Stories Pilot results
Inside our first school pilot.
What 52 Year 9 students did, what they told us, and what we're changing.
Pilot results
- 48 of 51
- students who rated the session liked or loved it
- 3 to 31
- students who said they know quite a lot about tech careers, before and after
- 52
- Year 9 students from two Perth schools, September 2026
What we ran
On 24 September 2026, 52 Year 9 students from two Perth schools came to the UWA Venture space for a 45 minute session. It was built around the moth camouflage research behind Mission 001, with a look at the different paths into technology careers.
This was an early, facilitated version. It ran before the Mission 001 web app was finished, so it tells us how students responded to the ideas and the research, not to the finished software.
How we measured it
- Every student filled in the same short paper survey before and after the session. Cards were anonymous and matched in pairs.
- Ratings were on a scale of 1 to 5. "Liked or loved it" means a rating of 4 or 5.
- 51 of the 52 students gave a rating. A teacher's card is excluded from every number.
- Gender as self-reported. 24 girls, 25 boys, 1 non-binary, 2 not stated. The session was not framed as a girls in tech activity.
This is an early pilot, not a controlled study. It measures how students felt straight after one session, not long-term change.
What we found
- 48 of 51 liked or loved it. That's 94%.
- Tech careers knowledge went up. Before the session, 3 students said they knew quite a lot or a lot about careers in technology. After, 31 did. 42 rated their knowledge higher than before, 8 the same and 1 lower.
- Students who weren't interested still liked it. All 9 students who started out not at all or only a little interested in tech rated the session liked it or loved it.
- The words changed. We asked for three words students think of for "technology". Before, most named devices like computers and phones. Device words dropped from 38 mentions to 6. After, 30 students used creativity or design words and 28 used innovation or problem solving words.
- Tech and nature. Students who strongly agreed that technology can be used to explore nature went from 18 to 32.
The pathway to STEM and technology isn't purely about being good at maths or physics or coding, it can be explored through multiple things too.
Year 9 studentWhat wasn't perfect
One school was cooler than the other. Nobody there ticked "loved it", one student rated it "disliked", and another wrote that it could be more interactive. That was fair. The session was mostly a facilitated activity, not hands-on software.
What we're changing
- Mission 001 is now hands-on from the first minute. Students race a computer vision model to find hidden moths before anything else.
- Every step now asks students to do something, not just watch.
What's next
More pilots are underway with Year 9 to Year 12 students across Perth and regional WA. We'll publish the combined results here.