This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will demonstrate the feasibility of engaging children ages 8 to 13 in the wonders of science and the application of scientific principles through the transmedia SCIENTASTIC! project. The study will also demonstrate that the television series will help students answer questions and solve problems for themselves and their community. The American public supports the advancement of scientific knowledge and our investment in scientific research leads the world. However, Americans are falling behind in educating the next generation of scientists. Late elementary school is an ideal time to capture students' attention and engage them in STEM activities. Using rigorous evaluation techniques we will show that SCIENTASTIC! encourages hands-on learning by exploration, questioning and thinking. The innovative television program and integrated companion resources provide scientific role models and demonstrate the scientific process in an entertaining way. The associated web site, Apps, Web 2.0 repository and teaching aids allow students, teachers, and parents to further explore concepts introduced in the show. Preliminary analysis reveals that the SCIENTASTIC! target audience liked the show, would watch the show and learned from the show. Further analysis will demonstrate that the transmedia approach increases viewer interest and learning. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project will play a transformative role in encouraging students to take STEM courses in college, pursue scientific careers, and become a scientifically informed electorate. By developing the story beyond the story, transmedia SCIENTASTIC! has strong commercial value. Dissemination through public television allows for a potential audience of 250 million people. Commercial and noncommercial sponsorships will be sold with associated on-air credits. Additional direct funding will be sought from industries with interests in promoting science and health literacy. A commercial version of the program will be offered to cable networks on a licensing basis, with DVDs, Apps and study guides sold to schools, homeschoolers, and parents. With a broad and commercially viable dissemination, SCIENTASTIC! will show children the joys of science by demonstrating and engaging in hands-on, team- based learning in real-world contexts. This process will improve student retention and will show that SCIENTASTIC! introduces new ways to learn. The SCIENTASTIC! project will evaluate teaching techniques information that will be shared with policy-makers, educational institutions, and teachers to improve education nationwide. By spreading successful methods for engaging children in math and science, SCIENTASTIC! shoiuld have significant societal benefit creating a generation of scientifically educated decision-makers.
Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI), in collaboration with the Hall of Health, a hands-on health museum, proposes a two year, Phase II SEPA project entitled Health and Biomedical Science for a Diverse Community. The purpose of this project is to disseminate (1) "Your Genes and Your Choices," a unique, interactive exhibit on social and genetic factors in health, and (2) a 4th and 5th grade health and biomedical science curriculum. The exhibit and curriculum were developed during Phase I. "Your Genes and Your Choices, "which has eight interactive stations and has been piloted at the Hall of Health, is designed for small science museums and health education centers. It will travel to four venues nationwide during Phase II and remain available to other venues after the grant ends. The innovative, activity based curriculum consists of eight instructional units that introduce students to scientific concepts and investigation in the context of the study of diseases and health conditions that disproportionately affect minority populations. The topics are: Fourth Grade: Unit 1: Nutrition: Balance and Imbalance (Obesity); Unit 2. Traumatic Brain Injuries; Unit 3. Infectious Diseases and Immunity; Unit 4. Environmental Toxics: Poisoning Prevention. Fifth Grade: Unit 1. Nutrition: Diabetes; Unit 2. Asthma and Lung Disease; Unit 3. Heart Disease; and Unit 4. Sickle Cell Anemia and Genetics. Each unit consists of five one hour lessons. The curriculum was piloted during Phase I, both in the classroom and in an after school science club, at two elementary schools serving predominantly minority children in Oakland, California. Now we propose to: (1) disseminate the curriculum via science clubs to ten elementary schools in Oakland and Berkeley; (2) offer a series of educator workshops to enhance the skills of teachers and after school personnel to teach scientific investigation and to incorporate the latest findings in biomedical science across the curriculum; and 3) hold family science festivals at each participating school to introduce parents to the topics of the science clubs. The festivals will include hands-on activities, talks by CHORI researchers, and focused discussions with healthcare providers on issues relating to minority health. This project involves clinical as well as basic science investigators, healthcare providers, teachers and health educators, high school and college students, and faculty from San Francisco State University and the University of California at Berkeley. The ultimate goals are to make science interesting and relevant to children who come from ethnically diverse, low income environments; to help them meet state and national objectives for learning in health, science, and scientific inquiry; to help them and their parents understand the relationship between science and health; and to foster their interest in science, so that they may consider future careers related to biomedical science. All project activities will be assessed through formative and summative evaluation. The science clubs will remain in place at the ten participating schools after Phase II funding ends, and the curriculum and evaluation tools will be posted on the internet, and thereby available to others.
Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI), in collaboration with the Hall of Health, a hands-on health museum, proposes a three-year Phase I SEPA project entitled "Health and Biomedical Science for a Diverse Community." The project entails development of a novel, interactive biomedical science curriculum for 4th and 5th grade students in low socioeconomic environments. Complementary to the curriculum, a hands-on exhibit on social and genetic factors in health will be developed to enhance learning by students and families. The curriculum and exhibit will be pilot tested with students from two elementary schools in Oakland, California. The curriculum--which will specifically address minority health issues such as asthma, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease--will include four five-lesson instructional units for 4th grade, and four five-lesson instructional units for 5th grade. In addition to classroom activities, the project will include workshops for teachers, family health and biomedical science nights, field trips to the Hall of Health, and an annual health and biomedical science festival for families. The project will involve clinical as well as basic science investigators, patients and families, and high school and college students. It will draw on the talents of teachers and health educators from the Oakland Unified School District, directors of SEPA projects at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, faculty at San Francisco State University and the University of California at Berkeley, and employees of LeapFrog, Inc., a company located in Emeryville, California, that makes interactive educational products. The ultimate goals of the project are to make science interesting and relevant to children who come from ethnically diverse, low socio-economic environments, to help them and their parents understand the relationship between science and health, and to foster their interest in science so that they may consider future opportunities in careers related to biomedical science. All project activities will undergo front-end, formative, and summative evaluation.
Field trips to science museums can provide students with educational experiences, particularly when museum programs emphasize scientific inquiry skill building over content knowledge acquisition. We describe the creation and study of 2 programs designed to significantly enhance students' inquiry skills at any interactive science museum exhibit without the need for advanced preparation by teachers or chaperones. The programs, called Inquiry Games, utilized educational principles from the learning sciences and from visitor studies of museum field trips. A randomized experimental design compared
The Massachusetts Linking Experiences and Pathways Follow-on (M-LEAP2) is a three-year longitudinal empirical research study that is examining prospectively how early formal and informal STEM education experiences are related to gender-based differences in STEM achievement-related choices in middle and high school. M-LEAP2 serves as a complement to - and extension of - a prior NSF-funded study, M-LEAP, which was a largely quantitative research study that followed overlapping cohorts of 3rd - 6th grade female and male students for three years. M-LEAP surveyed over 1,600 students, 627 student-parent pairs, and 134 second parents in 8 diverse public schools across Massachusetts. In contrast, M-LEAP2 is a heavily qualitative three-year study using in-depth interviews with a diverse range of 72 of these students and their families to study how formal and informal science experiences shape the students' science-related beliefs, interests, and aspirations as they progress though middle and high school.
Educators in informal science are exploring data visualization as a way to involve learners in analyzing and interpreting data. However, designing visualizations of data for learners can be challenging, especially when the visualizations show more than one type of data. The Ainsworth three-part DeFT framework can help practitioners design multiple external representations to support learning.
The resources on this handout were shared by participants of the “Bridging the practice-research gap” forum, which took place on InformalScience.org from July 6-17, 2015.
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Association of Science-Technology CentersGrace Troxel
As part of a grant from the National Science Foundation, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) is conducting regional STEM workshops, entitled NFB STEM2U, for blind youth [youth], grades 3 – 6. During this first regional workshop in Baltimore, the NFB operated three different programs simultaneously: one program for youth, a second program for their parents/caregivers, and a third program for a group of teachers who work with visually impaired students. A fourth program, for Port Discovery museum staff, was conducted earlier to prepare the museum staff to assist with the youth program
The underrepresentation of non‐White students and girls in STEM fields is an ongoing problem that is well documented. In K‐12 science education, girls, and especially non‐White girls, often do not identify with science regardless of test scores. In this study, we examine the narrated and embodied identities‐in‐practice of non‐White, middle school girls who articulate future career goals in STEM‐related fields. For these girls who desire an STEM‐related career, we examine the relationships between their narrated and embodied identities‐in‐practice. Drawing on interview and ethnographic data in
Today, policy makers, funders, and government agencies alike are grappling with the need to use resources efficiently and effectively in order to make a measurable difference in addressing some of today’s pressing significant social, cultural, and educational challenges. When dealing with such complex and “wicked” problems as global warming, hunger, substance abuse, education and skills development (including competencies in STEM disciplines), it’s not enough for an organization to deliver results that contribute only to its bottom line. Increasingly, civic and philanthropic leaders are
Building on self-determination theory, this study presents a model of intrinsic motivation and engagement as “active ingredients” in garden-based education. The model was used to create reliable and valid measures of key constructs, and to guide the empirical exploration of motivational processes in garden-based learning. Teacher- and student-reports of garden engagement, administered to 310 middle school students, demonstrated multidimensional structures, good measurement properties, convergent validity, and the expected correlations with self-perceptions in the garden, garden learning
Although informal learning environments have been studied extensively, ours is one of the first studies to quantitatively assess the impact of learning in botanical gardens on students' cognitive achievement. We observed a group of 10th graders participating in a one-day educational intervention on climate change implemented in a botanical garden. The students completed multiple-choice questionnaires in a pre-post-retention test design. Comparing the test scores revealed a significant short-term knowledge gain as well as a long-term knowledge gain. Consequently, our results show the potentials