This project will research factors influencing the implementation of programs designed to increase diverse participation in informal science. The goal is to provide the informal science education field with information and tools that will help them design effective programs that more effectively engage a broad range of diverse audiences. The project has two major components. First, the project will research the implementation of a citizen science project, Celebrate Urban Birds (CUB), in major U.S. cities. Citizen science projects involve public volunteers in gathering scientifically valid data as part of ongoing research. Second, building on results of the research, the project will launch a website and learning community (called a Community of Practice or CoP) supporting informal science educators that are involved in designing and implementing informal science programs with an emphasis on engaging diverse participants. The project will be lead by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (CLO), a leader in designing and researching citizen science projects, in collaboration with the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) and five science center members of ASTC, where the CUB program will be implemented and researched. The objective of the research is to better understand contextual factors and how they impact implementation even when accepted practices are followed. Such research is key not only to revealing accepted practices but also to understanding how projects are implemented in the face of concrete operational, cultural, economic, and demographic variables. The research will use a comparative case study approach, which is designed for studies requiring holistic, in-depth investigation. The development of the website and the CoP will be guided by a Network Improvement Strategy, a research-based approach to designing educational CoPs. The development of the CoP will involve the project stakeholders including the informal science organization practitioners, community organization representatives, CUB staff, ASTC staff, advisors and consultants. This strategy will allow the project team and pilot sites to leverage their diverse experiences and skill sets to improve practice; provide space for researchers and practitioners to work together as partners; and develop a nuanced set of strategies that can be implemented across a variety of organizational contexts.
This early-stage design and development, integrated media and research project will contribute important new understandings to the informal science learning literature by exploring science engagement on social media when integrated with broadcast television. It will help answer questions including: What does such engagement look like? Who participates? How and why does it happen? and What is the degree or depth of engagement? The project builds on the previous successful work by WGBH nationally distributing the television series NOVA scienceNOW and the research expertise of EDC. WGBH's NOVA scienceNOW program will collaborate with EDC to develop new metrics to understand how and why learners engage with science on social media. Deliverables will include six one-hour episodes of NOVA scienceNOW, short online videos, moderated online discussion events, and an online film festival. A new social Media Initiative will develop six live broadcast microblogging events, six post-broadcast online discussion events, daily social media updates, and an online film festival that will feature user generated videos. A range of STEM content in the videos and online posts will be framed around big science and engineering questions such as animal communication and survival systems, the biology of sleep, climate change, new technologies, energy, genetics, and natural disasters. The continued innovations and expansion of social media channels provides significant new opportunities for providing learner's access to high quality science content, researchers, and opportunities to participate in science. In the first phase of this work to deepen the evidence based understanding of how social media supports informal science engagement, NOVA and EDC will collaborate to develop new measurement instruments: (1) a Network Profile to quantitatively represent the size and activity of NOVA's social media network; (2) an Informal Science Engagement (ISE) index to measure the degree of engagement by coding and analyzing conversations and posts; (3) a Follower Profile to assess the degree of activity and the nature of the engagement; and (4) a Science Social Media Engagement survey instrument. They will then use these measures and data collection protocols to explore whether and how the initiative might influence science engagement. External expert reviewers with content and methodological expertise will review all aspects of the project at critical junctures. This project will contribute important new knowledge and research instruments and methods to better understand how the learning opportunities of social media channels can be realized most effectively. This has significant potential for broad and lasting benefits to society as well as advancing the informal science learning field.
Brewer and Ley surveyed 851 participants in a U.S. city and revealed relationships among demographic characteristics, religious beliefs, political views, and trust in multiple forms of science communication sources.
This presentation was shared at the 2014 Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) annual conference. It describes 4 websites designed for informal science education (ISE) professionals, including: InformalScience.org, Relating Research to Practice (RR2P), the Building Informal Science Education (BISE) project, and CitizenScience.org. The presentation ended with questions to the audience asking what might project leaders of these sessions do next with regards to building out online infrastructure.
The UMass Donahue Institute (UMDI) was contracted to provide formative evaluation services for WGBH’s PEEP and the Big Wide World project development of curriculum units and instructional modules for use by family child care providers (FCCPs). This formative study piloted three 3-week curriculum units focused on three science content areas, integrated with media and professional development materials for family child care settings (videos and a Facilitator’s Guide for trainers) in English and in Spanish. This report describes the methodology used to implement this study and the findings from
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WGBH Educational FoundationUniversity of Massachusetts, Donahue
NOVA Labs (pbs.org/nova/labs) is a free digital platform that engages teens and lifelong learners in activities and games that foster authentic scientific exploration. From building RNA molecules and designing renewable energy systems to tracking cloud movements and learning cybersecurity strategies, NOVA Labs participants can take part in real-world investigations by visualizing, analyzing, and playing with the same data that scientists use. Each Lab focuses on a different area of active research. But all of them illustrate key concepts with engaging and informative videos, and guide participants as they answer scientific questions or design solutions to current problems. Supporting pages on each Lab site explain the purpose and functions of the Lab, help teachers incorporate it into their classrooms, foster collaboration between users, and help users make connections to the broader world of STEM. Users are encouraged to explore potential career paths through “Meet the Scientists” profiles, and to obtain information about local and national STEM resources.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting. It describes a collaborative project between Smith College and Springfield Technical Community College to improve technical literacy for children in the area of engineering education through the Talk to Me (TTM) website.
This poster describes the work accomplished by August 2014 for the NSF-funded project "Science of Sharing: Investigating Cooperation, Competition, and Social Interdependence." It was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It describes a project that will expand the functions and applications of FieldScope, a web-based science information portal currently supported by the National Geographic Society (NGS). The goal is to create a single, powerful infrastructure for Public Participation in Science Research (PPSR) projects that any organization can use to create their own project and support their own community of participants.
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National Geographic SocietyMary Ford
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. The project created a bilingual exhibit and surrounding activities to explore the concept of sustainability.
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Oregon Museum of Science and IndustryMarilyn Johnson
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It describes a citizen science project that developed a question-driven online bird identification tool called "Merlin".
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. Using STEM America (USA) is a two-year Pathways project designed to examine the feasibility of using informal STEM learning opportunities to improve science literacy among English Language Learner (ELL) students in Imperial County, California.