Summative Evaluation of SciGirls Television Series Season One

SciGirls is a new weekly public television series produced by Twin Cities Public Television and supported by the National Science Foundation. Twelve half-hour animated and live action shows are accompanied by web and outreach activities in the fields of science, technology and engineering (STEM). Multimedia Research, an independent evaluation group, implemented a summative evaluation of SciGirls television programming with a rigorous randomized controlled trial design comparing treatment and control groups. Girls entering fifth grade were assigned randomly either to a treatment group (n = 42) that viewed four SciGirls engineering episodes focused on design and build projects or to a control group (n = 42) that viewed four episodes of Wishbone, a reading literacy series. The experimental design permitted assessment of a cause-effect relationship between the SciGirls series and its planned outcomes of high engagement, better understanding of the engineering design process, and higher confidence in participating in design and build projects.