students abandon school and encounter dangerous environments. Therefore, our objective was to create an anatomy and sciences outreach activity, entitled “What should I do after I graduate? Guidelines for success after high School”, for 84 high school students from a private school in Caguas, Puerto Rico to motivate them to study a STEM career. We created 8 stations with specific topics (cardiovascular system, respiratory system, neurosciences and drugs, muscle and skeletal system, reproductive system, environmental pollution and sciences orientation) and divided the 84 students into groups of approximately ±10 after giving them the pre‐test with 8 questions related to each station. Then the groups rotated through each station to learn about that topic. Later, they took a post‐test (same questions) in order for us to assess their learning experience. Each question worth 1 point with a maximum score of 8 points. Finally, they filled evaluation forms on each station (4‐excellent to 1‐poor) and made comments. A paired‐samples t‐test was conducted to compare PRE and POST tests (only 54 students completed). There was a significant difference in the scores for pre test (M=5.3, SD=1.18) and post test (M=6.77, SD=.90) conditions; t (53)=‐7.9, p 蠄 0.05. The results suggest the outreach activity had a positive impact in these students. The highest scored station in the evaluation form was the cardiovascular system and the sciences orientation station. It appears that our outreach activity had an impact on 54 students confirmed by our results, but we are confident we had a positive impact on the entire 84 students based on the evaluation form comments.