HBCUs are critical to producing a diverse and inclusive workforce as they graduate a disproportionate number of African American future STEM workers and STEM leaders. Although the National Science Foundation is fully committed to diversity and inclusion, there has been little research to determine why Historically Black Colleges and Universities are not fully participating in the NSF STEM educational research opportunities. The project will investigate the challenges, needs and support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to succeed in applying for educational research support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Participants will be recruited from 96 HBCUs that are eligible to apply for such funding and will include the wide range of college and university administration and faculty that are involved in the preparation of research projects and related applications for research funding. The investigation will focus primarily on the Division of Research on Learning in Informal and Formal Settings (DRL) within NSF. The investigation will: 1) determine the submission rate and funding success rate of HBCUs within the DRL funding mechanisms; 2) determine why a greater proportion of HBCUs are not successful in their applications of research or do not apply; and 3) determine what factors, such as institutional support, research expertise, and professional development, could lead to a larger number of research proposals from HBCUs and greater success in obtaining funding. The project has the potential to have significant influence on the national educational and research agenda by providing empirical findings on the best approach to support and encourage HBCU participation in DRL educational research funding programs.
This exploratory research project will investigate what changes and/or supports would contribute to significantly increasing the number of applications and successful grant awards for STEM educational research project proposed by HBCUs. The project has the following research questions: (1) What factors discourage participation of HBCUs in the DRL funding mechanisms and what are the best practices to encourage participation? (2) What approaches have been successful for HBCUs to obtain DRL funding? (3) What dynamic capabilities are necessary for HBCU researchers to successfully submit STEM proposals to NSF? (4) What changes would be helpful to reduce or eliminate any barriers for HBCU applications for DRL educational research funding and what supports, such as professional development, would contribute to greater success in obtaining funding? Participants will be recruited from the 96 eligible HBCUs and will include both individuals from within the administration (e.g., Office Sponsored Programs, Deans, VP, etc.) as well as from within the faculty. The research will collect variety of quantitative and qualitative data designed to support a comprehensive analysis of factors addressing the research questions. The project will develop research findings and recommendations that are relevant to faculty, administrators, and policymakers for improving HBCU participation in research funding opportunities. Results of project research will be widely disseminated to HBCUs and other Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) through a project website, peer reviewed journals, newsletters, and conference presentations.
This project is funded by the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST), the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL), and the Discovery Research PreK-12 (DRK-12) programs. These programs which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing students' and general public knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Cynthia TrawickJohn HaynesTriscia HendricksonTerry Mills
For many youth, gaining access to quality STEM (science, technology, engineering mathematics) experiences is a challenge. Inequity and underrepresentation of youth of color in STEM persist. The makerspace movement holds great promise in broadening participation in STEM among youth from underrepresented communities. Makerspaces are defined as collaborative workspaces inside a library, school, or other community location designed for creating, learning, exploring, and sharing with high- to low-tech tools. Despite the availability of making programs focused on STEM activities targeted towards youth of color, the field has few models for designing these programs in ways that build upon youths’ cultural assets and desires for making. Working collaboratively with youth, families, and maker educators in Lansing, Michigan, and Greensboro, North Carolina, this project aims to deepen the field’s understanding about the rich and deep ingenuity in STEM-based making that youth from underrepresented communities can engage. These insights will be leveraged towards advancing community-based maker programming across four community-based makerspaces. The project will also build capacity among STEM-oriented maker educators, researchers, and youth. This model is important because the voices and perspectives of families and communities have been largely absent from the formative knowledge and theory-building processes of the field of makerspace education.
This project will build new knowledge about how and why youth and families make at home, in communities, and in STEM-based maker programs. Collaborators for the project include the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and four STEM- and youth-oriented making spaces in Lansing, Michigan, and Greensboro, North Carolina. This project will take place in two phases, exploring two main research questions: 1) What are the learning results of making at home and in the community? And 2) How do youth organize community resources for sustained STEM making, and what facilitates or hinders such organization? Phase one investigates the community resources (people, tools, materials, knowledge, data, and spaces) youth leverage towards making and how they do so across time. The project will study how youth connect these resources to STEM-rich making and what youth and families learn in the process. In phase two, design-based research will be used to apply phase one insights to the design of community-based STEM-rich maker programs in four maker clubs in Michigan and North Carolina. This work will develop an understanding of youths’ family and community-based STEM-based making practices, including the community resources (people, tools, materials, knowledge, data, and spaces) that youth leverage.
This Research in Service to Practice project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
Increasing greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in science not only presents a social justice goal, but is also vital to the financial and social success of the nation. The stereotype of the older white male scientist has obscured the contributions of women and people of color. This project seeks to remedy these perceptions which are barriers to entry into STEM fields. The project will create a large-scale hub for STEM themed video content on YouTube and other social media platforms, featuring 100+ original STEM videos produced by PBS partners. This hub and accompanying research seeks to identify the characteristics of online STEM content that attract (or fail to attract) underrepresented groups, specifically Black and Hispanic communities as well as women of all races. The objectives of this project are to 1) provide a unified online science-themed hub, PBS Terra, on YouTube and other platforms for hosting, sharing, and distributing digital STEM series from diverse producers from across the PBS system; 2) conduct surveys and focus groups to examine and understand the needs and expectations of women, Black and Hispanic communities and their consumption of STEM video content online and 3) test hypotheses about the communicative strategies of STEM videos that feature Black and Hispanic female scientists. Project collaborators include PBS, researchers at the University of Utah and the University of Georgia, and consultants and advisors with expertise in broadening participation and inclusion in STEM.
Little is known about how or why adult Americans seek science content on YouTube, especially the motivations of adults from underrepresented minorities and females. The key research questions in this project are: 1) Why do Black and Hispanic audiences and women of all races seek science video content online? 2) How does showing Black and Hispanic female scientists in science video content on YouTube impact viewers’ identification with and sense of belonging in STEM? 3) How does the use of humor by Black and Hispanic scientists in YouTube science content affect viewers’ perceptions of the communicator and their engagement with STEM content? 4) How does the appearance and manner of dress of Black and Hispanic scientists in YouTube science content affect viewers’ perceptions in the aforementioned areas? A nationally representative baseline survey will be conducted. A probability sample of 2000 respondents will be obtained including oversampling of Black and Hispanic audiences. To complement findings from the survey, focus groups will be conducted in eight different regions of the country to learn why these targeted audiences do or do not seek science content on YouTube and what motivates them to share the content with their social media network. In addition, an experiment embedded in an online survey will test the hypothesis that greater on-screen representation of women and scientists of color will broaden existing perceptions about scientists. The experiment will consist of a 3 (scientist’s race: Black/Hispanic/White) × 2 (science issue: controversial/non-controversial) × 2 (style: casual/professional) between-subjects design. Survey participants will be randomly assigned to the experimental conditions. These factors (science issue and host appearance) can be altered by content producers to better reach and engage the targeted audiences. The project not only investigates theoretical questions at the intersection of STEM stereotypes and race, but findings related to these experimental conditions will offer practical insight into strategies that can be used by science communication practitioners.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Adam DylewskiSara YeoMichael Cacciatore
This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).
Research shows that Black girls and women, regardless of their academic achievements and STEM interests, often encounter academic under-preparation, social isolation, exclusion, and race-gender discrimination that negatively impacts their ongoing engagement and retention in STEM. This project will provide innovative, culturally relevant learning environments to middle and high school Black girls to counter these negative trends. Using hands-on coding and robotics activities, project participants will develop positive attitudes toward science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The project emphasizes peer-mentoring by providing opportunities for Black female high school (assistant coaches) and Black college students (coaches) to serve as counselors and mentors to participants. Additionally, engineers, scientists, and executives from STEM industries will serve as mentors and share their experiences to broaden participants’ STEM career aspirations. The project is a three-year collaborative effort between the University of California Davis C-STEM Center, the Umoja Community Education Foundation, and the 66 affiliated California community colleges, industry partners, and school districts in California. Over three years, nearly 2,000 females will participate in the project.
Learning environments for Black girls and women led by other Black girls and women are referred to as “counterspaces” where they are free to engage in STEM in ways that value their identities while promoting STEM engagement, interests, and career aspirations. The project’s curriculum will follow a research-based, culturally relevant multi-tiered mentoring approach. The curriculum is designed to develop participants’ STEM content knowledge, critical thinking, and logical reasoning capabilities through meaningful connections to real-life applications using hands-on coding and robotics. A mixed-method longitudinal study will examine the impact on participants’ STEM outcomes, emphasizing contributing new knowledge on the viability of multi-tiered, culturally relevant mentoring for increasing equity in informal STEM learning (ISL). The program's effectiveness will be evaluated using longitudinal assessments of mathematics standards, computer science and robotics conceptual knowledge, logical and critical thinking skills, STEM school achievements, interests and attitudes toward STEM subjects, advanced STEM course-taking, involvement in other ISL opportunities, and leadership in STEM in one’s school/university and community. The project will test a locally based informal learning model with projects hosted by other K-12 and college partners.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
Black Girls Create (BGC) is a program that uses maker pedagogy, social history (i.e., Black women’s contributions in STEM), culturally responsive pedagogy, and mentoring to engage Black girls in STEM. For the project, culturally responsive making is operationally defined as the use of cultural knowledge and maker technologies to create, design, and produce artifacts that are related to a particular concept, theme, or person. The project will conduct a feasibility research study that investigates how engagement in BGC affects participants' STEM interest, STEM confidence, and racial and gender identities. In the project, participants will discover how Black women have made an impact in STEM fields and will learn how to digitally create cultural artifacts/wearable art related to their discoveries. Approximately 120 middle school girls in grades 6-8 (8 groups of 15 participants each) from underserved neighborhoods will be recruited for participation in this two-year study. Each group will meet for 3 hours per week over an 8-week period. Instructional materials from this research will be made freely available online so that they can be adapted and used at other formal and informal educational institutions that seek to garner interest and access to STEM learning for Black girls and women.
A pre- and post-test, quasi-experimental design will be used to research the program’s influence on participants’ self-efficacy, racial identity, and gender identity. Lagged regression models that control for students’ age, race/ethnicity, and pre-survey scores will be used to examine growth in each of the four outcomes. Once all of the participants in the groups have completed BGC, data from all groups will be combined to increase power and thereby detect statistically meaningful differences in pre- and post-survey scores. In addition, variables representing attendance and program engagement will be entered into the model to examine whether students who are highly engaged in BGC programming exhibit more growth in the four outcomes. Qualitative data will be derived from students' journal entries as well as focus group interviews. Weekly journals will be used to gather data about the context and experiences of participants as they unfold throughout the program. Semi-structured focus groups will center around the usefulness of skills and knowledge gained from the program activities, significant experiences with peers and program staff, the opportunity to learn about Black women STEM progenitors, and learning how to make digitally fabricated artifacts. NVIVO, a computer software program, will be used as a tool to support the analysis of the rich, text-based information resulting from the journals and focus group narratives.
This feasibilty research project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
Millions of Latinx youth, aged 14 to 18, work formal or informal jobs to provide income for themselves or their families. In the context of these workplaces, Latinx youth demonstrate numerous skills that are essential to industrial engineering, such as minimizing workplace injuries or optimizing processes to maximize efficiency. However, their workplace ingenuity and skills are often underrecognized by educational systems. To counter this lack of recognition, the purpose of this project is to iteratively develop and research an out-of-school engineering program for working Latinx youth. This program is designed to recognize and build from youths’ workplace experiences by connecting them with industrial engineering concepts and practices, such as those used to promote worker safety. This program is also designed for youth to articulate transformational visions of industrial engineering, which expand current goals, values, and methods commonly embraced within this discipline. This year-long program will be facilitated by educators of existing out-of-school programs (e.g., Mathematics, Engineering, and Science Achievement), in partnership with undergraduate mentors from the Society for Professional Hispanic Engineers and other local organizations that serve Latinx youth (e.g., Latinos in Action). Approximately 220 youth are expected to participate in the programming. Researchers will explore whether and how youth participants develop identities in engineering, as well as how the educators and mentors understand and enact assets-based, out-of-school engineering education grounded in youths’ experiences. Researchers will also identify the individual, institutional, and systemic factors that support or inhibit sustained implementation of the program over time in different sites and contexts. This project will result in a set of empirically tested, bilingual program materials that will be disseminated widely to professional organizations dedicated to out-of-school programming and to serving Latinx youth.
This project will result in a localizable, transferable, and sustainable model for an out-of-school time program that recognizes and amplifies Latinx youths’ workplace funds of knowledge and leverages them toward youth-driven visions and applications of engineering. This program, which will connect with other people and sites in youths’ learning ecosystems, is grounded in principles of translanguaging, transformational mentorship, and educational dignity and recognition. In partnership with youth participants, researchers will use a social design experiment to explore the following research questions: What are the engineering identity trajectories of working high school youth, and how do specific moments of identity negotiation and recognition relate to broader patterns across program sessions and identity trajectories for individual participants over time? To answer these questions, a pre-, mid- and post-program Engineering Identity Scale; recordings of program implementations; interviews; and youth artifacts will be analyzed using various methods such as critical multimodal discourse analysis. After implementations of the program across multiple sites, researchers will use design-based implementation research to answer the following questions: How do educators and mentors understand and enact assets-based pedagogies designed to foster recognition across sites? What institutional and systemic features (designed or naturalistic) support or inhibit productive adaptations and implementations of the program? These questions will be answered using constant comparative analyses of data sources such as interviews with the program educators and mentors, observations of program implementations, observations of professional development sessions, and public documents. Culturally responsive, educative evaluation will be used to iteratively improve the program. The resulting research and program materials will be disseminated widely through professional organizations dedicated to Latinx youth, engineering education, and out-of-school learning.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Amy Wilson-LopezAlfonso Torres-RuaMarisela Martinez-ColaColby Tofel-GrehlAlfonso Torres-Rua
Informal STEM education spaces like museums can intentionally serve surrounding communities and support sustainable and accessible engagement. Building from this base, the project takes a stance that the intersection of the museum, home/family life and the youth’s internal practices and disciplinary sense of self are rooted in history and culture. Thus, this CAREER work builds on the following principles: Black families and youth have rightful presence in STEM and in STEM learning environments; Black families are valuable learning partners; and Black youths need counterspaces to explore STEM as one mechanism for creating future disciplinary agency. In partnership with the Henry Ford Museum and the Detroit-Area Pre-College Engineering Program, the project seeks to (a) expand the field's understanding of how Black youth engineer and innovate; (b) investigate the influence of a culturally relevant curriculum on their engineering practices and identity, knowledge, and confidence; and (c) describe the ways Black families and museums support youth in engineering learning experiences. The work will center on the 20-hour “Innovate” curriculum which was designed by the museum to bridge design, innovation, and creation practices with the artifacts of innovators throughout time. The project comprises six weekend “Innovate” sessions and an at-home innovation experience plus participation in an annual Invention Convention. By focusing on these aims, this research responds to the goals of the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning opportunities for the public in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening engagement in STEM learning experiences and advancing innovative research on STEM learning in informal environments.
The main research questions of this multiphase CAREER award are: (1) What practices do Black youths and families engage in as they address engineering, design, and innovation challenges? (2) In what ways does a culturally relevant museum-based innovation program influence the design and innovation practices and assessment performance of Black youths and families as they engage in engineering, design, and innovation across learning settings? (3) How does teaching innovation, design, and engineering through historical re-telling and reconstruction influence a youth’s perception of their own identities, abilities, and practices? and (4) How do Black families engage with informal STEM learning settings and what resources best support their engineering, design, and innovation exploration? Youth in sixth grade are the focus of the research. The work is guided by ecological systems, sociocultural learning, culturally relevant pedagogy, and community cultural wealth theories. During phase one, the focus will be to refine the curriculum and logistics of the study implementation. The investigator will enhance the curriculum to include narratives of Black innovators and engineers. Fifteen families will be recruited to participate in the program enhancement pilot and initial research cycle for phase two. In phase three another cohort of families will be recruited to participate. Survey research, narrative inquiry and digital ethnography will comprise the approaches to explore the research questions. The evaluation has a two-pronged focus: to assess (1) how well the enhanced Innovate curriculum and museum/home learning experience supports Black families’ participation and (2) how well the separate phases of the study connect and operate together to meet the research aims. The study’s findings can help families and informal practitioners leverage evidence-based approaches to support Black youth in making connections between history and out-of-school contexts to model and develop their innovative engineering practices. Additionally, this work has implications for Black undergraduate students who will develop skills through their mentorship and researcher roles, studying cultural practices and learning experiences. The research study and findings can inform the design of future museum/home learning programs and research opportunities for Black learners in informal learning spaces.
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.
Access to STEM information is unequal, with rural and poor communities often receiving the fewest public education science and science literacy opportunities. Rural areas also face unique STEM teaching and technology integration challenges. In fact, LatinX communities in rural areas are less likely to have access to educational resources and language supports available to LatinX communities in urban centers. This project will help address these inequities by engaging rural librarians, bilingual science communicators, polar scientists, and a technical team to create a series of five bilingual virtual reality (VR) experiences to enhance STEM understanding and appreciation. Project researchers will create a new channel for disseminating polar science, working first with rural Latinx communities in Wisconsin to create a new network between rural communities and university researchers. Involving rural librarians in the co-design of instruction process will produce new ways for rural libraries to engage their local communities and their growing Latinx populations with polar science learning experiences. Each of the five VR experiences will focus on a different area of research, using the captivating Arctic and Antarctic environments as a central theme to convey science. VR is a particularly powerful and apt approach, making it possible to visit places that most cannot experience first-hand while also learning about the wide range of significant research taking place in polar regions. After design, prototyping and testing are finished, the VR experiences will be freely available for use nationally in both rural and urban settings. Public engagement with science creates a multitude of mutual benefits that result from a better-informed society. These benefits include greater trust and more reasoned scrutiny of science along with increased interest in STEM careers, many of which have higher earning potential. The project team will partner with 51 rural libraries which are valued community outlets valuable outlets to improve science literacy and public engagement with science. The effects of this project will be seen with thousands of community members who take part in the testing of prototype VR experiences during development and scaled engagement through ongoing library programs utilizing the final VR experiences for years to come.
This project will create new informal STEM learning assessment techniques through combining prior efforts in the areas of educational data mining for stealth assessment and viewpoint similarity metrics through monitoring gaze direction. Results of the project contribute to the field of educational data mining (EDM), focusing on adopting its methods for VR learning experiences. EDM is a process of using fine grained interaction data from a digital system to support educationally relevant conclusions and has been applied extensively to intelligent tutors and more recently, educational videogames. This project will continue building on existing approaches by expanding to include the unique affordances of VR learning media, specifically gaze. The project will focus on predicting user quitting as well as assessing key learning goals within each experience and triangulate these predictive models with user observations and post-experience surveys. The eventual application of this foundational research would address the problem in assessing a learner using measures external to the experience itself (i.e., surveys) and instead provide new methods that instrument learners using only data generated by their actions within the learning context. These techniques will provide a new means for evaluating informal learning in immersive technology settings without need for explicit tagging. The findings from this project will enable a greater understanding of the relationship between a user’s experience and their learning outcomes, which may prove integral in the creation of educational interventions using VR technology.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments. This project is also supported by the Office of Polar Programs.
Recent studies have advocated for a shift toward educational practices that involve learners in actively contributing to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as a shared and public endeavor, rather than limiting their involvement to the construction of previously established knowledge. Prioritizing learners’ agency in deciding what is worth knowing and how learning takes place may create more equitable and inclusive learning experiences by centering the knowledge, cultural practices, and social interactions that motivate learning for people across ages, genders, and backgrounds. In informal learning environments, families’ social interactions are critical avenues for STEM learning, and science centers and museums have developed strategies for prompting families’ sustained engagement and conversation at STEM exhibits. However, exhibits often guide visitors’ exploration toward predetermined insights, constraining the ways that families can interact with STEM content, and neglecting opportunities to tap into their prior knowledge. Practices in the maker movement that emphasize skill-building and creative expression, and participatory practices in museums that invite visitors to contribute to exhibits in consequential ways both have the potential to reframe STEM learning as an ongoing, social process that welcomes diverse perspectives. Yet little is known about how these practices can be scaled, and how families themselves respond to these efforts, particularly for the diverse family audiences that science centers and museums aim to serve. Further, although gender and ethnicity both affect learning in informal settings, studies often separate participants along a single dimension, obscuring important nuances in families’ experiences. By addressing these outstanding questions, this research responds to the goals of the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning opportunities for the public in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening engagement in STEM learning experiences and advancing innovative research on STEM learning in informal environments.
Research will address (1) how families perceive and act on their collective epistemic agency while exploring STEM exhibits (i.e., how they work together to negotiate and pursue their own learning goals); (2) whether and how families’ expressions of agency are influenced by gender and ethnicity; and (3) what exhibit design features support expressions of agency for the broadest possible audience. Research studies will use interviews and observational case studies at a range of exhibits with distinct affordances to examine families’ epistemic agency as a shared, social practice. Cultural historical activity theory and intersectional approaches will guide qualitative analyses of families’ activities as systems that are mediated by the physical environment and social setting. Education activities will involve an ongoing collaboration between researchers, exhibit designers, educators, and facilitators (high-school and college-level floor staff), using a Change Laboratory model. The group will use emerging findings from the research to create a reflection tool to guide the development of more inclusive learning experiences at STEM exhibits, and a set of design principles for supporting families’ expressions of agency. A longitudinal ethnographic study will document the development of inclusive exhibit design practices throughout the project as well as how the Change Lab participants develop their sociocultural perspectives on learning and exhibit design over time. Analyzing these shifts in practice within the Change Lab will provide a deeper understanding of what works and what is difficult or does not occur when working toward infrastructure change in museums. By considering how multiple aspects of families’ identities shape their learning experiences, this work will generate evidence-based recommendations to help science centers and museums develop more inclusive practices that foster a sense of ownership over the learning process for the broadest possible audience of families.
Wireless radio communications, such as Wi-Fi, transmit public and private data from one device to another, including cell phones, computers, medical equipment, satellites, space rockets, and air traffic control. Despite their critical role and prevalence, many people are unfamiliar with radio waves, how they are generated and interact with their surroundings, and why they are the basis of modern communication and navigation. This topic is not only increasingly relevant to the technological lives of today’s youth and public, it is critical to the National Science Foundation’s Industries of the Future activities, particularly in advancing wireless education and workforce development. In this project, STEM professionals from academia, industry and informal education will join forces to design, evaluate, and launch digital apps, a craft-based toolkit, activity guides, and mobile online professional learning, all of which will be easily accessed and flexibly adapted by informal educators to engage youth and the public about radio frequency communications. Experiences will include embodied activities, such as physically linking arms to create and explore longitudinal and transverse waves; mobile experiences, such as augmented reality explorations of Wi-Fi signals or collaborative signal jamming simulations; and technological exploration, such as sending and receiving encrypted messages.
BSCS Science Learning, Georgia Tech, and the Children’s Creativity Museum (CCM) with National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Net) museum partners will create pedagogical activity designs, digital apps, and a mobile online professional learning platform. The project features a rigorous and multipronged research and development approach that builds on prior learning sciences studies to advance a learning design framework for nimble, mobile informal education, while incorporating the best aspects of hands-on learning. This project is testing two related hypotheses: 1) a mobile strategy can be effective for supporting just-in-time informal education of a highly technical, scientific topic, and 2) a mobile suite of resources, including professional learning, can be used to teach informal educators, youth, and the general public about radio frequency communications. Data sources include pre- and post- surveys, interviews, and focus groups with a wide array of educators and learners.
A front-end study will identify gaps in public understanding and perceptions specific to radio frequency communications, and serve as a baseline for components of the summative research. Iterative formative evaluation will incorporate participatory co-design processes with youth and informal educators. These processes will support materials that are age-appropriate and culturally responsive to not only youth, with an emphasis on Latinx youth, but also informal educators and the broader public. Summative evaluation will examine the impact of the mobile suite of resources on informal educators’ learning, facilitation confidence and intentions to continue to incorporate the project resources into their practice. The preparation of educators in supporting public understanding of highly technological STEM topics can be an effective way for supporting just-in-time public engagement and interests in related careers. Data from youth and museum visitors will examine changes to interest, science self-efficacy, content knowledge, and STEM-related career interest. If successful, this design approach may influence how mobile resources are designed and organized effectively to impact future informal education on similarly important technology-rich topics. All materials will be released under Creative Commons licenses allowing for widespread sharing and remixing; research and design findings will be published in academic, industry, and practitioner journals.
This project is co-funded by two NSF programs: The Advancing Informal STEM Learning 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 Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers.
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.
Framing: Broadening participation and achieving equitable outcomes has been a core goal of the science museum field for over two decades. However, how to make progress has proven an intractable problem.
Methods: Focusing on five organizations who officially committed to diversity, equity, access, and inclusion (DEAI) by participating in a national professional development program, the researchers investigate how science museums attempt to enact internally-focused change via a mixed methods case study.
Findings: While these organizations considered a variety of structurally focused change
The Council for Opportunity in Education, in collaboration with TERC, seeks to advance the understanding of social and cultural factors that increase retention of women of color in computing; and implement and evaluate a mentoring and networking intervention for undergraduate women of color based on the project's research findings. Computing is unique because it ranks as one of the STEM fields that are least populated by women of color, and because while representation of women of color is increasing in nearly every other STEM field, it is currently decreasing in computing - even as national job prospects in technology fields increase. The project staff will conduct an extensive study of programs that have successfully served women of color in the computing fields and will conduct formal interviews with 15 professional women of color who have thrived in computing to learn about their educational strategies. Based on those findings, the project staff will develop and assess a small-scale intervention that will be modeled on the practices of mentoring and networking which have been established as effective among women of color who are students of STEM disciplines. By partnering with Broadening Participation in Computing Alliances and local and national organizations dedicated to diversifying computing, project staff will identify both women of color undergraduates to participate in the intervention and professionals who can serve as mentors to the undergraduates in the intervention phase of the project. Assisting the researchers will be a distinguished Advisory Board that provides expertise in broadening the representation of women of color in STEM education. The external evaluator will provide formative and summative assessments of the project's case study data and narratives data using methods of study analysis and narrative inquiry and will lead the formative and summative evaluation of the intervention using a mixed methods approach. The intervention evaluation will focus on three variables: 1) students' attitudes toward computer science, 2) their persistence in computer science and 3) their participant attitudes toward, and experiences in, the intervention.
This project extends the PIs' previous NSF-funded work on factors that impact the success of women of color in STEM. The project will contribute an improved understanding of the complex challenges that women of color encounter in computing. It will also illuminate individual and programmatic strategies that enable them to participate more fully and in greater numbers. The ultimate broader impact of the project should be a proven, scalable model for reversing the downward trend in the rates at which women of color earn bachelor's degrees in computer science.