Developing and Studying a Three hour Documentary Series and Live Game Streaming Showing the Relationship of Engineering to the Everyday Built World

This project was an innovative, integrated multimedia/research project that featured engineering stories across a range of scales and functions. It presented engineering as fundamentally human, highlighting how problem-solvers—people of all ages, genders, experience levels, backgrounds, and perspectives—think, predict, learn, optimize, and ultimately overcome challenges to innovate. The project consisted of a 3-part NOVA documentary, Building Stuff, broadcast on PBS; an interactive, livestream/escape room on Twitch, designed to engage audiences in collaborative engineering challenges (95 total livestreams); short form videos; educational resources on PBS LearningMedia; and community outreach to engage young people with engineering resources and activities. The series reached 3.5 million viewers via TV and 277,000 viewers via streaming.

The project included original research to assess informal engineering learning in an under-explored informal learning space: Twitch.tv, a live-streamed gaming platform. As online livestreaming trends continue, opportunities for STEM media producers to engage with audiences in meaningful ways are emerging. The live feed and streamer/viewer interactions of livestreaming offers users the opportunity to engage synchronously and collaborate on games, puzzles, or other real-time problem solving. Thus, this research focused on understanding, measuring, and designing engaging informal learning environments on remote streaming platforms.