Epistemic Engineering Practices at the Bloom Build and Roll-It Wall - Sam S.

In observing guests employing STEM practices at MOXI, I chose to focus on two very different exhibits: the Bloom Build blocks and the Roll-It Wall. Being so different in nature, each exhibit lends itself to different STEM and epistemic practices.

Bloom Build blocks lend themselves more to open creative projects, often without predetermined objectives. As such, some of the most frequent STEM practices I saw guests engage in were envisioning multiple solutions, applying science knowledge, investigating properties and uses of materials, and, most importantly, persisting and learning from failure. I've mostly seen guests playing with the Bloom Builds on their own, without a specific goal from the onset. However, even without a preset design goal, the asymmetrical blocks lead to falling blocks or a shifting structure as additional blocks shift the center of gravity. Guests adjust to this common occurrence by undoing their previous block placements, adding new ones, or by continuing to build on the new equilibrium with greater knowledge of how the unstable the structure is. In all of these adjustments, they are learning from failure, investigating properties of materials, and also envisioning multiple solutions as they anticipate the implications of further block placements. In the rarer events that guests use the bloom build blocks with a preset design or challenge, they expand the possibility of incorporating epistemic engineering practices. Guests with a certain design challenge in mind would be forced to make trade-offs between criteria and constraints, most likely by accommodating the asymmetrical blocks by changing their initial design. They would then be forced to envision multiple solutions, as they adjusted to the constraints posed by the blocks. They may also work in a team, if more than one person is working on the design.

While Bloom Build is quite open ended and organic in it engages guests, the Roll-It Wall is far more determinative in nature. While guests have the freedom to make their own goals, they will generally consist of making a ball complete a track with multiple features, beginning on one end. While this seems more constrained overall, it lends itself much more to collaborative engineering practices. I've most often seen guests operating in pairs, in any combination of child/adult/boy/girl/teacher/student. These pairs of guests often have some objective, whether it's a large track-scale design, or simply determining how to keep the ball from falling of the track in the middle of a dip. Guests most often engage in the epistemic practices of envisioning multiple solutions, making trade-offs between criteria and constraints, persisting and learning from failure, and most frequently, working in teams and engaging in argument from evidence. I've often seen guests holding the ball and running it along the track in slow motion, arguing to their partner how they think it behaved in the previous test and why. I've seen guests trade off leads on designing parts of the track, based on who has gone previously. The roll it wall also encourages guests to incorporate their existing knowledge of science. I've frequently seen children and adults talking about the energy the ball needs to complete a loop, or to overcome a hill, without necessarily using the words "potential energy," but still accessing their understanding of physical behavior nonetheless. Guests often are limited by the time they are willing to spend at the exhibit, or by the difficulty of affixing the rubber track to the pins, if they are young. In the rare instances that they persevere through these limitations and spend a long time at the Roll-It Wall, guests may proceed to employ math knowledge (potential energy and comparing hill height/friction), and investigate the properties and uses of materials (behavior of different balls).

-Sam Shaw