Despite decades of policies and programs meant to increase the representation of girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), girls and women of color still represent a much smaller percent of the STEM workforce than they do in the US population. This lack of representation is preventing the US STEM workforce from reaching its true potential. Intersecting inequalities of gender, race, ethnicity, and class, along with stereotypes associated with who is successful in STEM (i.e., White men), lead to perceptions that they do not belong and may not succeed in STEM. Ultimately, these issues hinder girls’ STEM identity development (i.e., sense of belonging and future success), lead to a crisis of representation for women of color and have compounding impacts on the STEM workforce. Research suggests there are positive impacts of in-person STEM learning after-school and out-of-school time programs on girls’ sense of belonging. The increasing need for online learning initiated by the COVID-19 pandemic means it is vital to investigate girls’ STEM identity development within an online community. Thus, the project will refine and test approaches in online learning communities to make a valuable impact on the STEM identity development of girls of color by 1) training educators and role models on exemplary approaches for STEM identity development; 2) implementing a collaborative, girl-focused Brite Online Learning Community that brings together 400 girls ages 13-16 from a minimum of 10 sites across the United States; and 3) researching the impact of the three core approaches -- community building, authentic and competence-demonstrating hands-on activities, and interactive learning with women role models -- on participating girls’ STEM identities in online settings.
The mixed methods study is guided by guided by Carlone & Johnson’s model of STEM identity involving four constructs: competence, performance, recognition, and sense of belonging. Data collection sources for the quantitative portion of the project include pre- and post-surveys, while qualitative data sources will be collected from six case study sites and will include observations, focus group interviews with girls, artifacts created by girls and educators, educator interviews, and open-ended survey responses. This approach will enable the research team to determine how and the extent to which the Brite Online Learning Community influences STEM identity constructs, interpreting which practices lead to meaningful outcomes that can be linked to the development of STEM identity for participating girls in an online environment. The products of this work will include research-based, tested Brite Practices and a toolkit for fostering girls’ interest, identification, and long-term participation in STEM. The resulting products will increase the reach of informal STEM education programming to girls of color across the nation as online spaces can reach more girls, potentially increasing the representation of women of color in the STEM workforce.
This Innovations in Development project aims to foster the development of STEM identity among a diverse group of middle school students and, in turn, motivate them to pursue in STEM interests and careers. Vegas STEM Lab, led by a team of investigators from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, will employ a mix of online and on-site activities to introduce students to engineering methods in the context of the entertainment and hospitality (E&H) industry that is the lifeblood of Las Vegas. Investigators will collaborate with local resorts, multimedia designers, and arts institutions to offer field experiences for students to interview, interact with, and learn from local experts. The Lab will help youth overcome prevailing beliefs of STEM as boring and difficult, boost their confidence as STEM-capable individuals, and expose them to the exciting STEM careers available in their hometown. UNLV engineering undergrads will serve as near-peer mentors to the middle school students, guiding them through Lab activities and acting as role models. Investigators will measure student learning and engagement over the course of the Vegas STEM Lab experience with the aim of understanding how the Lab model—with its rich set of activities and interpersonal interactions set in the local E&H industry—can cultivate STEM identity development and encourage students to pursue STEM pathways. Despite the project’s hyperlocal focus on the Las Vegas community, if successful, other cities and towns may learn from and adapt the Lab model for use in their youth development programs.
Vegas STEM Lab will provide online materials for students’ STEM learning during the academic year followed by on-site visits and hands-on project development during a three-week summer experience. The Lab will run for three years with cohorts of 40 students each (N=120) with the aim of iteratively improving its activities and outcomes from year to year. The local school district will help recruit middle school students who have demonstrated low interest in STEM to participate in the Lab, ensuring that participants reflect the demographic makeup of the Las Vegas community in terms of race and ethnicity, socio-economic status, and gender. Summer activities will take students behind the scenes of the city’s major E&H venues; investigate the workings of large-scale displays, light shows, and “smart hospitality” systems; and then build their own smaller scale engineering projects. Investigators will employ the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI) framework to study how intentionally designed Lab experiences shape students’ understanding of themselves, their future aspirations, and their grasp of the scientific enterprise. Summer activities will be integrated into the online learning platform at the end of each year of Vegas STEM Lab, and in the final year of the project, workshops will train local educators to use the platform in either formal or informal learning settings. Materials and research findings produced through this work will be disseminated to middle school teachers and afterschool care providers, and shared with researchers through academic publications and conferences.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Emma RegentovaVenkatesan MuthukumarJonathan HilpertSi Jung Kim
Peer production projects involve people in many tasks, from editing articles to analyzing datasets. To facilitate mastery of these practices, projects offer a number of learning resources, ranging from project-defined FAQsto individually-oriented search tools and communal discussion boards. However, it is not clear which project resources best support participant learning, overall and at different stages of engagement. We draw on Sørensen's framework of forms of presence to distinguish three types of engagement with learning resources: authoritative, agent-centered and communal. We assigned
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Corey Brian JacksonCarsten OsterlundKevin CrowstonMahboobeh HarandiLaura Trouille
This award takes an innovative approach to an ongoing, pervasive, and persistent societal issue: women are still drastically underrepresented in computing careers. This project targets middle school-aged girls because it is a time when many of them lose interest and confidence in pursuing technical education and computing careers. This project will design, develop, and deploy a one-week experience focused on middle school girls that targets this issue with a novel combination of teaching techniques and technology. The project will use wearable computing devices to support girls' social interactions as they learn computing and solve technical challenges together. The goals of the project are to raise interest, perceived competence, and involvement in the computational ability of girls. Additionally, the project aims to increase a sense of computational community for girls that makes pursuing computational skills more relevant to their identities and lives, and that helps continued participation in computing. The project will deploy a one-week experience four times per year with a socioeconomically diverse range of campers. The project will also develop a 'program in a box' kit that can be broadly used by others wishing to deliver a similar experience for girls.
The planned research will determine if a one-week experience that uses social wearable construction in the context of live-action role play can use the mediating process of computational community formation to positively impact middle school girls' engagement with and interest in computation. Computational community is defined as girls engaging together in the process of learning computation, trading resources and knowledge, and supporting growth. Research participants will include 100 6th to 9th-grade girls. At least 75% of the participants will be either low income, first-generation college-bound, or underrepresented in higher education. Students will be recruited through the longstanding partnerships with title one schools in the Salinas Valley, the Educational Partnership Center, and in the Pajaro Valley Unified School district, where 82% of the students are Hispanic/Latinx, 42% are English Learners, and 73% are eligible for free or reduced lunch. The research questions are: 1) Does the proposed experience increase girls' self-reported competence, self-efficacy, and interest in computational skills and careers? and 2) Will the proposed experience lead to activity-based evidence of learning and integration of computational skills at the group social level? The project will use a mixed-methods, design-based research approach which is an iterative design process to rapidly collect and analyze data, and regularly discuss the implications for practice with the design team. Data will be collected using observations, interviews, focus groups, surveys, and staff logs. Quantitative data will be analyzed using frequencies, means, and measures of dispersion will be applied to survey data from both time points. Pearson correlation coefficients will be used to describe the bivariate relationship between continuous factors. ANOVAs will assess whether there are significant differences in continuous measures across groups. Qualitative data will be analyzed using a constant comparison method.
This Innovations in Development award 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.
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.
Participants in this study reported a variety of resources used in the past to learn to code in Apex, including online tutorials, one-day classes sponsored by Salesforce, and meet-up groups focused on learning. They reported various difficulties in learning through these resources, including what they viewed as the gendered nature of classes where the men already seemed to know how to code—which set a fast pace for the class, difficulty in knowing “where to start” in their learning, and a lack of time to practice learning due to work and family responsibilities. The Coaching and Learning Group
This project aims to broaden participation in STEM education among underserved populations through innovative and inclusive approaches to technology education. The project is designed to enhance knowledge and comfort with technology and develop computational thinking among women who were formerly incarcerated and are now seeking to reenter the workforce or adjust to their lives outside the criminal justice system ("women in transition") in the Midwest. While women have become the fastest growing segment of the incarcerated population, prison education and reentry programs are not well prepared to respond to this influx. Women in transition are rarely exposed to STEM education and they are generally isolated from the digital world while in prison. Consequently, they face post-incarceration challenges in accessing and using rapidly changing digital technologies. Against this backdrop, this three-year technology education project will aim to help women in transition in Kansas and Missouri develop STEM skills relevant to job applications and post-incarceration adjustments. The project may serve as a template for building evidence-based workforce preparation efforts in informal settings, and the concurrent online peer networking and app development may also facilitate adaptation for and scaling to other regions and other similarly digitally disadvantaged populations. This project is funded by the 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 project design is informed by the research team's past experiences offering technology education to women in transition and other underserved populations in the Midwest. The design includes three interrelated aspects: (1) technology education, (2) web/mobile app development, and (3) original empirical research. The research team will offer hybrid (online and offline) technology training programs to 300 women in transition in Kansas and Missouri. Learners will attend weekly face-to-face technology classes at different levels (introductory, intermediate, and advanced) at public libraries. A member-only online site and an accompanying mobile application for online tutorials and virtual meet-ups will enhance exposure to different types of technologies. Starting with interest-based technology topics including online resume building, information verification, and identity protection, the team will introduce women to deeper STEM topics including elementary coding skills and computational thinking. Empirical research will examine how different modalities of offering technology education are associated with learning outcomes for women participating in the program and the association of increasing knowledge and skills in digital technologies with self-efficacy, perceived social support, employment, and reduced recidivism.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Hyunjin SeoHannah BrittonMegha RamaswamyBaek-Young ChoiSejun Song
Teen Conservation Leadership is a major integration and expansion of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's existing teen education programs (Student Oceanography Club, Young Women in Science and Student Guides). The project is growing and enhancing these programs through the following activities: - Service-Learning and Leadership Activities, including: Guest Service Track: professional development and training as interpreters Camp and Club Track: serving as a mentor for other participants Program Track: assisting in the delivery of programs - Conservation and Science Activities, including participating in and leading projects with local organizations, and participating in technologically facilitated outdoor learning experiences - Teen Network and Technology Activities, including onsite networking and information sharing through Web 2.0 technology The project will reach 930 teens. Each teen will provide 200 service-learning hours per year. The sequential nature of this project will encourage many teens to participate for multiple years.
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.
The mixed methods randomized experimental study assessed a model of engagement and education that examined the contribution of SciGirls multimedia to fifth grade girls’ experience of citizen science. The treatment group (n = 49) experienced 2 hours of SciGirls videos and games at home followed by a 2.5 hour FrogWatch USA citizen science session. The control group (n = 49) experienced the citizen science session without prior exposure to SciGirls. Data from post surveys and interviews revealed that treatment girls, compared to control girls, demonstrated significantly greater interest in their
SciGirls' (Season'Three) is a multimedia project that presents videos and games designed to engage and educate millions of children about citizen science. Multimedia Research, an independent evaluation group, implemented a summative evaluation that assessed a model of citizen science engagement and education that examined the contribution of SciGirls multimedia to preteen girls' experience of citizen science.
NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) explores the Earth, the Sun, our solar system, the galaxy and beyond through four SMD divisions: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Planetary Science and Astrophysics. Alongside NASA scientists, teams of education and public outreach (EPO) specialists develop and implement programs and resources that are designed to inspire and educate students, teachers, and the public about NASA science.