As part of an overall strategy to enhance learning within informal environments, the Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems (INFEWS) and Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) programs partnered to support innovative models poised to catalyze well-integrated interdisciplinary research and development efforts within informal contexts that transform scientific understanding of the food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) nexus in order to improve system function and management, address system stress, increase resilience, and ensure sustainability. This project addresses this aim by using systems thinking and interdisciplinary integration approaches to develop a novel immersive educational simulation game and associated materials designed to highlight the role and importance of corn-water-ethanol-beef (CWEB) systems in supporting the ever increasing demands for food, energy, and water in the United States. The focus on FEWS and sustainable energy aligns well with both the INFEWS program and the sizable sustainability-related projects in the AISL program portfolio. The development and broad dissemination of a multiuser game specific to CWEB systems are particularly innovative contributions and advance for both program portfolios and their requisite fields of study. An additional unique feature of the game is the embedding of varying degrees of economic principles and decision-making along with the nuisances of cultural context as salient variables that influence systems thinking. Of note, a team of computer science, management and engineering undergraduate students at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln will be responsible for the engineering, development, and deployment of the game as their university capstone projects. If successful, this game will have a significant reach and impact on youth in informal programs (i.e., 4-H clubs), high school teachers and students in agriculture vocational education courses, college students, and the public. The impact could extend well beyond Nebraska and the targeted Midwestern region. In conjunction with the game development, mixed-methods formative and summative evaluations will be conducted by an external evaluator. The formative evaluation of the game will focus on usability testing, interest and engagement with a select sample of youth at local 4-H clubs and youth day camps. Data will be collected from embedded in-game survey questionnaires, rating scales, observations and focus groups conducted with evaluation sample. These data and feedback will be used to inform the design and refinement of the game. The summative evaluation will focus on the overall impacts of the game. Changes in agricultural systems knowledge, attitudes toward agricultural systems, interest in pursuing careers in agricultural systems, and decision making will be aligned with the Nebraska State Science Standards and tracked using the National Agricultural Literacy Outcomes (NALOs) assessment, game analytics and pre/post-test measures administered to the evaluation study sample pre/post exposure to the game.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jeyamkondan SubbiahEric ThompsonDeepak KeshwaniRichard KoelschDavid Rosenbaum
This is an Early-concept Grant for Exploratory Research supporting research in Smart and Connected Communities. The research supported by the award is collaborative with research at the University of Colorado. The researchers are studying the use of technologies to enable communities to connect youth and youth organizations to effectively support diverse learning pathways for all students. These communities, the youth, the youth organizations, formal and informal education organizations, and civic organizations form a learning ecology. The DePaul University researchers will design and implement a smart community infrastructure in the City of Chicago to track real-time student participation in community STEM activities and to develop mobile applications for both students and adults. The smart community infrastructure will bring together information from a variety of sources that affect students' participation in community activities. These include geographic information (e.g., where the student lives, where the activities take place, the student transportation options, the school the student attends), student related information (e.g., the education and experience background of the student, the economic status of the student, students' schedules), and activity information (e.g., location of activity, requirements for participation). The University of Colorado researchers will take the lead on analyzing these data in terms of a community learning ecologies framework and will explore computational approaches (i.e., recommender systems, visualizations of learning opportunities) to improve youth exploration and uptake of interests and programs. These smart technologies are then used to reduce the friction in the learning connection infrastructure (called L3 for informal, formal, and virtual learning) to enable the student to access opportunities for participation in STEM activities that are most feasible and most appropriate for the student. Such a flexible computational approach is needed to support the necessary diversity of potential recommendations: new interests for youth to explore; specific programs based on interests, friends' activities, or geographic accessibility; or programs needed to "level-up" (develop deeper skills) and complete skills to enhance youths' learning portfolios. Although this information was always available, it was never integrated so it could be used to serve the community of both learners and the providers and to provide measurable student learning and participation outcomes. The learning ecologies theoretical framework and supporting computational methods are a contribution to the state of the art in studying afterschool learning opportunities. While the concept of learning ecologies is not new, to date, no one has offered such a systematic and theoretically-grounded portfolio of measures for characterizing the health and resilience of STEM learning ecologies at multiple scales. The theoretical frameworks and concepts draw together multiple research and application domains: computer science, sociology of education, complexity science, and urban planning. The L3 Connects infrastructure itself represents an unprecedented opportunities for conducting "living lab" experiments to improve stakeholder experience of linking providers to a single network and linking youth to more expanded and varied opportunities. The University of Colorado team will employ three methods: mapping, modeling, and linking youth to STEM learning opportunities in school and out of school settings in a large urban city (Chicago). The recommender system will be embedded into youth and parent facing mobile apps, enabling the team to characterize the degree to which content-based, collaborative filtering, or constraint based recommendations influence youth actions. The project will result in two measurable outcomes of importance to key L3 stakeholder groups: a 10% increase in the number of providers (programs that are part of the infrastructure) in target neighborhoods and a 20% increase in the number of youth participating in programs.
This is an Early-concept Grant for Exploratory Research supporting research in Smart and Connected Communities. The research supported by the award is collaborative with research at DePaul University. The researchers are studying the use of technologies to enable communities to connect youth and youth organizations to effectively support diverse learning pathways for all students. These communities, the youth, the youth organizations, formal and informal education organizations, and civic organizations form a learning ecology. The DePaul University researchers will design and implement a smart community infrastructure in the City of Chicago to track real-time student participation in community STEM activities and to develop mobile applications for both students and adults. The smart community infrastructure will bring together information from a variety of sources that affect students' participation in community activities. These include geographic information (e.g., where the student lives, where the activities take place, the student transportation options, the school the student attends), student related information (e.g., the education and experience background of the student, the economic status of the student, students' schedules), and activity information (e.g., location of activity, requirements for participation). The University of Colorado researchers will take the lead on analyzing these data in terms of a community learning ecologies framework and will explore computational approaches (i.e., recommender systems, visualizations of learning opportunities) to improve youth exploration and uptake of interests and programs. These smart technologies are then used to reduce the friction in the learning connection infrastructure (called L3 for informal, formal, and virtual learning) to enable the student to access opportunities for participation in STEM activities that are most feasible and most appropriate for the student. Such a flexible computational approach is needed to support the necessary diversity of potential recommendations: new interests for youth to explore; specific programs based on interests, friends' activities, or geographic accessibility; or programs needed to "level-up" (develop deeper skills) and complete skills to enhance youths' learning portfolios. Although this information was always available, it was never integrated so it could be used to serve the community of both learners and the providers and to provide measurable student learning and participation outcomes. The learning ecologies theoretical framework and supporting computational methods are a contribution to the state of the art in studying afterschool learning opportunities. While the concept of learning ecologies is not new, to date, no one has offered such a systematic and theoretically-grounded portfolio of measures for characterizing the health and resilience of STEM learning ecologies at multiple scales. The theoretical frameworks and concepts draw together multiple research and application domains: computer science, sociology of education, complexity science, and urban planning. The L3 Connects infrastructure itself represents an unprecedented opportunities for conducting "living lab" experiments to improve stakeholder experience of linking providers to a single network and linking youth to more expanded and varied opportunities. The University of Colorado team will employ three methods: mapping, modeling, and linking youth to STEM learning opportunities in school and out of school settings in a large urban city (Chicago). The recommender system will be embedded into youth and parent facing mobile apps, enabling the team to characterize the degree to which content-based, collaborative filtering, or constraint based recommendations influence youth actions. The project will result in two measurable outcomes of importance to key L3 stakeholder groups: a 10% increase in the number of providers (programs that are part of the infrastructure) in target neighborhoods and a 20% increase in the number of youth participating in programs.
This project will make synthetic biology activities accessible to high school students and teachers by providing them with an authentic but safe context to learn. These activities will also broaden their understanding and perspectives about how synthetic biology and bioengineering is used in personal, health, and food production contexts as well as raise their interest in STEM. The design of bioMAKERlab will generate an educational version of an existing professional-grade lab for synthetic biology to promote safe production, accessibility, and affordability for high schools and community colleges interested in integrating such wetlab activities into their curriculum.
Most current efforts to broaden access to maker activities for K-12 students have focused on developing collaborative fabrication workspaces (fablabs) involving 3D printers, laser cutters, and other digital and traditional tools. This project will develop and implement bioMAKERlab, an innovative wetlab starter kit and activities that will enable high school students and teachers to engage in synthetic biology by building genetic circuits that let microorganisms change color, smell, and shape. In synthetic biology, participants make their own DNA--gene by gene--and then grow their designs into real applications by inserting them into microorganisms to develop different traits and characteristics provided by the genes. The project will involve students from a Philadelphia public high school and young people participating in weekend workshops at The Franklin Institute, a Philadelphia-based science museum.
This project is a part of NSF's Maker Dear Colleague Letter portfolio (NSF 15-086), a collaborative investment of Directorates for Computer & Information Science & Engineering, Education and Human Resources, and Engineering.
While the term 'failure' brings to mind negative associations, there is a current focus on failure as a driver of innovation and development in many professional fields. It is also emerging from prior research that for STEM professionals and educators, failure plays an important role in designing and making to increase learning, persistence and other noncognitive skills such as self-efficacy and independence. By investigating how youth and educators attend to moments of failure, how they interpret what this means, and how they respond, we will be better able to understand the dynamics of each part of the experience. The research team will be working with youth from urban, suburban and rural settings, students from Title I schools or who qualify for free/reduced-price lunches, those from racial and ethnic minority groups, as well as students who are learning English as a second language. These youth are from groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM and in making, and research indicates they are more likely to experience negative outcomes when they experience failure.
The intellectual merit of this project centers on establishing a baseline understanding of how failure in making is triggered and experienced by youth, what role educators play in the process, and what can be done to increase persistence and learning, rather than failure being an end-state. The research team will investigate these issues through the use of qualitative and quantitative research methods. In particular, the team will design and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions on increasing the abilities of youth and educators in noticing and responding to failures and increasing positive (e.g., resilience) outcomes. Research sites are selected because they will allow collection of data on youth from a wide range of backgrounds. The research team will also work to test and revise their hypothesized model of the influence of factors on persistence through failures in making. This project is a part of NSF's Maker Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) portfolio (NSF 15-086), a collaborative investment of Directorates for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR) and Engineering (ENG).
This Research in Service to Practice project, a collaboration of Pepperdine University and the New York Hall of Science, will establish a network of STEM-related Media Making Clubs comprised of after-school students aged 12 - 19 and teachers in the U.S. and in three other countries: Kenya, Namibia and Finland. The media produced by the students may include a range of formats such as videos, short subject films, games, computer programs and specialized applications like interactive books. The content of the media produced by the students will focus on the illustration and teaching of STEM topics, where the shared media is intended to help other students become enthused about and learn the science. This proposal builds on the principal investigator's previous work on localized media clubs by now creating an international network in which after-school students and teachers will collaborate at a distance with other clubs. The central research questions for the project pertain to three themes at the intersection of learning, culture and collaboration: the impact of participatory teaching, virtual networks, and intercultural, global competence. The research will combine qualitative, cross-cultural and big data methods. Critical to the innovation of the project, the research team will also develop a network assessment tool, adapting epistemic network analysis methods to the needs of this initiative. This work 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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Eric HamiltonKatherine McMillanPriya Mohabir
Community education with regard to science comes in many forms and is usually designed to address issues within that community. In this proposal, land use is the focus. This is a general topic and applicable in nearly all locations within communities and in the State. In this case, the topic is used to educate adults and high school students providing each with unique identities. Using satellite-enabled tools, the topology of an area can be mapped in detail and assessed for use thus enabling science education for both adults and high school students. The studies will involve intergenerational learning which is an area needing additional study. Also, the proposers are going to broaden the scope so that it impacts several different areas in the State of Connecticut. This is important because in doing so it will include the diversity of cultures within the State and the education results will reflect this diversity. As a part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds research and innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. This proposed effort aims to promote lifelong STEM learning through a focus on conservation, geospatial technology and community engagement. The goals are to: (1) develop particular STEM knowledge and skills, and foster STEM identity authoring/learning in two disparate groups of lifelong learners, and (2) gain a deeper understanding of the ways that this learning occurs through research and evaluation. The project will develop an educational program that focuses on conservation science and recent advances in web-enabled geospatial technologies (geographic information systems, remote sensing, and global positioning systems) that, for the first time, make these technologies accessible and attainable for the public. The focus will be on urban and rural areas with underrepresented populations of STEM learners. Two groups of lifelong learners will be targeted: adult volunteers involved with community land conservation issues, and high school-aged adolescents enabling the project to investigate the processes and impacts of intergenerational learning.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
John VolinDavid MossDavid CampbellChester ArnoldCary Chadwick
Rural communities across the Nation are, in general, underserved in terms of the various forms of STEM education. Clearly, they are under-represented in the realm of contemporary STEM subjects often because they are geographically isolated and cannot travel to cities where there are Science and Museum Centers for informal education opportunities. As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. This award will, in a collaborative effort within the community, bring STEM activities to selected communities in Arizona. Among the initial activities, there will be a STEM festival highlighting aspects of the community and its assets in an effort to gather support and begin to give perspective on identity for an extended effort of longevity. Further, these communities will be networked to facilitate discussion and to enhance effectiveness.
This project will develop STEM activities and STEM learning within a selected community by giving the community and its residents identity and opportunities for youth development and career choices. The selected communities in Arizona represent a diverse group that includes Native Americans and Latinos. In collaboration with community residents, a designed plan will be established that satisfies the needs and opportunities that can be derived from the extant community assets whether it is mining, tourism, or government facilities. Evaluation efforts are set to determine what the key features and methodologies are that facilitate STEM knowledge acquisition for each rural community. This project represents seminal and foundational work in the area of rural informal STEM education. Researchers will explore the following questions: 1) understanding how rural communities currently perceive, access, and engage in informal science learning, and the extent to which they identify themselves and/or their community in relation to science; and 2) the extent to which relevant, place-based networks can increase public awareness of local STEM assets, resources, and opportunities, and foster a science-related identity at both the personal and community level. These data will be compared to data on other rural community projects in the AISL portfolio. The partners in this effort include the Arizona Science Center, community leaders from four rural regions in Arizona, Arizona State University, and the Center of Science and Industry.
Chemistry is an important and widely relevant field of science. However, when compared with other STEM content areas, chemistry is under-represented in U.S. science museums and other informal educational environments. This project will build, and build knowledge about, innovative approaches to delivering informal science learning activities in chemistry. The project will not only increase public interest and understanding of chemistry but also increase public perception of chemistry's relevance and increase the public's self-efficacy with respect to chemistry. This project outcomes will include a guide for practitioners along with activity materials that will be packaged into a kit, distributed, and replicated for use by informal science educators, chemists, and chemistry students at 250 sites across the U.S. The project team will reach out to organizations that serve diverse audiences and diverse geographic locations, including organizations in rural and inner-city areas. The kits will provide guidance on engaging girls, people with various abilities, Spanish speakers, and other diverse audiences, and include materials in Spanish. Written guides, training videos, and training slides will be included to support training in science communication in general, as well as chemistry in particular. This project is supported by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds research and innovative resources for use in a variety of settings, as a part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments.
This project will take an innovative approach to develop informal educational activities and materials about chemistry. Rather than starting with content goals, the project will start with a theoretical framework drawn from research about affecting attitudes about science related to interest, relevance, and self-efficacy. A design-based research approach (DBR) will be used to apply that framework to the development of hands-on educational activities about chemistry, while also testing and modifying the framework itself. (DBR blends empirical educational research with the theory-driven design of learning environments.) Existing or new educational activities that appear to embody key characteristics defined in the framework will be tested with public audiences for their impact on visitors. Researchers and educators will determine how different characteristics of the educational activities defined in the framework affect the outcomes. The activities will be modified and tested iteratively until the investigators achieve close alignment between framework and impacts.. The project team will continue the design-based research approach both to examine groups of activities in which synergies can have impacts beyond single interactions as well as to examine varied ways of training facilitators who can also significantly affect outcomes. In this way, the project will generate knowledge about how kits of hands-on informal learning activities can stimulate attitudes of interest, relevance, and self-efficacy with respect to the neglected field of chemistry. The project teams will broadly disseminate project outcomes within the educational research, science and informal Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education communities. While this project will focus on chemistry, the strategies it will develop and test through a design-based research process will provide valuable insight into effective approaches for informal STEM education more broadly.
Youth environmental education (EE) programs often serve as gateway experiences in which diverse audiences engage in informal science learning. While there is evidence that these programs can have positive impacts on participants, little empirical research has been conducted to determine what makes one program more successful than another. To be able to conduct such research, this Exploratory Pathways study will (1) develop and statistically validate ways to measure meaningful outcomes for participants across a variety of programs and (2) test observational methods that will enable research that can determine which elements of program delivery most powerfully influence participant engagement and learning outcomes in different contexts. These efforts will include consultations with diverse subject matter experts from the National Park Service, nature centers, and academia; survey research with participants in afterschool and free-choice EE programs; and observations of EE programs designed to fine tune the measurement of program delivery elements and student engagement. Developing valid and reliable outcomes measures and observational protocols will enable a larger investigation that will specifically address the following research question: What program characteristics lead to the best learning outcomes for program participants in different contexts? This research will result in empirically tested guidelines that will enable educators to design and deliver more effective programs for a wide range of audiences in a wide range of contexts. It 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 effort will refine methods necessary to undertake an unprecedented study (and future AISL Research in Service to Practice proposal) to examine the linkages between pedagogical approaches, participant engagement, and learning outcomes in informal STEM-focused youth EE programs. The larger study will involve systematically observing a large number of programs to assess the use of different approaches and to link those approaches to engagement and learning outcomes through both observation and survey research. In this current study the team will develop and refine crosscutting outcome measures to ensure validity, reliability, and sensitivity by drawing upon the literature and consultation with key stakeholders to develop suites of indicators for subsequent psychometric testing and revision. They will also refine observational techniques for assessing pedagogical approaches through extensive testing of inter-rater reliability. Finally, techniques for measuring participant engagement, incorporating both observational techniques and retrospective participant surveys will be refined. The work will be conducted by researchers at Clemson University and Virginia Tech, in partnership with the U.S. National Park Service, the North American Association for Environmental Education, and the American Association of Nature Center Administrators. This work represents the first step in a longer research process to determine the "best practices" most responsible for achieving outcomes in a wide range of contexts.
The Wayne State University Math Corps is a mathematics enrichment and mentoring program that operates during summers and on Saturdays. The curriculum and the teach pedagogies in this informal learning program have documented success of supporting youths' mathematics learning as well as raising achievement levels in school. Through rigorous research and evaluation, this project seeks to analyze and understand the nature, extent, and reasons for Math Corps' success with youth learning in Detroit as well as the processes of program replication in three sites: Cleveland, OH; Utica, NY; and Philadelphia, PA. As such, this project will deepen understandings of program replication and of addressing the needs of youth in economically-challenged communities in order to promote mathematics learning.
The project's research studies will assess the multiple factors that make Math Corps successful with youth in Detroit and document the implementation of the program to the three replication sites. Research methods include discourse analyses, surveys, interviews, and pre/post-tests. The project will also conduct a retrospective evaluation of Math Corps based on quantitative datasets regarding both near-term and long-term youth outcomes.
This projects is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understandings of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Steve KahnStephen ChrisomalisTodd KubicaCarol Philips-BeyFrancisca Richter
In this chapter we present the ways in which institutional cultural differences impact the development and implementation of learning activities in informal settings. Five university-based centers for the study of chemistry worked with informal learning professionals to re-envision educational and public outreach activities about science. The projects were part of a broader effort to catalyze new thinking and innovation in informal education and chemistry centers. The set of projects illustrates the broad possibilities for informal learning settings, with projects targeting diverse audiences