The self-serve version of the ProjectBoard platform makes it easy to develop and document project work and then showcase it virtually to private or public communities.
Most engineers start out young: whether that means building bridges and dams in the backyard using sticks and scrap wood, or taking apart a radio or a toaster and (hopefully) putting them back together again just to see how they work. For many, the love of all things science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) is a lifelong commitment—from the classroom to the boardroom.
If you’re over 30 and working in STEM, the odds are good that somewhere in your house (or your parents’ house) is a bin filled with old school projects: essays, lab notes, presentation boards—all the breadcrumbs that lead from your earliest days as a budding engineer or scientist right up to graduation and beyond. Depending on how far you go, that might include newspaper clippings and—who knows—maybe a patent or two as well. Anyone who sits down with all this stuff could piece together a lot about you and your career. Of course, they’d have to find it first.
How many science fair projects have ended up in the trash after an overzealous spring cleaning?
That was probably the fate of the wind tunnel I made in high school.
But just think of all those kids who turned their high school science fair projects into real-world applications; in some cases, these projects might even form the basis for a start-up company. (It happens more often than you’d expect.) With the right project development and virtual display platform, you could preserve a record of the STEM project from the sharing of its earliest inspiration, building a portfolio for a future career and possibly all the way to a commercial product.
Celebrating the lifecycle of a project is the big idea behind engineering.com‘s ProjectBoard Platform, the place for STEM minds to develop and display their projects. “ProjectBoard aims to bring communities together from the earliest of ideation to the polished presentation of a project,” explains Lauren Baldesarra, Chief Product Officer and Co-founder of ProjectBoard. “The platform is specially designed to help visually communicate and organize that (sometimes messy) process.”
That’s one reason major organizations are using ProjectBoard today.
Projects on ProjectBoard
The Ohio Academy of Science is redefining all of its in-classroom project reviews and event programs by using ProjectBoard to provide equality and access to pre-collegiate students across the state.
In Canada, Youth Science Canada uses the platform for its national science fair and all affiliated fairs, with laudable projects such as this one about using algorithms to determine an asteroid’s physical properties and gauge the success of deflecting it from a very bright thirteen-year-old.
Globally, the platform hosts the virtual companion to the Olympics of Science Fairs: The Society for Science’s International Science and Engineering Fair. This event includes outstanding projects, such as this modelling of glioblastoma multiforme tumor growth and this year’s winner, a new system for detecting exoplanets.
For big, highly customized experiences such as these, the ProjectBoard team works closely with partners to create something special and unique for their community. Of course, not everyone who’s running STEM project programs has the budget or the specific requirements for such a bespoke approach.
Enter ProjectBoard+
The new self-serve version of ProjectBoard enables anyone to build a virtual complement to an existing in-person event or host a completely virtual project showcase. “We’ve heard loud and clear that many communities that want to use ProjectBoard don’t have the budget or time that others may be able to dedicate,” Baldesarra explains. “So, with ProjectBoard+ we have a free version for anyone that will grow the playing field to include those STEM voices that may not have had a stage before.”
Managing costs is an important part of this equation, but so is is the commitment to technical accessibility for those that might not be as tech-savvy. “That is extremely important to us,” explains Baldesarra. “ That our community can build a branded experience, manage project submissions and then showcase and share those projects as easy as possible. If it’s complicated or convoluted, no one will use it!”
Fortunately, for anyone who takes a tour of the platform, the ease of creating a ProjectBoard+ Project Showcase should become apparent almost immediately. From the moment you log in, there are only a few steps between you and having a live event that you can invite anyone to join. Setting up the essential components, including design elements and a custom URL, takes as little as 15 minutes.
Once you launch your event, you can invite others simply by sending them the URL and getting them to register on the platform to start a project submission. You can also go back and change virtually every aspect of your event once it’s live, with the exceptions of the URL and the project template.
“The Project template library allows you to choose which type of showcase you’d like to host, and what components participants need to complete before they submit their project.” says Baldesarra. “It’s personalized, so whether you’re a local science fair organizer, a large corporation doing a company-wide employee brainstorm or a teacher in a classroom doing a project review, there are project templates ready for you to use.”
The platform is currently in a research preview, with key existing users trying it out and providing feedback. According to Baldesarra, the goal is to stress-test the platform as well as gather user insights to refine its basic features before launching in late-September.
After that, the ProjectBoard team will continue to add new features, such as project categories, tools for judging projects and additional functionalities for sponsorships. In the long-term, ProjectBoard+ will support the continued development of the platform’s original vision. “We’ve always had a very simple mission,” says Baldesarra. “We want to build the world’s largest STEM community and connect them with like-minds to solve the world’s greatest problems through the projects they do. That’s the real value of ProjectBoard and ProjectBoard+… and we’re just getting started!”
Visit https://projectboard.world/ or contact the ProjectBoard team at https://projectboard.world/contact to learn more.
