Pathways: Measuring the Impact of Participation in Informal STEM Programming on University Students

Effective communication of science to the public by scientists is a desired and sought after attribute. This project which is working with graduate and undergraduate students in Physics will determine what interventions are best in assessing communication and attitudinal capacities in this cadre. Further, the project will determine what strategies are best at remediation. Finally, the successes will be generalized with regard to interventions and remediation to other Physics programs across the country and perhaps to other disciplines in the STEM fields. There are a variety of factors that contribute to effective communications with public audiences. Some of those factors include audience characteristics and teacher/mentor capabilities. This project will ascertain the issues in the latter teacher/mentor capacities. They will assess the mentor's baseline skills regarding communication, teaching and emergent attitudes. These are considered separately as each contributes uniquely to the effectiveness of communication. In the communications skills section, the objective will be to determine initially if the mentors are using any one of the following models: deficit, meaning the mentor is the expert and the participants are not informed; dialogue, where there is more back and forth between mentor and participant; and finally participatory interactions, where there is full integration of participant and mentor ideas. Once the baseline is established, the investigators will introduce mechanisms for remedial intervention with the student mentors to determine if and what types of changes can be made to improve communication directed toward public understanding of STEM concepts and ideas. Finally, the researchers will seek to determine if these interventions have affects beyond the immediate challenges such as career discussions, participation in classes and/or written products.

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