In fall 2019, the Bell Museum received funding via a NASA TEAM II grant to create Mars: The Ultimate Voyage, a full-dome planetarium show and accompanying hands-on activities that focus on the interdisciplinary roles that will be needed to send humans to Mars. This report from Catalyst Consulting Group presents the findings from the summative evaluation completed in March–May 2023.
EMERGE in STEM (Education for Minorities to Effectively Raise Graduation and Employment in STEM) is a NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot. This project addresses the broadening participation challenge of increasing participation of women, the at-risk minority population, and the deaf in the STEM workforce. The project incorporates in and out-of-school career awareness activities for grades 4-12 in a high poverty community in Guilford County, North Carolina. EMERGE in STEM brings together a constellation of existing community partners from all three sectors (public, private, government) to leverage and expand mutually reinforcing STEM career awareness and workforce development activities in new ways by using a collective impact approach.
This project builds on a local network to infuse career exposure elements into the existing mutually reinforcing STEM activities and interventions in the community. A STEM education and career exposure software, Learning Blade, will be used to reach approximately 15,000 students. A shared measurement system and assessment process will contribute to the evaluation of the effectiveness of the collective impact strategies, the implementation of mutually reinforcing activities across the partnership and the extent to which project efforts attract students to consider STEM careers.
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Gregory MontyMargaret KanipesMalcolm SchugSteven Jiang
Computer Science (CS) education at the middle school level using educational games has seen recent growth and shown promising results. Typically these games teach the craft of programming and not the perspectives required for computational thinking, such as abstraction and algorithm design, characteristic of a CS curriculum. This research presents a game designed to teach computational thinking via the problem of minimum spanning trees to middle school students, a set of evaluation instruments, and the results of an experimental pilot study. Results show a moderate increase in minimum spanning
In 2009, the North Carolina Virtual Public Schools worked with researchers at the William and Ida Friday Institute to produce and evaluate the use of game creation by secondary students as a means for learning content related to career awareness in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines, with particular emphasis in computer science areas. The study required the development of various forms of multimedia that were inclusive of content and activities delivered in a distance environment via the Internet. The team worked with a game art and design graduate class to
This report combines the views of education researchers, technology developers, educators, and researchers in emerging fields such as educational data mining and technology-supported evidence-centered design to present an expanded view of approaches to evidence. It presents the case for why the transition to digital learning warrants a re-examination of how we think about educational evidence. The report describes approaches to evidence-gathering that capitalize on digital learning data and draws implications for policy, education practice, and R&D funding.
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U.S. Department of EducationOffice of Educational Technology
This report is the National Education Technology Plan (NETP) submitted by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to Congress. It presents five goals with recommendations for states, districts, the federal government, and other stakeholders. Each goal addresses one of the five essential components of learning powered by technology: Learning, Assessment, Teaching, Infrastructure, and Productivity. The plan also calls for "grand challenge" research and development initiatives to solve crucial long-term problems that the ED believes should be funded and coordinated at a national level.
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U.S. Department of EducationDaniel AtkinsJohn BennettJohn Seely BrownAneesh ChopraChris DedeBarry FishmanLouis GomezMargaret HoneyYasmin KafaiMaribeth LuftglassRoy PeaJim PellegrinoDavid RoseCandace ThilleBrenda Williams
resourceprojectWebsites, Mobile Apps, and Online Media
SETAC is funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union and emerges out of the need to undertake specific action for the improvement of science education. It regards science education as among the fundamental tools for developing active citizens in the knowledge society. SETAC draws on the cooperation between formal and informal learning institutions, aiming to enhance school science education and active citizenship looking further into the role of science education as a lifelong tool in the knowledge society. On the day of the project’s conclusion, 31 October 2010, after two years of work SETAC contributes the following products and results to the field: 1. “Quality Science Education: Where do we stand? Guidelines for practice from a European experience” This is the concluding manifesto that presents the results of the SETAC work in the form of recommendations for practitioners working in formal and informal science learning institutions; 2. “Teaching and Learning Scientific Literacy and Citizenship in Partnership with Schools and Science Museums” This paper constitutes the theoretical framework of the project and innovative ways of using museums for science education and develop new modes of linking formal and informal learning environments; 3. Tools for teaching and learning in science: misconceptions, authentic questions, motivation. Three specific studies, leading to three specific reports, have been conducted in the context of the project, looking in particular into notions with an important role in science teaching and learning. These are on: Children’s misconceptions; Authentic questions as tool when working in science education; Students’ attitudes and motivation as factors influencing their achievement and participation in science and science-related issues; 4. Activities with schools: SETAC developed a series of prototype education activities which were tested with schools in each country. Among the activities developed between the partners, two have been chosen and are available on-line for practitioners to use and to adapt in their own context. These are: The Energy role game, a role game on Energy invites students to act in different roles, those of the stakeholders of an imaginary community, called to debate and decide upon a certain common problem; MyTest www.museoscienza.org/myTest, which aims to encourage students to engage in researching, reflecting and communicating science-oriented topics; 5. European in-service training course for primary and secondary school teachers across Europe. The training course is designed in such a way as to engage participants in debate and exploration of issues related to science education and active citizenship. The course is open to school teachers, headteachers and teacher trainers from all EU-member and associate countries. Professionals interested can apply for a EU Comenius grant. All the products of the project as well as information about the training course are available at the project website, some of them in more than one languages: www.museoscienza.org/setac
This formative evaluation gathered feedback from after-school group leaders and their 3rd-5th grade youth in response to two activities included in the Cyberchase Workshops-In-A-Box. The user-based feedback will assist with the design of new after-school materials. The general goals for the research were:To explore reactions to the workshop guide generally To assess appeal of the two activities To pinpoint difficulties in the implementation of the two activities To estimate comprehension of the activity content.To evaluate leader interest in further activities.Cyberchase is the Emmy Award
Cognitive research indicates that science experts commonly use diagrams as mediational tools for reasoning visually. But in science education materials and practices, visuals are typically "aids" rather than fundamental representations. This research will examine how students learn to comprehend, use, and construct diagrams as thinking tools. It will focus on the diagram-dense field of beginning optics. The project has two interacting phases: research on how students understand static optics diagrams, and development and refinement of prototype computer- based dynamic diagrams and diagramming tools. Specific tasks are: (1) Pilot research, and analysis of diagrams in optics texts, (2) research on instructional practices with these diagrams, (3) research on student understanding and use of diagrams, (4) design and develop interactive diagrams and a dynamic diagram-construction kit, (5) carry out research with prototypes, and (6) formulate and disseminate implications for creation and use of interactive diagrams in science education. Such research on visual education in science will help guide development of new curricula and software for science education. The project team of cognitive scientists, science educators, graphics specialists, and systems developers is devoted to promoting learning and reasoning in science with new data, theory, and innovative prototypes of dynamic diagrams. These interdisciplinary activities more directly link science education research, materials development, and classroom activities. Cost sharing is provided by the Institute for Research on Learning which is contributing indirect costs and APPEL which is contributing four MacIntosh II systems.
Digital image processing offers several possible new approaches to the teaching of a variety of mathematical concepts at the middle-school and high-school levels. There is reason to believe that this approach will be successful in reaching some "at-risk" students that other approaches miss. Since digital images can be made to reflect almost any aspect of the real world, some students may have an easier time taking an interest in them than they might with artificial figures or images resulting from other graphics- oriented approaches. Using computer-based tools such as image processing operators, curve-fitting operators, shape analysis operators, and graphical synthesis, students may explore a world of mathematical concepts starting from the psychologically "safe" territory of their own physical and cultural environments. There is reason to hope that this approach will be particularly successful with students from diverse backgrounds, girls and members of minority groups, because the imagery used in experiments can easily be tailored to individual tastes. The work of the project consists of creating detailed designs of the learning modules, implementing them on microcomputers, and evaluating their effectiveness in a variety of ways, using trials with students at Rainier Beach High School, which is an urban public high school having an ethnically diverse student body and a Macintosh computer laboratory.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Steven TanimotoMichele LeBrasseurJames King
NOVA Labs (www.pbs.org/nova/labs) is a web-based platform designed to engage teens and educators with authentic data, scientific games, tools, and opportunities to communicate with and assist working scientists. The present study sought to investigate the outcomes achieved by users of the fourth NOVA Labs platform developed: RNA Lab. The RNA Lab includes several key components of the previous labs (e.g., videos, educator guides, etc.). The major difference is that the RNA Lab “research challenge” is a game component. The NOVA Education team's overarching goals for teens using the Lab focused