RISES (Re-energize and Invigorate Student Engagement through Science) is a coordinated suite of resources including 42 interactive English and Spanish STEM videos produced by Children's Museum Houston in coordination with the science curriculum department at Houston ISD. The videos are aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, and each come with a bilingual Activity Guide and Parent Prompt sheet, which includes guiding questions and other extension activities.
Informal STEM education institutions seek to engage broader cross sections of their communities to address inequities in STEM participation and remain relevant in a multicultural society. In this chapter, we advance the role that evaluation can play in helping the field adopt more inclusive practices and achieve greater equity than at present through evaluation that addresses sociopolitical contexts and reflects the perspectives and values of non-dominant communities. To do this for specific projects, we argue that evaluation should privilege the voices and lived experiences of non-dominant
This third and final report reflects on the entire three-year grant period. It offers the External Review Team’s overall assessment and observations about the accomplishments and challenges experienced by the Child Trends Team while implementing the proof-of-concept study. It further presents several open questions and opportunities for future consideration.
The Miami Science Museum, in collaboration with Ideum and the Institute for Learning Innovation, is designing and developing an interactive multi-user exhibit that allows visitors to explore the global dimensions and local impacts of climate change. The exhibit will raise public understanding about the underlying science, the human causes, and the potential impacts of climate change by combining the attraction of a 4-foot spherical display with a user-controlled interface that lets visitors control the sphere and choose from a range of global and local content they wish to explore. A particular focus is on climate-related impacts on coastal communities, including the dangers posed by rising sea level and the possibility of more intense hurricanes. The project emphasizes engagement of diverse, multigenerational audiences through development of an interface that is fully bilingual and that promotes social interaction. The open-source learning module will be adaptable by other museums, to explore climate impacts specific to their region.
Child Trends is a nonprofit organization focused on improving the lives of children and their families by conducting research and sharing the resulting knowledge with practitioners and the public. In this project, Child Trends will conduct research and development to launch a Child Trends News Service aimed at providing news reports that feature social science child-centric research. The resulting work is designed to improve outcomes for at-risk children, particularly Latinos, the largest and fastest-growing minority group among U.S. children. Working with a professional news syndication company, the Child Trends News Service will produce engaging reports for key news media outlets that feature the latest actionable social science research related to behaviors that help mitigate negative child outcomes associated with poverty, lack of education, violence, among other challenges. Child Trends will draw attention to the reports through social media and outreach to stakeholders. By airing these reports on local television news programs in English and Spanish, millions of people will have greater access to this information. This is early R&D work to demonstrate that local television stations will air these stories and to examine the audience impact—how does accessing this social science research through preferred media channels influence news audiences’ knowledge and attitudes toward specific social science research? The study will also delve deeper to better understand how news might, or might not, motivate behavioral change. The study will provide valuable lessons to the informal science education and the STEM communication science field.
The overarching aim of this project is to use commercial news to reach populations, especially Latinos, who have historically been underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and careers. The goals of the project are to:
* Leverage mass media news outlets to effectively communicate developments in social science research on child well-being and development to Latino audiences.
* Advance the field of informal STEM learning by exploring how the public interacts with actionable social science child research.
* Expand the reach and application of the news products through strategic collaborations with provider organizations serving at-risk Latino families; the child research and STEM fields; and other organizations working on Latino family issues.
Activities include the development and formative testing of the news service, the qualitative and quantitative testing of the news service's impact on audiences, and evaluation of the implementation of the project's components. The quantitative research, using a control group and treatment group, will work to establish preliminary evidence that the Child Trends News Service will result in changes in viewers' knowledge, attitudes, and intent to adopt behaviors related to child-centric social science research. The Child Trends' project team will be informed by an Advisory Board and Technical Working Group as well by working closely with Abriendo Puertas, the largest U.S. parenting education program for low-income Latino parents. Child Trends will partner with Ivanhoe Broadcast News to produce and distribute the materials. Group I&I Consultancy will evaluate the project. In year-two, Child Trends will produce a research brief on lessons learned and research outcome measures. The proposed research and development will be conducted over a two-year period; findings will inform ongoing service and additional research.
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.
In 2010 EarthSky Communications Inc. was awarded a broad implementation grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) entitled Proyecto de Implementacion Amplia EarthSky en Español (EarthSky in Spanish Broad Implementation Project). In partnership with the Spanish media company Univision Communications Inc. and a national Advisory Committee of Hispanic scientists, educators, and media experts, EarthSky proposed to present science information and scientist interviews to Spanish-preferring U.S. Hispanics via short video programs distributed on television and the Internet. Under the Broad
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Knight Williams Inc.Valerie Knight-WilliamsDeborah ByrdRachel TeelDivan WilliamsRoxana HernandezEric AndersonGabriel SimmonsSauleh Rahbari
The Exploratorium, in collaboration with the Boys and Girls Club Columbia Park (BGC) in the Mission District of San Francisco, is implementing a two-year exploratory project designed to support informal education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) within underserved Latino communities. Building off of and expanding on non-STEM-related efforts in a few major U.S. cities and Europe, the Exploratorium, BGC, and residents of the District will engage in a STEM exhibit and program co-development process that will physically convert metered parking spaces in front of the Club into transformative public places called "parklets." The BGC parklet will feature interactive, bilingual science and technology exhibits, programs and events targeting audiences including youth ages 8 - 17 and intergenerational families and groups primarily in the Mission District and users of the BGC. Parklet exhibits and programs will focus on STEM content related to "Observing the Urban Environment," with a focus on community sustainability. The project explores one approach to working with and engaging the public in their everyday environment with relevant STEM learning experiences. The development and evaluation processes are being positioned as a model for possible expansion throughout the city and to other cities.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. The Lost Ladybug Project (LLP) is a Cornell University citizen science project that connects science to education by using ladybugs to teach non-scientists concepts of biodiversity, invasive species, and conservation.
Genetics was developed by The Tech staff in collaboration with Stanford University and was funded by the National Institutes of Health Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) program. The evaluation documents the impact and effectiveness of the exhibition using timing and tracking observations and exit interviews. It also examines the partnership between The Tech and Stanford University through interviews with graduate students, who conduct programs in the exhibition, and their supervisor (results are not included in this summary).
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Randi KornThe Tech Museum of Innovation
This report describes a summative evaluation of Secrets of Circles, a 2,600 square foot exhibition created by Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose and funded by the National Science Foundation. The exhibition and related programs were designed to highlight the uses of circles and wheels in everyday life. Circles have properties that make them extremely effective as an engineering tool, and they are ubiquitous in cultures around the world. The appendix of this report inclues interview and observation protocols and questionnaires used in this study.
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Sue AllenChildren's Discovery Museum of San Jose
Queens Central Library contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to conduct an evaluation of the newly completed Children's Library and Discovery Center (CLDC), partially funded by the National Science Foundation. In addition to traditional children's library resources, the CLDC includes interactive science exhibits, programming space, and an early childhood area. The evaluation sought to understand 1) how its family customers use the new CLDC (and its exhibits) and what they most value about it, and 2) experiences of CLDC staff who interact with the customers. How did we approach this
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Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Queens Central Library