The SpinWheel: Using artistic expression to overcome math phobia

Over the past four years, the Yale Graduate Society of Women Engineers outreach team has developed educational activities that lessen math phobia’s power by introducing math, coding, and electronics as tools for artistic expression. Our activities are designed to be challenging, doable, and fun, allowing students to realize that mastering technical skills takes practice, not innate ability. Feedback after these events demonstrated that we have been able to attract students not previously considering engineering and excite them about the field. In this session, we will cover some example activities that Yale GradSWE developed for middle and high schoolers, discuss what was particularly effective about each activity, and empower attendees to implement similar activities as part of their own outreach efforts. We will end the session by modeling a successful hands-on activity, using the SpinWheel, a STEM educational kit we released on Kickstarter.