For over 40 years, the Mayor’s Summer Youth Employment Program (MSYEP, or the Mayor’s Program) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been offering youngsters with their first work expertise, however 2022 introduced a brand new providing. Collaborating with MIT’s Personal Robots analysis group (PRG) and Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) this summer time, MSYEP created a STEAM-focused studying web site on the Institute. Eleven college students joined this system to be taught coding and programming abilities via the lens of “Data Activism.”
MSYEP’s partnership with MIT supplies a chance for Cambridge excessive schoolers to realize publicity to extra pathways for his or her future careers and schooling. The Mayor’s Program goals to respect college students’ time and present the worth of their work, so individuals are compensated with an hourly wage as they be taught workforce abilities at MSYEP worksites. In conjunction with two ongoing analysis research at MIT, PRG and RAISE developed the six-week Data Activism curriculum to equip college students with critical-thinking abilities in order that they really feel ready to make the most of information science to problem social injustice and empower their neighborhood.
Rohan Kundargi, Ok-12 Community Outreach Administrator for MIT Office of Government and Community Relations (OGCR), says, “I see this as a model for a new type of partnership between MIT and Cambridge MSYEP. Specifically, an MIT research project that involves students from Cambridge getting paid to learn, research, and develop their own skills!”
Cross-Cambridge collaboration
Cambridge’s Office of Workforce Development initially contacted MIT OGCR about internet hosting a possible MSYEP worksite that taught Cambridge teenagers the way to code. When Kundargi reached out to MIT pK-12 collaborators, MIT PRG’s graduate analysis assistant Raechel Walker proposed the Data Activism curriculum. Walker defines “data activism” as using information, computing, and artwork to investigate how energy operates on the planet, problem energy, and empathize with people who find themselves oppressed.
Walker says, “I wanted students to feel empowered to incorporate their own expertise, talents, and interests into every activity. In order for students to fully embrace their academic abilities, they must remain comfortable with bringing their full selves into data activism.”
As Kundargi and Walker recruited college students for the Data Activism studying web site, they needed to ensure the cohort of scholars — the vast majority of whom are people of coloration — felt represented at MIT and felt they’d the company for his or her voice to be heard. “The pioneers in this field are people who look like them,” Walker says, talking of well-known information activists Timnit Gebru, Rediet Abebe, and Joy Buolamwini.
When this system started this summer time, among the college students weren’t conscious of the methods information science and synthetic intelligence exacerbate systemic oppression in society, or among the instruments at present getting used to mitigate these societal harms. As a end result, Walker says, the scholars needed to be taught extra about discriminatory design in each facet of life. They have been additionally concerned with creating accountable machine studying algorithms and AI equity metrics.
A unique aspect of STEAM
The improvement and execution of the Data Activism curriculum contributed to Walker’s and postdoc Xiaoxue Du’s respective analysis at PRG. Walker is finding out AI schooling, particularly creating and educating information activism curricula for minoritized communities. Du’s analysis explores processes, assessments, and curriculum design that prepares educators to make use of, adapt, and combine AI literacy curricula. Additionally, her analysis targets the way to leverage extra alternatives for college kids with various studying wants.
The Data Activism curriculum makes use of a “libertatory computing” framework, a time period Walker coined in her place paper with Professor Cynthia Breazeal, director of MIT RAISE, dean for digital studying, and head of PRG, and Eman Sherif, a then-undergraduate researcher from University of California at San Diego, titled “Liberty Computing for African American Students.” This framework ensures that college students, particularly minoritized college students, purchase a sound racial id, crucial consciousness, collective obligation, liberation centered tutorial/achievement id, in addition to the activism abilities to make use of computing to rework a multi-layered system of limitations during which racism persists. Walker says, “We encouraged students to demonstrate competency in every pillar because all of the pillars are interconnected and build upon each other.”
Walker developed a collection of interactive coding and project-based actions that centered on understanding systemic racism, using information science to investigate systemic oppression, information drawing, accountable machine studying, how racism may be embedded into AI, and completely different AI equity metrics.
This was the scholars’ first time studying the way to create information visualizations utilizing the programming language Python and the information evaluation instrument Pandas. In one venture meant to look at how completely different programs of oppression can have an effect on completely different facets of scholars’ personal identities, college students created datasets with information from their respective intersectional identities. Another exercise highlighted African American achievements, the place college students analyzed two datasets about African American scientists, activists, artists, students, and athletes. Using the information visualizations, college students then created zines concerning the African Americans who impressed them.
RAISE employed Olivia Dias, Sophia Brady, Lina Henriquez, and Zeynep Yalcin via the MIT Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) and PRG employed freelancer Matt Taylor to work with Walker on creating the curriculum and designing interdisciplinary expertise tasks. Walker and the 4 undergraduate researchers constructed an intersectional information evaluation exercise about completely different examples of systemic oppression. PRG additionally employed three highschool college students to check actions and supply insights about making the curriculum partaking for program individuals. Throughout this system, the Data Activism staff taught college students in small teams, regularly requested college students the way to enhance every exercise, and structured every lesson based mostly on the scholars’ pursuits. Walker says Dias, Brady, Henriquez, and Yalcin have been invaluable to cultivating a supportive classroom setting and serving to college students full their tasks.
Student Nina says, “It’s opened my eyes to a different side of STEM. I didn’t know what ‘data’ meant before this program, or how intersectionality can affect AI and data.” Before MSYEP, Nina took Intro to Computer Science and AP Computer Science, however she has been coding since Girls Who Code first sparked her curiosity in center college. “The community was really nice. I could talk with other girls. I saw there needs to be more women in STEM, especially in coding.” Now she’s concerned with making use of to schools with robust laptop science applications so she will be able to pursue a coding-related profession.
From MSYEP to the mayor’s workplace
Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui visited the Data Activism studying web site on Aug. 9, accompanied by Breazeal. A graduate of MSYEP herself, Siddiqui says, “Through hands-on learning through computer programming, Cambridge high school students have the unique opportunity to see themselves as data scientists. Students were able learn ways to combat discrimination that occurs through artificial intelligence.” In an Instagram put up, Siddiqui additionally mentioned, “I had a blast visiting the scholars and studying about their tasks.”
Students labored on an exercise that requested them to ascertain how information science may be used to help marginalized communities. They remodeled their solutions into block-printed T-shirt designs, carving photos of their hopes into rubber block stamps. Some college students centered on the significance of knowledge privateness, like Jacob T., who drew a birdcage to signify information saved and locked away by third occasion apps. He says, “I want to open that cage and restore my data to myself and see what can be done with it.”
Many college students needed to see extra illustration in each the media they eat and throughout varied skilled fields. Nina talked concerning the significance of illustration in media and the way that would contribute to better illustration within the tech business, whereas Kiki talked about encouraging extra ladies to pursue STEM fields. Jesmin mentioned, “I wanted to show that data science is accessible to everyone, no matter their origin or language you speak. I wrote ‘hello’ in Bangla, Arabic, and English, because I speak all three languages and they all resonate with me.”
“Overall, I hope the students continue to use their data activism skills to re-envision a society that supports marginalized groups,” says Walker. “Moreover, I hope they are empowered to become data scientists and understand how their race can be a positive part of their identity.”