STEM Camp Evaluations
In our pre- and post-surveys, we ask our campers to tell us what they like about camp and how we can improve camp for future students. We ask them: "Would you recommend this camp to a friend? Why or Why not?" Consistently, over 95% of campers recommend camp to a friend.
Our Campers Recommend Camp
In their reasons why, campers share about learning specific and general skills, making new friends and having unique experiences. Even when a camper says they wouldn't recommend camp, most of the time they say that is because their friends have different interests from themselves.
Interest & Confidence
The majority of our campers, over 90%, arrive at camp highly interested STEM areas. They attend camp because the topic is something they care about. In our post-survey, we ask campers to think about how their camp experience has impacted their interest in STEM. Seventy percent of campers or more believe that camp has helped them become more interested in science and in a STEM career. Campers who attend our science and technology themed camps in mostly believe that camp hasn't impacted their interest in mathematics at all while math camp campers believe their interest in mathematics does go up as a result of camp. Results shown in the graph above are from the 2018 UNI STEM camp evaluation.
Interest in STEM areas begins to fade as early as 4th grade. We believe that access to quality STEM activities, such as STEM camps can help the youth of our community maintain their interest in STEM and result in more students pursuing STEM courses and careers.
Just as important as interest is "self-efficacy" or a campers confidence that they have the skills and abilities to pursue STEM. In our post-surveys we ask campers to think about before camp and after camp and rate their confidence that they can "do science", "do mathematics" and "do a career involving STEM". The majority of campers report they are more confident in science and that they can do a STEM career. Our campers who attend mathematics themed camp sessions report confidence gains in mathematics. A few campers disagree that their confidence is higher. These actually fall into three categories - those that don't think their confidence could possibly be higher than it started, those that feel camp taught them that they have a lot more to learn and those who do feel less confident.
