The Impact of participating in an Afterschool Professional Training Program on Youth Employees

Abstract

Afterschool professional training programs for youth can provide valuable opportunities to learn hands-on real-world technical and social skills while earning income. Understanding how to design, implement, and evaluate these programs can inform future innovative ways to engage youth in technology-rich learning and motivate them to pursue technical career pathways. Furthermore, it is important to understand how youth experience these programs and reflect on their own learning. In this study, we collaborated with a community-organization providing technology-rich learning experiences for youth to setup an afterschool professional training program involving running a 3D printshop for youth focused on digital modeling and fabrication. Over two years, two cohorts of youth (a total of 12 participants) participated in the project and worked at the 3D printshop at tasks that included interacting with clients from the local community, completing 3D modeling and 3D printing tasks, maintaining digital fabrication equipment, and representing the printshop at different outreach events. In this paper, we report on findings from qualitative exit interviews with the youth and focus on understanding the impact of participating in the program from their perspectives. The results show a range of motivations for youth to interview for the experience, including family and peer support, interest in learning skills, affinity for the organization, and desire for income. Additionally, we found that the experience increased youths’ confidence in their ability to pursue technical careers, including those in digital fabrication, engineering, and management, and demonstrated a career path that can be both technical and rewarding. Youth also described learning how to effectively troubleshoot different issues and collaborate with others to address problems as skills they gained during the program. Finally, youth described how their communication skills and ability to work in a team had significantly improved through the program and described how specialized roles helped them stay motivated and engaged by learning new skills during their experience. We conclude with several recommendations for creating similar future professional development programs for youth.