2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Online engineering programs offered by public libraries hold great potential for families and children in rural areas, where access to engineering learning resources is often limited. However, these programs can present challenges for librarians in providing support to families needing assistance, as online environments restrict their ability to directly observe and provide just-in-time support. Guided by sociocultural perspectives of learning, we conduct a case study of four caregiver-child groups to examine the type of frustrations families experience in online engineering programs and identify strategies to enhance participation of online engineering programs for children and caregivers. Findings demonstrate that the source of frustration influences the level of participation of the child and caregiver in the engineering design process. This study illustrates four types of frustrations experienced by children—difficulties in solution planning, material handling, achieving desired outcomes, and time constraints—as well as caregivers’ frustrations that stemmed from planning and collaborating during the making challenge with the child. Findings highlight different strategies that caregivers used to mitigate their frustrations, such as providing suggestions, assistance, and emotional support, which helped maintain the child’s engagement and motivation to complete the engineering challenge. Our findings provide insights on how to effectively design online engineering programs that guide and support rural families to develop positive attitudes toward engineering.