Thoughts About the Outreach Project "Science on the Frontier: Expanding the Limits of Knowledge"

Ana Soja^1*

¹Physics, Federal Institute of Mato Grosso do Sul, Corumbá, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil

* Presenter:Ana Soja, email:ana.soja@ifms.edu.br

Science on the Frontier: Expanding the Limits of Knowledge was an outreach project focused on young girls that aimed to promote interest in Science. We used interactive practical activities in the virtual environment to create a journey to advanced topics such as Black Holes and Relativity, in a language accessible to students. At the same time we celebrated female participation in Science in order to make the students identify themselves with women scientists. Our target audience were 8th to 12th grade students, especially female (75%) and enrolled in the public school (50%). The activities ran from October 2020 to September 2021, divided between study groups and synchronous virtual classes, always mediated by advanced students. The project was successful, being rated with the highest score by the participants. The challenges of promoting interactive activities in a virtual environment was overcome, since this was the most prominent point among the participants. In this presentation we show what strategies we used to achieve such result and also the ideas that didn't work satisfactory. 

Keywords: outreach program , teaching advanced physics, equity