About

Mission:
The mission of the Culturally Situated Design Tools (CSDT) team is to improve education, justice, and equality through new STEM+C educational methods.

Concept:
By eliminating misconceptions about race and gender in STEM+C, engaging students, and working with teachers, CSDTs can simultaneously teach science, empower students, and change perspectives.

History:
CSDTs grew out of the field of Ethnomathematics back in 2000. It developed into a series of Java applets which could be used by teachers in various schools to engage students on math topics.
As Java applets were phased out of use, it was switched to build on Snap! by adding new core components to incorporate culture (CSnap), and expanded to include computer science and general science topics.

Team:
CSDTs are the brain child of Dr. Ron Eglash, Professor in the School of Information at The University of Michigan, and his Co-PIs: Dr. Audrey Bennett. They have been assisted by a dedicated team of staff, graduate, and undergraduate students at the University of Michigan and previously at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. This work has been supported by the National Science Foundation.

Publications:
Here are some of the CSDT team's selected academic publications.

Contact:
You can contact us at csdtdevelopers@umich.edu.

Disclaimer:
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation through NSF grant #1640014. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.