Designing Our World (DOW) was a four-year NSF-funded initiative in which the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) sought to promote girls’ pursuit of engineering careers through community-based programming, exhibition development, and identity research. The overarching aim of DOW was to engage girls ages 9–14 with experiences that illuminate the social, personally relevant, and altruistic nature of engineering. In addition to programming for girls, the project also included workshops for parents/caregivers, professional development for staff from community partners; and an exhibition
EvaluATE is a national resource center dedicated to supporting and improving the evaluation practices of approximately 250 ATE grantees across the country. EvaluATE conducts webinars and workshops, publishes a quarterly newsletter, maintains a website with a digital resource library, develops materials to guide evaluation work, and conducts an annual survey of ATE grantees. EvaluATE's mission is to promote the goals of the ATE program by partnering with projects and centers to strengthen the program's evaluation knowledge base, expand the use of exemplary evaluation practices, and support the continuous improvement of technician education throughout the nation. EvaluATE's goals associated with this proposal are to: (1) Ensure that all ATE Principal Investigators and evaluators know the essential elements of a credible and useful evaluation; (2) Maintain a comprehensive collection of online resources for ATE evaluation; (3) Strengthen and expand the network of ATE evaluation stakeholders; and (4) Gather, synthesize, and disseminate data about the ATE program activities to advance knowledge about ATE/technician education. The Center plans to produce a comprehensive set of evaluation resources to complement other services, engaging several community college-based Principal Investigators and evaluators in that process.
EvaluATE's products are informed by current research on evaluation, the National Science Foundation's priorities for the evaluation of ATE grants, and the needs of ATE PIs and evaluators for sound guidance that is immediately relevant and usable in their contexts. The fundamental nature of EvaluATE's work is geared toward supporting ATE grantees to use evaluation regularly to improve their work and demonstrate their impacts. All of EvaluATE's products are available to the public. EvaluATE's findings from the annual survey of ATE grantees aid in advancing understanding of the status of technician education and illuminate areas for additional research. The new survey investigates ATE grantees' work to serve underrepresented and special populations, including women, people of color, and veterans. Survey data are available upon request for research and evaluation purposes.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Lori WingateArlen GullicksonEmma PerkKelly RobertsonLyssa Becho
Makerspaces and engineering design spaces have proliferated in science museums, schools, libraries, and community settings at a rapid pace. However, there is a risk that some of the same inequities that exist in the engineering field are being replicated in these settings. Research has provided evidence of persistent gaps between boys' and girls' levels of interest in engineering as it has been traditionally represented in informal learning environments, particularly in Making and engineering spaces. This Research-In-Service to Practice project intends to address this gap by employing a design-based research approach to examine if and to what extent narrative elements can interest and engage middle school girls in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and promote equitable, effective engineering design experiences and practices. This work is significant, as it will build upon current research and conceptual understanding of how to design narrative-rich engineering design activities for informal learning spaces, especially for girls, and within museum drop-in experiential learning contexts. It will also contribute to the evidence base regarding how girls approach and choose to persist in solving engineering design problems. The 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.
The New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) in collaboration with the Amazeum in Bentonville, Arkansas, the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California, the Creativity Labs at Indiana University and a team of advisors will conduct the 30-month, design-based research project in two phases. In the first phase, NYSCI will garner ongoing input from its partners to develop parallel versions of six pairs of engineering design activities, one with narrative elements and one without. These activities will be iteratively tested in NYSCI's Design Lab, a 10,000 square foot exhibition devoted to hands-on exploration of engineering design. Several research questions will be explored, focused primarily on building evidence-based design knowledge, establishing appeal and comprehensibility, and understanding facilitation. Observational and interview data will be garnered from 30 girls aged 7-14 and their family groups for each of the twelve activities developed, totaling 360 girls in the study sample. The results of the research on the paired activities will be iterative and provide insight on how narrative elements can most effectively invite girls into sustained engagement with the core engineering concepts and practices highlighted in each activity. In the second phase, formative and summative evaluation will be conducted to study the impact of the narrative and non-narrative versions of the engineering design activities on participating girls' engagement and persistence, by contrasting the quality of girls' engagement across the two types of activities while they are implemented across three museum sites. Project deliverables include journal articles reporting on project findings; documentation of activities that meet project goals; design guidelines for exhibit and curriculum developers who are interested in using narrative effectively to frame engineering design activities; and practical guidance for facilitators seeking to ensure that they are supporting girls effectively as they explore those activities.
Girls met to engage with Through My Window twice each week after school. The afterschool program format provided a freer, less structured atmosphere than a classroom setting. Students extensively debated and investigated the questions and themes posed by the novel, Talk to Me. The meeting space had plenty of space for students to move around, as well as teachers who encouraged the expression of full emotional and intellectual enthusiasm for the story at hand.
Beginning in September 2015, with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) initiated the three-year project Latina SciGirls: Promoting Middle School-Age Hispanic Girls' Positive STEM Identity Development. The cornerstone of the project is a fourth season of the Emmy Award-winning television and transmedia project SciGirls, to premiere in 2017, in this case involving six half-hour SciGirls episodes filmed in Spanish showing groups of Hispanic girls and their Hispanic STEM mentors investigating science and engineering problems. The television
As part of the development work of Latina SciGirls, the independent evaluation firm Knight Williams Inc. conducted a front-end evaluation focused on gathering input from the project’s primary public audiences (Latina girls and their parents/guardians) and professional audiences (the project’s advisers and partners). A total of 86 participants representing these diverse audience perspectives were asked to review an episode of the SciGirls program Hábitat en Caos/Habitat Havoc and two role model scientist profile videos featuring Karin Block and Victoria Velez. Scheduled early in Year 1 of the
The independent evaluation team subsequently undertook a formative evaluation to provide the production team with feedback on issues that arose from the front-end evaluation findings and from tpt’s early production work on the first Season Four episode and STEM role model videos.
As part of the development work of Latina SciGirls, the independent evaluation firm Knight Williams Inc. conducted a front-end evaluation focused on gathering input from the project’s primary public audiences (Latina girls and their parents/guardians) and professional audiences (the project’s advisers and partners).
Appendix includes logic model.
This project will develop standardized, exportable and comparable assessment instruments and models for Women In Engineering (WIE) programs nationwide, thus allowing them to assess their program's activities and ultimately provide data for making well-informed evaluations.
To accomplish this goal, the principal investigators at the University of Missouri and Penn State University will work over a three-year period with their institutions' WIE programs and three cooperating programs at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Georgia Tech, and University of Texas at Austin. With these five programs that collectively represent a variety of private and public, years of experience for WIE directors and student body characteristics, the investigators will pilot, revise, implement, conduct preliminary data analysis and disseminate easy-to-access, reliable and valid assessment instruments. The principles of formative evaluation will be applied to all instruments and products. All institutions will use the same set of instruments, thus allowing them to have access to powerful benchmarking data in addition to the data from each of their respective institutions.
A prior project, the Women's Experience in College Engineering Project (WECE) sought to characterize the factors that influence women students' experiences and decisions by studying college environments, events and support programs that affect women's satisfaction with their engineering major, and their decisions to persist or leave these majors. In contrast to WECE's macro-level and student focus, this proposal's target audience is WIE directors, with a focus on WIE programs, not students.
Women in Engineering programs around the United States are a crucial part of our country's response to the need for more women in engineering professions. There are about 50 WIE programs nationwide. Half have expressed interest in this effort. WIE directors will benefit by having ready-made assessment tools that will allow them to collect data on programs, evaluate these programs, and make decisions on how to revise programs and / or redistribute limited resources to maximize overall program effectiveness. Data from these instruments will also provide substantiated evidence for administrators, advisory boards and potential funding agencies. Finally, because these instruments will be available nationwide, programs will have the opportunity to take advantage of powerful benchmarking data for their decision-making processes.
This project provides the next logical step in the national movement to recruit and retain women in engineering.
SciGirls Strategies is a National Science Foundation–funded project led by Twin Cities PBS (TPT) in partnership with St. Catherine University, the National Girls Collaborative, and XSci (The Experiential Science Education Research Collaborative) at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for STEM Learning. This three-year initiative aims to increase the number of high school girls recruited to and retained in fields where females are traditionally underrepresented: technical science, engineering, technology, and math (STEM) pathways. We seek to accomplish this goal by providing career and
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Rita KarlBradley McLainAlicia Santiago
Lack of diversity in science and engineering education has contributed to significant inequality in a workforce that is responsible for addressing today's grand challenges. Broadening participation in these fields will promote the progress of science and advance national health, prosperity and welfare, as well as secure the national defense; however, students from underrepresented groups, including women, report different experiences than the majority of students, even within the same fields. These distinctions are not caused by the students' ability, but rather by insufficient aspiration, confidence, mentorship, instructional methods, and connection and relevance to their cultural identity. The long-term vision of this project is to amplify the impact of a successful broadening participation model at the University of Maine, the Stormwater Research Management Team (SMART). This program trains students and mentors in using science and engineering skills and technology to research water quality in their local watershed. Students engage in numerous science and technology fields: engineering design, data acquisition, analysis and visualization, chemistry, environmental science, biology, and information technology. Students also connect with a diversity of professionals in water and engineering in government, private firms and non-profits. SMART has augmented the traditional science and engineering classroom by engaging students in guided mentored apprenticeships that address community problems.
Technical
This pilot project will form a collaborative and define a strategic plan for scale-up to a national alliance to increase the long-term success rate of underrepresented minority students in science, engineering, and related fields. The collaborative of multiple and varied organizations will align to collectively contribute time and resources to a pre-college educational pathway. There are countless isolated programs that offer short-term interventions for underrepresented and minority students; however, there is lack of organizational coordination for aligning current program offerings, sharing best practices, research results or program outcomes along the education to workforce pathway. The collaborative activities will focus on the transition grades (e.g., 4-5, 8, and high school) and emphasize relationships among skills, confidence, culture and future careers. Collaborative partners will establish a centralized infrastructure in each location to coordinate recruiting of invested community leaders, educators, and parents, around a common agenda by designing, deploying and continually assessing a stormwater-themed project that addresses their location and demographic specific needs. This collaborative community will consist of higher education faculty and students, K-12 students, their caregivers, mentors, educators, stormwater districts, state and national environmental protection agencies, departments of education, and other for-profit and non-profit organizations. The collaborative will address the need for research on mechanisms for change, collaboration, and negotiation regarding the greater participation of under-represented groups in the science and technology workforce.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mohamed MusaviVenkat BhethanabotlaCary JamesVemitra WhiteLola Brown
The Mississippi Alliance for Women in Computing (MAWC) project will identify factors that influence and motivate female students and female African American students in Mississippi to enroll and persist in an undergraduate engineering- or science-based computing major. There is a particular need for programming that is inclusive of women and women of color who are from the southern region of the United States. These students typically have less access to extracurricular activities that encourage computing, and are less likely to visualize themselves in a computing major or career. This proposed research is to help girls to know that computer science exists and what jobs in computer science are available with a degree in computer science. A rich environment exists in Mississippi for an alliance focused on building co-curricular and mentorship opportunities. A scalable pipeline model, expandable to a Southern Alliance for Women in Computing (SAWC), will be developed with three major objectives: to attract women and women of color to computing, to improve retention rates of women in undergraduate computing majors, and to help postsecondary women make the transition to the computing workforce. Activities to support these objectives include: scaling the National Center for Women and Information Technology Aspirations in Computing award program in Mississippi, expanding scholarships for Aspirations winners, expanding student-led computing outreach programs, establishing a Mississippi Black Girls Code chapter, informing and collaborating with the Computer Science for Mississippi initiative, creating a summer bridge and living-learning community for women in computing majors, and increasing professional development opportunities for women in computing through conferences, lunch and learn meetings, job shadowing, and internships.
The project will analyze whether the co-curricular activities of MAWC lead to computing self-efficacy and ultimately female students selecting to pursue and persist in computing majors and careers. In order to understand student participation and efficacy changes, data collection for this research will be through demographic and background surveys administered to women entering an undergraduate engineering- or science-based computing major at a university in Mississippi and student surveys and evaluations in MAWC-sponsored programs. Using discriminate analysis methods, specific research questions to be addressed are: 1) Which pre-collegiate experiences influenced them to enroll, 2) Which stakeholders influenced these girls in their decision-making process, and 3) What programs are effective in impacting their persistence in the major. Predictor variables for each respective research question are: pre-collegiate experiences, stakeholders, and programs. Outcome variables are: (a) a female undergraduate student with no involvement with MAWC programming, (b) MAWC activity participant, or (c) a MAWC participant having graduated with a bachelor?s degree in a STEM major. Results will complement published longitudinal research on the gendered and raced dimensions of computing literacy acquisition in Mississippi as well as research on effective CS role model programming.