"You gotta tell the camera": Advancing children's engineering learning opportunities through tinkering and digital storytelling

Abstract

This study addressed whether combining tinkering with digital storytelling (i.e., narrating and reflecting about experiences to an imagined audience) can engender engineering learning opportunities. Eighty-four families with 5- to 10-year-old (M = 7.69) children (48% female children; 57% White, 11% Asian, 6% Black) watched a video introducing a tinkering activity and were randomly assigned either to a digital storytelling condition or a no digital storytelling condition during tinkering. After tinkering, families reflected on their tinkering experience and were randomly assigned to either engage in digital storytelling or not. Children in the digital storytelling condition during tinkering spoke most to an imagined audience during tinkering, talked most about engineering at reflection, and remembered the most information about the experience weeks later.