Mathematizing, Visualizing, and Power (MVP): Appalachian Youth Becoming Data Artists for Community Learning is a three-year Advancing Informal STEM Learning, Innovations and Development, project that focuses on community-centered data exploration catalyzed by youth. The project develops statistical artistry among young people in East Tennessee Appalachian communities and enables these youth to share their data visualizations with their communities to foster collective reflection and understanding. The creative work generated by the MVP project will be compelling in two ways, both as statistical art and as powerful statements giving voice to the experience of communities. Critical aspects of the MVP model include (1) youth learning sessions that position youth as owners of data and producers of knowledge and (2) Community Learning Events that support community learning as youth learning occurs. The MVP project has a primary focus on broadening the STEM participation of underrepresented communities of Appalachia. The project’s mission is to increase the learning and life outcomes of young people and communities of Appalachia by creating a meaningful foundation of data science and collective data exploration. The University of Tennessee partners with Pellissippi State Community College, Drexel University, and the Boys & Girls Club of the Tennessee Valley to bring together a convergent team of community members, practitioners, and professionals, with the expertise to carry out the project. The project will impact approximately 120 youth and 3800 of their East Tennessee community members. The research generated will inform how to engage community members in learning about community issues through the exploration of datasets relevant to participants.
The field of STEM education is in urgent need of knowledge about effective models to inspire community-based data exploration with young people as leaders in these efforts. The MVP project includes engaging youth with meaningful problems, building a discourse community with possibilities for action, re-positioning youth as knowledge producers within their own communities, leveraging linguistic and cultural resources of the youth participants and their communities, and implementing critical events that support substantial interaction between youth, community members, and the data visualizations. MVP builds on the idea that the design of data visualizations requires an understanding of both data science and artistic design. Research will inform the model of community engagement, examine data artists’ identities, and document community learning. The MVP model will be designed, developed, tested, and refined through three cycles of design-based research. The overarching research question guiding these cycles is: What affordances (and delimitations) related to identity and learning does the model provide for MVP Youth and community members? Data sources for the project include: fieldnotes, portfolios created by MVP Youth, youth pre/post interviews, observations of the learning sessions, a project documentary, surveys for youth and community members, interviews with community members, and audience feedback. The National Institute for STEM Evaluation and Research (NISER) will provide formative and summative evaluation about project activities. Formative feedback will be integrated into the ongoing research cycles. The research conducted will inform (1) the community learning model; (2) the integrated pedagogy and curriculum of the MVP Youth learning sessions that emphasize data science through design arts; and, (3) research on community learning and youth identity. Findings will be shared through conferences, academic and practitioner-focused journals, a video documentary, a Summit on Engaging Youth and Communities in Data, and a project website.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Lynn HodgeElizabeth DyerJoy BertlingCarlye Clark
Numeracy is not a luxury: numbers constantly factor into our daily lives. Yet adults in the United States have lower numeracy than adults in most other developed nations. While formal statistical training is effective, few adults receive it – and schools are a major contributor to the inequity we see among U.S. adults. That leaves news well-poised as a source of informal learning, given that news is a domain where adults regularly encounter quantitative content. Our transdisciplinary team of journalists and social scientists propose a research agenda for thinking about math and the news. We
Virtual Reality (VR) shows promise to broaden participation in STEM by engaging learners in authentic but otherwise inaccessible learning experiences. The immersion in authentic learner environments, along with social presence and learner agency, that is enabled by VR helps form memorable learning experiences. VR is emerging as a promising tool for children with autism. While there is wide variation in the way people with autism present, one common set of needs associated with autism that can be addressed with VR is sensory processing. This project will research and model how VR can be used to minimize barriers for learners with autism, while also incorporating complementary universal designs for learning (UDL) principles to promote broad participation in STEM learning. As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of settings. This project will build on a prototype VR simulation, Mission to Europa Prime, that transports learners to a space station for exploration on Jupiter's moon Europa, a strong candidate for future discovery of extraterrestrial life and a location no human can currently experience in person. The prototype simulation will be expanded to create a full, immersive STEM-based experience that will enable learners who often encounter cognitive, social, and emotional barriers to STEM learning in public spaces, particularly learners with autism, to fully engage and benefit from this STEM-learning experience. The simulation will include a variety of STEM-learning puzzles, addressing science, mathematics, engineering, and computational thinking through authentic and interesting problem-solving tasks. The project team's learning designers and researchers will co-design puzzles and user interfaces with students at a post-secondary institute for learners with autism and other learning differences. The full VR STEM-learning simulation will be broadly disseminated to museums and other informal education programs, and distributed to other communities.
Project research is designed to advance knowledge about VR-based informal STEM learning and the affordances of VR to support learners with autism. To broaden STEM participation for all, the project brings together research at the intersection of STEM learning, cognitive and educational neuroscience, and the human-technology frontier. The simulation will be designed to provide agency for learners to adjust a STEM-learning VR experience for their unique sensory processing, attention, and social anxiety needs. The project will use a participatory design process will ensure the VR experience is designed to reduce barriers that currently exclude learners with autism and related conditions from many informal learning opportunities, broadening participation in informal STEM learning. Design research, usability, and efficacy studies will be conducted with teens and adults at the Pacific Science Center and Boston Museum of Science, which serve audiences with autism, along with the general public. Project research is grounded in prior NSF-funded research and leverages the team's expertise in STEM learning simulations, VR development, cognitive psychology, universal design, and informal science education, as well as the vital expertise of the end-user target audience, learners with autism. In addition to being shared at conferences, the research findings will be submitted for publication to peer-reviewed journals for researchers and to appropriate publications for VR developers and disseminators, museum programs, neurodiverse communities and other potentially interested parties.
This Innovations in Development 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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Teon EdwardsJodi Asbell-ClarkeJamie LarsenIbrahim Dahlstrom-Hakki
Sense-making with data through the process of visualization—recognizing and constructing meaning with these data—has been of interest to learning researchers for many years. Results of a variety of data visualization projects in museums and science centers suggest that visitors have a rudimentary understanding of and ability to interpret the data that appear in even simple data visualizations. This project supports the need for data visualization experiences to be appealing, accommodate short and long-term exploration, and address a range of visitors’ prior knowledge. Front-end evaluation
Vassar College is conducting a 2.5-day conference, as well as pre- and post-conference activities, that convenes a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional (USA and international) team to conceptualize and plan various research, education and outreach activities in informal learning, focusing on the seminal concept of tensegrity and its applications in many fields of science and mathematics. Tensegrity is the characteristic property of a stable three-dimensional structure consisting of members under tension that are contiguous and members under compression that are not.
The conference will bring together researchers and practitioners in informal learning and researchers in the various disciplines that embrace tensegrity (mathematics, engineering, biology, architecture, and art) to explore the potential that tensegrity has to engage the public in informal settings, especially through direct engagement in creating such structures. This project 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 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.
To date there have been no sustained informal educational projects and research around the topic of tensegrity. However, there is considerable related work on learning through "making and tinkering" upon which the participants will adapt and expand. The intended conference outcomes are to produce prototypes of activities, a research agenda, and lines of development with the potential to engage the wider public. A key priority of the gathering is the development of new partnerships between researchers and creators of tensegrity systems and the informal learning professionals. The long-term project hypothesis is that children and adults can engage with tensegrity through tinkering with materials and becoming familiar with a growing set of basic structures and their applications. The activities will include evaluation of the conference and a social network analysis of the collaborations that result.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
Since 1992, the WSU Math Corps, a combined mathematics and mentoring program, has worked to make a difference in the lives of Detroit’s children—providing them with the love and support that all kids need in the moment, while empowering them with the kinds of educational opportunities and sense of purpose, that hold the promise of good lives for themselves and a better world for all.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Steve KahnStephen ChrisomalisTodd KubicaCarol Philips-BeyFrancisca Richter
This Innovations in Development project 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 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. This Pilot and Feasibility study will investigate strategies for enhancing the mathematics in museum-based making and tinkering activities and lay the foundation for a full research study on broadening family participation in mathematics through making. This proposal builds directly on the NSF-funded Math in the Making convening. During this convening, questions about how to authentically highlight and enhance the mathematics in making and tinkering experiences, and how different math-enhancement approaches might influence learner experiences and outcomes, emerged as critical issues for researchers, educators, and mathematicians alike. The project aims to provide a practical lens to help researchers and educators connect topics across STEM with making and tinkering experiences. The project also seeks to advance theoretical understandings of museum-based learning by exploring ways that activity design and facilitation strategies influence how visitors understand the nature and goals of the experience and, in turn, how these visitor experiences shape learning outcomes. The project is designed to explore the most promising of these math-enhancement strategies in more depth, to propose as a next project and develop a theoretical framework for understanding and describing how these strategies influence how families understand and engage with the mathematics in maker experiences. Through several culturally-responsive approaches developed in collaboration with community-based organizations, the project will research how mathematics in maker experiences influences participant engagement and learning. The project will culminate in the design of a research study. Reports and resources developed by the project will be broadly disseminated to researchers, mathematicians, and educators. 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.
This NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot is to expand the Navajo Nation Math Circle model to other sites, and to develop and launch a network of math circles based on the NNMC model. The Navajo Nation Math Circle model is a novel approach to broadening the participation of indigenous peoples in mathematics that, ultimately, seeks to improve American Indian students' attitudes towards mathematics, persistence with challenging problems, and grades in math courses. Navajo Nation Math Circles bring teachers, students, and mathematicians together to work collaboratively on challenging, but meaningful and fun, math problems. Through this NSF INCLUDES project, additional math circles across the Navajo Nation will be launched and a mirror site in Washington State serving additional tribes (such as Puyallup, Muckleshoot, Tulalip, and Stillaguamish) will be established.
Originating approximately a century ago in Eastern Europe as a means to engage students in mathematical thinking, math circles bring teachers, students, and math professionals together to work collaboratively on challenging, but relevant and interesting, math problems. Navajo Nation Math Circles, established math circles in various Navajo Nation communities, are the foundation of this INCLUDES project. One goal of this effort is to launch a network with the capacity to support the replication and adaption of math circles in multiple sites as an innovative strategy for encouraging indigenous math engagement through culturally enriched open-ended group math explorations. In addition, the Navajo Nation Math Circle model will be expanded to new math circles in the Navajo Nation, as well as in Washington State to serve additional tribes. Cells in the network will implement key elements of the Navajo Nation Math Circle model, adapting them to their particular contexts. Such elements include facilitation of open-ended group math explorations, incorporating indigenous knowledge systems; a Mathematical Visitor Program sending mathematicians to schools to work with students and their teachers; inclusion of mathematics in public festivals to increase community mathematical awareness; a two-week summer math camp for students; and teacher development opportunities ranging from workshops to immersion experiences to a mentoring program pairing teachers with mathematicians.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
David AucklyHenry FowlerJayadev Athreya
As the world is increasingly dependent upon computing and computational processes associated with data analysis, it is essential to gain a better understanding of the visualization technologies that are used to make meaning of massive scientific data. It is also essential that the infrastructure, the very means by which technologies are developed for improving the public's engagement in science itself, be better understood. Thus, this AISL Innovations in Development project will address the critical need for the public to learn how to interpret and understand highly complex and visualized scientific data. The project will design, develop and study a new technology platform, xMacroscope, as a learning tool that will allow visitors at the Science Museum of Minnesota and the Center of Science and Industry, to create, view, understand, and interact with different data sets using diverse visualization types. The xMacroscope will support rapid research prototyping of public experiences at selected exhibits, such as collecting data on a runner's speed and height and the visualized representation of such data. The xMacroscope will provide research opportunities for exhibit designers, education researchers, and learning scientists to study diverse audiences at science centers in order to understand how learning about data through the xMacroscope tool may inform definitions of data literacy. The research will advance the state of the art in visualization technology, which will have broad implications for teaching and learning of scientific data in both informal and formal learning environments. The project will lead to better understanding by science centers on how to present data to the public more effectively through visualizations that are based upon massive amounts of data. Technology results and research findings will be disseminated broadly through professional publications and presentations at science, education, and technology conferences. The project 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 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 project is driven by the assumption that in the digital information age, being able to create and interpret data visualizations is an important literacy for the public. The research will seek to define, measure, and advance data visualization literacy. The project will engage the public in using the xMacrocope at the Science Museum of Minnesota and at the Center of Science and Industry's (COSI) science museum and research center in Columbus, Ohio. In both museum settings the public will interact with different datasets and diverse types of visualizations. Using the xMacroscope platform, personal attributes and capabilities will be measured and personalized data visualizations will be constructed. Existing theories of learning (constructivist and constructionist) will be extended to capture the learning and use of data visualization literacy. In addition, the project team will conduct a meta-review related to different types of literacy and will produce a definition with performance measures to assess data visualization literacy - currently broadly defined in the project as the ability to read, understand, and create data visualizations. The research has potential for significant impact in the field of science and technology education and education research on visual learning. It will further our understanding of the nature of data visualization literacy learning and define opportunities for visualizing data in ways that are both personally and culturally meaningful. The project expects to advance the understanding of the role of personalization in the learning process using iterative design-based research methodologies to advance both theory and practice in informal learning settings. An iterative design process will be applied for addressing the research questions by correlating visualizations to individual actions and contributions, exploring meaning-making studies of visualization construction, and testing the xMacroscope under various conditions of crowdedness and busyness in a museum context. The evaluation plan is based upon a logic model and the evaluation will iteratively inform the direction, process, and productivity of the project.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program 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 goal of this project is to make 21st century quantum science comprehensible and engaging to non-expert informal adult learners. This project has strong potential to add new knowledge about the public's perception and understanding of quantum physics. This scientific content is often difficult for informal audiences to grasp, and there are relatively few accessible learning resources for a non- professional audience. The development of this online, interactive resource with short animations, graphics, and simulations has strong potential to fill this gap. It will develop a visually driven online resource to engage non-expert audiences in understanding the basics of quantum physics. The web design will be modular, incorporating many multimedia elements and the structure will be flexible allowing for future expansion. All content would be freely available for educational use. There is potential for extensive reach and use of the resources by informal adult learners online as well as learners in museums, science centers, and schools. Project partners are the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, College Park. An independent evaluation of the project will add new knowledge about informal learners' perceptions and/or knowledge about quantum science and technology. An initial needs assessment via focus groups with the general public will be designed to find out more about what they already know about quantum physics topics and terminology, as well as what they want to know and what formats they prefer (games, simulations, podcasts, etc.). In person user testing will be used with early versions of the project online resource using a structured think-aloud protocol. Later in year 1 and 2, online focus groups with the general public will be conducted to learn what they find engaging and what they learned from the content. Iterative feedback from participants during the formative stage will guide the development of the content and format of the online resources. The Summative Evaluation will gather data using a retrospective post-survey embedded with a pop-up link on the Atlas followed by interviews with a subset of online users. Google Analytics will be used to determine the breadth and depth of their online navigation, what resources they download, and what websites they visit afterward. A post-only survey of undergraduate and graduate students who participated in resource development will focus on changes in students' confidence around their science communication skills and level of quantum physics understanding.
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
Research on mathematical reasoning and learning has long been a central part of the classroom and formal education literature (e.g., National Research Council, 2001, 2005). However, much less attention has been paid to how children and adults engage with and learn about math outside of school, including everyday settings and designed informal learning environments, such as interactive math exhibits in science centers. With the growing recognition of the importance of informal STEM education (National Research Council, 2009, 2015), researchers, educators, and policymakers are paying more