2. Developing Strong Content

Developing Good Content

This section of the module will look at what makes content “strong”. In short, strong content is content that is effective for creating positive STEM learning experiences and that achieves the desired outcomes for the participants.

The ‘Actua Experience’ Framework

The Actua Experience is a set of four broad strategies to help guide your approach to designing STEM content and programs. They are based on Actua’s extensive experience in the STEM education and outreach sector, the experience of our network members, along with empirical evidence of impacts and external research on youth engagement in STEM. 

Strategy 1: Connect youth to post-secondary institutions and real-life STEM applications

  • Provide opportunities to interact with positive and diverse STEM role models (e.g., STEM professionals, professors, and students).

  • Where possible, use authentic STEM contexts, such as being on-campus in a Faculty of Science or Faculty of Engineering building.

Strategy 2: Customized programming engaging all segments of Canada’s population

  • Make connections between your content and topics of personal interest to participants.

  • Where possible, integrate or provide connections to local cultural knowledge and practices.

  • Approach topics from more than one angle to provide more opportunities for participants to connect with and understand your content.

  • Include opportunities for creativity and personal choice in your content.

Strategy 3: Engagement of youth early and often

  • Consider participant demographics and create appropriate content.

  • If possible, create ways to continue learning at home and ways for parents or guardians to be included.

Strategy 4: Programs are learner-centred and promote holistic thinking

  • Prioritize including fun, hands-on, and interactive elements in your content.

  • Create opportunities for critical thinking and problem solving.

  • When possible, explain and use appropriate and accurate technical language and terminology.

  • Create opportunities to learn STEM-related skills and use STEM-related tools.

  • Include opportunities for participant reflection.

As you engage in the content development process, think about the role each of these strategies might play in shaping your content.

Other Best Practices

On top of the strategies for success from the Actua Experience framework, we’ve also gathered a few best practices specific to designing interesting and engaging STEM-related content to help you get started with your own content.

  • Connect current participant understanding with formal explanations. 
    • Use participants’ existing understanding and knowledge of a topic or phenomenon as a starting point for your formal or scientific explanation. This can be accomplished by, for example, using conversational prompts at the beginning of an activity to help frame the discussion. It can also be an opportunity to gently correct any misconceptions they may hold and to reinforce that they already hold plenty of STEM knowledge.
  • Present multiple ways to interact with a topic or phenomenon. 
    • Provide multiple ways for your participants to explore, observe, or investigate a topic or phenomenon. In practice, this usually means approaching a topic or phenomenon from a variety of angles or perspectives that reinforce or build upon each other.
  • Create interactive experiences. 
    • Add elements of interaction to demonstrations or tasks that are less hands-on to encourage participants to remain attentive and engaged, and provide them with a sense of agency in their learning.
  • Encourage multiple approaches, pathways, representations, and solutions. 
    • As much as possible, design tasks to allow for multiple correct or functional outcomes and encourage participants to approach tasks with imagination and creativity. Reinforce the message that many problems have more than one solution and that deciding between solutions means evaluating and comparing the pros and cons of a given solution.
  • Include inquiry-based tasks. 
    • Allow plenty of time for participants to explore the activity on their own terms and ask questions. Include breaks for them to process information instead of continuously bombarding them.
  • Design “low-floor/high-ceiling” tasks. 
    • As much as possible, your content should be accessible at a base level to all levels of skill, while also having the potential to extend and challenge those who want to explore further.
  • Support growth mindsets and promote failure positivity. 
    • Structure tasks to encourage participants to engage in trial-and-error. Reinforce the message that failure or failed attempts aren’t necessarily negative but instead are opportunities for learning and improvement.
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