Consideration of the needs of individuals with a wide range of disabilities is not always considered in the early design stages of an informal STEM learning (ISL) activity or program. The primary access approach for people with disabilities becomes the provision of accommodations once the ISL product or environment is created. In contrast, the Universal Design approach considers users with a wide range of characteristics throughout the design process and works to create products and environments that are accessible, usable, and inclusive. This project, called AccessISL, led by the University of Washington's DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology) Center and Museology Program, includes an academic museology program and local ISL sites, representing museums, zoos, aquariums, makerspaces, science centers, and other sites of informal STEM learning. Insights will be gained through the engagement of people with disabilities, museology graduate students and faculty, and ISL practitioners. The AccessISL project model, composed of a set of approaches and interventions, builds on existing research and theory in the fields of education science, change management, effective ISL practices, and inclusive design processes. The project will collect evidence of policies and practices (or lack thereof) that improve the inclusiveness of ISL with respect to a wide range of disabilities and considers approaches for the design and development of new strategies; explores what stakeholders need to make change happen; uncovers challenges to the adoption of inclusive practices in public ISL settings and explores ways to overcome them; and proposes relevant content that might be included in museology curriculum. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
This project addresses the following two objectives:
For ISL personnel and museology faculty: to increase knowledge, skills, and actions to make ISL programs, facilities, courses, and resources more welcoming and accessible to participants with disabilities and embed relevant practices within their work.
For postsecondary STEM students with disabilities and museology students: to increase knowledge and skills in advocating for ISL offerings that are welcoming and accessible to everyone, including those with a wide variety of disabilities, and to encourage individuals with disabilities to pursue careers in ISL.
The project employs a student-centered approach and a set of practices that embrace the social model of disability, social justice education, disability as a diversity issue, intersectionality, and Universal Design. A leadership team of interns--each member a STEM student with a disability or a museology graduate student--along with project staff will engage with the University of Washington's Museology Program to identify and implement strategies for making ISL activities and courses more welcoming and accessible to individuals with disabilities. An online community of practice will be developed from project partners and others nationwide. A one-day capacity building institute will be held to include presentations, student/personnel panels for sharing project and related experiences, and group discussions to explore issues and further identify systemic changes to make ISL programs more welcoming and accessible to individuals with disabilities. As prototypes of the AccessISL Model are developed, evaluation activities will primarily be formative (looking for strengths and weaknesses) and remedial (identifying/implementing changes that could be made to improve the model). The model will continue to be fine-tuned through formative evaluation. Evaluation of the model components will focus on the experience of a range of stakeholders in the project. Specifically, quantitative data collected will include levels and quality of engagement, accessibility recommendations and products developed, and delivery of ISL services. Qualitative data will be collected through observations, surveys, focus groups, interviews, and case studies.
AccessISL project products will include proceedings of an end-of-project capacity building institute, promising practices, case studies, a video, and other online resources to help ISL practitioners and museology faculty that will result in making future ISL opportunities more inclusive of people with disabilities. AccessISL will advance knowledge and ensure long-term impact using multiple strategies:
broadening the STEM participation of people with disabilities as well as women, racial/ethnic minorities, and other underrepresented groups through the application of universal design
strengthening associations and creating synergy and durable relationships among stakeholders,
encouraging teaching about disability, accessibility, and universal design in museology courses,
empowering students with disabilities and current and future ISL practitioners to advocate for accessible ISL and develops an infrastructure to promote accessible ISL programs nationwide, and
contributing to the body of promising practices with products that will (a) enhance understanding of issues related to the inclusion of people with disabilities in ISL programs and (b) promote inclusive practices.
Outcomes will benefit society by making STEM opportunities available to more people and enhancing STEM fields with the talents and perspectives of people with disabilities.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
This report summarizes the ideas and conversations of the CAISE Broadening Participation Task Force, which was led by the authors, along with James Bell, Principal Investigator and project director of CAISE (see informalscience.org/bp-task-force). The task force was instrumental in identifying key ideas and challenges to the field, providing edits and input into the report, developing and drafting the associated practice briefs, and piloting the materials.
Across the nation, many are undertaking efforts to significantly transform who participates in science, technology, engineering, and
Curiosity is a grant-funding programme from the Wellcome Trust with BBC Children in Need., and it provides funding to help youth organisations develop and deliver inspiring science activities for disadvantaged children and young people. This report looks at the key findings from the 32 projects funded during the first round.
The Round 1 projects were delivered by voluntary and community sector organisations, some of which were in partnership with ISL providers, and offered a variety of science opportunities from surveying local weather to building a green-powered race car. Many projects
Parents are vital players in raising youth’s awareness of the value of STEM and in brokering their participation in activities that build STEM competencies.
STEM Next Opportunity Fund is committed to ensuring that every child – especially girls, youth of color, kids in low-income communities, and youth with disabilities – has access to STEM experiences and the social capital that lead to greater opportunities in academics and careers. We believe family engagement is a game changer and offer this white paper to raise awareness of its importance and amplify promising practices.
As part of a grant from the National Science Foundation, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) is conducting regional STEM workshops in partnership with local science museums, entitled NFB STEM2U, for blind youth [youth], grades 3 – 6 and 9-12 [apprentices]. During the sixth and final regional workshop in Minneapolis, MN, the NFB operated two different programs simultaneously: one program for youth and a second program for their parents/caregivers. A third program, for the Science Museum of Minnesota staff, was conducted earlier to prepare the museum staff to assist with the youth program
The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), in partnership with scholars from Utah State University and educators from the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM), has developed the Spatial Ability and Blind Engineering Research (SABER) project to assess and improve the spatial ability of blind teens in order to broaden the participation of blind students in STEM fields.
Activities began this summer (2018) with a week-long, residential engineering design program for thirty blind high school students at NFB headquarters in Baltimore. The evaluation focused on perceptions of process and measures of
This poster was presented at the 2019 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It provides an overview of a project designed to broaden participation of blind students in engineering fields through the development of spatial ability skills and the showcasing of nonvisually accessible teaching methods and techniques.
The Signing Glossaries are six new apps researched and developed for families with at least one member who is deaf and hard of hearing. Each glossary provides access to thousands of signed terms and definitions encountered in visits to aquariums, botanical gardens, natural history museums, nature centers, science museums, and zoos.
Deaf and hard of hearing children typically have literacy levels that lag behind those of their hearing peers, making access to captions, labels, instructions, and information difficult. This, in combination with a lack of interpreters to sign material for them
This project explores augmented reality (AR) technology as a way to make STEM content accessible to Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) learners in "live" presentation settings found within science centers and museums. The current ways of providing communication and information access to DHH museum visitors require DHH learners to split their attention between the visual focus of the experience and the interpreter or captioning display. As a result, DHH learners are forced to decide which information to miss during live presentations, thus presentations may not be fully comprehended by the DHH learner. Furthermore, this issue perpetuates a lack of inclusivity and accessibility in informal STEM learning environments. The work focuses on investigating approaches to develop an AR platform with a near-eye display that will allow DHH visitors to receive signed or captioned instruction while still looking at and interacting with the intended exhibits. The new platform will allow for transmission of live and spontaneous instruction. Researchers will evaluate and recommend efficient ways to make information at science centers and museums accessible to the DHH population based on data collected from DHH learners. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program's Pilot and Feasibility Studies which seek new approaches to design and development of STEM learning to be accessible to all learners including underrepresented groups in informal environments.
The researchers will investigate the following research question: how can the use of Augmented Reality (AR) as a method of support service delivery improve the engagement of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) adolescent learners in semi-structured learning environments? Both formative and summative evaluations will be conducted from two different angles: (1) an engineering-centric evaluation focused on technical development and (2) an educational-research centric evaluation focused on pilot studies on user experiences, attitudes, and learning outcomes. Both qualitative and quantitative data on the use of this technology will be collected. The evaluation methods include attitudinal surveys (pre/post), ethnographic observations, pre/post tests of content knowledge, and semi-structured group and individual interviews. This project will be conducted by researchers in the Center on Access Technology at National Technical Institute for the Deaf, one of the colleges of Rochester Institute of Technology, in partnership with the Rochester Museum & Science Center, which includes the Rochester Challenger Learning Center. This project represents a first step in setting future directions for research & development and to make educational materials more accessible to the DHH community.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Wendy DannelsSara SchleyBrian TragerMel Chua
Diversity among scientists can foster better science, yet engaging and retaining a diversity of students and researchers in science has been difficult. Actions that promote diversity are well defined, organizations are increasingly focused on diversity, and many institutions are developing initiatives to recruit and enroll students from underrepresented minority (URM) groups (racial, ethnic, gender, sexual identity, or persons with disabilities). Yet representation of URM groups in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields lag behind demographics in society at large, and many
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Chandler PurittyLynette R. StricklandEanas AliaBenjamin BlonderEmily KleinMichael T. KohlEaryn McGeeMaclovia QuintanaRobyn E. RidleyBeth TellmanLeah R. Gerber
Slides from the January 30, 2018 Webinar present information for preparing proposals for the NSF INCLUDES Alliance Solicitation (NSF 18-529). Includes a brief description of NSF INCLUDES, an explanation of Collaborative Change strategies and the NSF INCLUDES 5 elements of collaborative change, proposal recommendations, details on the NSF cooperative agreements and the NSF Merit Review criteria, and provides useful resources.