October 2018 additions to InformalScience.org

It was a busy month for resource submissions from the InformalScience.org community. See what’s new in our round-up of new additions in October.

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Learning Sciences

1. The report, How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures offers an updated look at the constellation of influences that affect individual learning. From the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Broadening Participation in STEM

2. The 2017 GENIAL conference (Generating Engagement and New Initiatives for All Latinos) brought practitioners, community leaders, diversity-focused organization staff, researchers, and media/marketing specialists to consider strategies for increasing Latino participation in informal STEM learning. Read the final evaluation report.

Media and Film

3. KQED, in partnership with Jacobs Media Strategies, the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School and Texas Tech University, and several other public media partners conducted the first-ever survey of millennial's science media habits, curiosity, and cultural beliefs.

4. The Anthropologist, a film by Ironbound Films, Inc. focuses on the impact of climate change on indigenous cultures around the world. The summative evaluation discusses findings from surveys with general audiences, as well as viewers in college and high school.

Youth Programs

5. Techbridge Girls, a program that works to expand the academic and career options for girls in STEM, posted several evaluation reports spanning from 2014 through 2017.

6. Science Education recently published an article on engineering identity in teen girls participating in an afterschool engineering program.

7. The Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance published an interim report from a September 2018 conference on out-of-school STEM learning in rural settings.

8. Growing Beyond Earth, a citizen science project engaging middle and high school students in botany experiments in partnership with NASA researchers, added it’s Year 2 evaluation report.

Museums and Exhibitions

9. The Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Experience Studies (COVES) project works to construct an infrastructure for collaboration, which will unite science centers across the country in the systematic collection, analysis, and reporting of visitor experience data. Their Year 2 evaluation report presents aggregated data and findings collected between July 2017 and June 2018 from multiple science centers in the United States and Canada.

10. Design Build Fly, an exhibition and program series that explores what happens behind-the-scenes in Wichita’s aircraft plants, shared the summative evaluation of their program and exhibits.

Public Engagement with Science and Science Communication

11. As part of its Building with Biology initiative, the Museum of Science, Boston developed a new guide for creating conversations between scientists and the public to engage in mutual learning and societal decision-making.

12. In a new publication from The Kavli Foundation workshop series, Support Systems for Scientists' Communication and Engagement, Oregon State University’s Center for Research on Lifelong STEM provides a brief landscape of the university systems and people supporting scientists in their public engagement efforts.

13. The project, Indianapolis as a Living Laboratory: Science Learning For Resilient Cities, which investigates informal science service learning at a city scale, added several new resources including research studies and evaluation instruments.  

14. Legacy magazine, a publication of the National Association for Interpretation, shared its special issue on Communicating Science which deals with the challenges of making science accessible, engaging, and relevant to people visiting interpretive sites.