The Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) will use $286,915, or 67% of a $430,373 total project budget, over three years to develop "SkyTellers," a space science and astronomy resource for small informal (and formal) learning settings such as planetariums, museum classes, school and community libraries, youth groups and home school settings. LPI educators and science staff, in consultation with a Native American master story teller, evaluation consultants, and an advisory board, will develop 12 SkyTeller topics. Each SkyTeller topic pairs a myth or legend (primarily but not exclusively Native American) with a relevant science story (Sky Story/Science Story) that explains our current understanding of the phenomenon that the ancient tale sought to explain. Ancillary materials (illustrations produced by LPI graphics staff, images from the latest in space science missions and research) will complete the 12 story sets to be used by informal and formal science educators at a variety of venues. Extensive formative and summative evaluation (alpha and beta testing) at multiple test venues is designed to insure high quality informal science education products.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Stephen MackwellStephanie ShippJoseph Hahn
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Does the public trust science? Scientists? Scientific organizations? What roles do trust and the lack of trust play in public debates about how science can be used to address such societal concerns as childhood vaccination, cancer screening, and a warming planet? What could happen if social trust in science or scientists faded? These types of questions led the Roundtable on Public Interfaces of the Life Sciences of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a 2-day workshop on May 5-6, 2015 on public trust in science. This report explores empirical evidence on
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Helaine ResnickKeegan SawyerNancy Huddleston
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 media and research project will inform adult audiences about the discoveries of NSF funded Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) scientists that are dramatically re-shaping fields as diverse as economics, marketing, medicine and government. Four primetime PBS specials hosted by science reporter, Miles O'Brien, will be produced featuring leading SBE scientists and vetted for inclusion by a panel of expert advisors including Baruch Fischhoff of Carnegie Mellon and Robert Kurzban of the University of Pennsylvania. A key innovation in the project is a participatory research strategy that will enable the public to take part directly in scientific behavioral research and discover what their participation has revealed about their own lives. Built around YouTube features, Facebook, and online games it will build on the public's interest in learning about themselves and others via social media supported by scientific research. The project collaborators include the media company, Oregon Public Broadcasting, and researchers at Carnegie Mellon, University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and Chapman University. This project is unique in its strategy for combining broadcast television programs focusing on Social, Behavioral, and Economics research with a participatory research component that engages audiences in scientific studies that are personally relevant. It will fill an important niche in the informal learning research literature and has the potential to impact media practice that continues to evolve incorporating new online social media tools. RMC will conduct formative evaluation to help inform the project deliverables, a summative evaluation of the project, and an experimental research study in Year 3 of the project. The research study is based on the hypothesis that those participants assigned to watch the entire television series and engage in all participatory research activities will experience the greatest gains in STEM interest and engagement as compared to those who only have limited exposure. Research participants will be randomly assigned to the control group (no services) or one of the three treatment conditions: view TV only; engage in participatory website only; or both. Pre-tests and posttests and statistical tools will be used to compare changes. Sub-studies will examine dosage levels and effectiveness in engaging those who have not previously been interested in STEM.
In concert with the overall strategy of the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments, Principal Investigators from Oregon State University, University of Idaho, and University of Texas at Dallas, will study a range of data in online social networks to identify evidence of the long-term impact of informal STEM education. Tracking informal learners over time to understand the impact of informal learning experiences has been a longstanding, daunting, and elusive challenge. Now, with massive amounts of data being shared and stored online, education researchers have an unprecedented opportunity to study such data and apply data analytics and visualization technologies to identify the long-term, cascading effects of informal STEM learning. Research findings will inform the design and development of a data-analysis tool for use by education practitioners to improve STEM learning experiences online, through television and film, and at informal education institutions. An independent external critical review board of learning scientists, computer scientists, engineers, informal STEM education practitioners, participating partners, broadcast media professionals, and policymakers, will ensure a robust evaluation of the research and effectiveness and utility of the data analysis tool to improve practice. A summary report for the field will be written on the scientific and practical reliability and validity of the research and data-analysis model, and the value of the work for audiences beyond informal STEM education practitioners and policymakers. The research is contemporaneously relevant, advancing innovative use of data-mining and data-analysis processes to better understand how informal learners communicate STEM learning experiences and interact with STEM content over time, across a range of social networks. Investigators will research: 1) whether learners who engage in informal STEM education experiences further their learning through discussions and sharing of information in social media networks, 2) which types of data are present in social media that are relevant for understanding the cascading impacts of learning over time, and 3) how learning may evolve independently within shared social networks, which, if discovered, could provide a predictive computational model with implications for significant impact across both formal and informal education. Investigators will employ existing and modified data crawlers to search for key terms and phrases, assess spikes and deformations in posts, queries, and blogs, and experiment with their test data to find which types or configurations of keywords or search terms deliver the most reliable and accurate results. A variety of formats will be explored to test various strategies with participating partners and practitioners. Data will be visualized to represent the following dimensions of learning: a) Interest/Affect, b) Recommendations, c) Understanding/Knowledge-Seeking, and d) Deeper Engagement.
The goal of "Communicating STEM -- Applying the Science of Science Communication to Natural History Media Products in Development/Production" is to bring standard methodology for media product development/production into better alignment with evidence-based best practices for science communication. Presentations in the professional development science strand at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival (JHWFF) conference will be curated to demonstrate how adhering to research-based communication strategies has been proven to increase knowledge retention in a lay audience and decrease instances of audience bias. The strand will present emerging methods for assessing media impact beyond simply the number of viewers, as well as in depth case studies examining evidence for measurable benefits to adopting science communication strategies. By establishing an international cohort of interdisciplinary professionals, and by recruiting ongoing engagement through dissemination of project deliverables through partner organizations and university programs, JHWFF will increase opportunities for cross-industry collaboration and provide media producers, STEM professionals and science communication experts with the resources and network necessary for informed, effective public outreach through natural history and science media products. This conference strand is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning 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. Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival (JHWFF) is a premier international industry conference for natural history media professionals. This project will establish a cross-industry, interdisciplinary professional development science strand in the upcoming 2015 JHWFF conference. The goal is to advance interdisciplinary collaborations between STEM professionals, science communication experts, media producers, and students/early career professionals. The strand will explore examples of successful science/media collaborations, and increase discourse on best practices for public engagement at the intersection of STEM research, empirically-proven communication methods, and media content for diverse audiences. The project is divided into two phases: Phase I involves the work at the conference; Phase II will provide free online access to edited videos of program sessions made broadly available through partner organizations and institutions, and promoted via social networking, cohort groups, and online blogs. The collaborating organizations (American Association for the Advancement of Science, LifeOnTERRA, and Participant Media), complemented by a broad group of expert advisors, will extend the capacity of the project, facilitate access to stakeholders, and recruit broader participation in both phases of the project. Dr. Louis Nadelson, Director of the Center for the School of the Future at Utah State University, will conduct external evaluation.
A recent report by the Association for Computing Machinery estimates that by decade's end, half of all STEM jobs in the United States will be in computing. Yet, the participation of women and underrepresented groups in post-secondary computer science programs remains discouragingly and persistently low. One of the most important findings from research in computer science education is the degree to which informal experiences with computers (at many ages and in many settings) shape young people's trajectories through high school and into undergraduate degree programs. Just as early language and mathematics literacy begins at home and is reinforced throughout childhood through a variety of experiences both in school and out, for reasons of diversity and competency, formal experiences with computational literacy alone are insufficient for developing the next generation of scientists, engineers, and citizens. Thus, this CAREER program of research seeks to contribute to a conceptual and design framework to rethink computational literacy in informal environments in an effort to engage a broad and diverse audience. It builds on the concept of cultural forms to understand existing computational literacy practices across a variety of learning settings and to contribute innovative technology designs. As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in these settings. This CAREER program of research seeks to understand the role of cultural forms in informal computational learning experiences and to develop a theoretically grounded approach for designing such experiences for youth. This work starts from the premise that new forms of computational literacy will be born from existing cultural forms of literacy and numeracy (i.e., for mathematical literacy there are forms like counting songs -- "10 little ducks went out to play"). Many of these forms play out in homes between parents and children, in schools between teachers and students, and in all sorts of other place between friends and siblings. This program of study is a three-phased design and development effort focused on key research questions that include understanding (1) how cultural forms can help shape audience experiences in informal learning environments; (2) how different cultural forms interact with youth's identity-related needs and motivations; and (3) how new types of computational literacy experiences based on these forms can be created. Each phase includes inductive research that attempts to understand computational literacy as it exists in the world and a design phase guided by concrete learning objectives that address specific aspects of computational literacy. Data collection strategies will include naturalist observation, semi-structured, and in-depth interviews, and learning assessments; outcome measures will center on voluntary engagement, motivation, and persistence around the learning experiences. The contexts for research and design will be museums, homes, and afterschool programs. This research builds on a decade of experience by the PI in designing and studying computational literacy experiences across a range of learning settings including museums, homes, out-of-school programs, and classrooms. Engaging a broad and diverse audience in the future of STEM computing fields is an urgent priority of the US education system, both in schools and beyond. This project would complement substantial existing efforts to promote in-school computational literacy and, if successful, help bring about a more representative, computationally empowered citizenry. The integrated education plan supports the training and mentoring of graduate and undergraduate students in emerging research methods at the intersection of the learning sciences, computer science, and human-computer interaction. This work will also develop publically available learning experiences potentially impacting thousands of youth. These experiences will be available in museums, on the Web, and through App stores.
Despite strong efforts by many people and institutions and a deep, ongoing commitment from the National Science Foundation, progress remains uneven and slower than desired with respect to broadening participation of people from all parts of society in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The broadening participation challenge will become even more urgent with increasing demographic and socioeconomic changes underway in our nation. Through this conference and workshop grant, the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) will convene a group of diverse thought leaders from across higher education, profit, non-profit, K-12 and informal STEM education sectors for one day of brainstorming and prioritizing possible ideas, strategies, and actions that could be aggressively pursued by broadening participation initiatives. The findings of this workshop could support ongoing, field-wide discussions about the next generation of projects and efforts to address issues of underrepresentation in STEM. This workshop will build upon a foundation of existing NSF programs and funded projects and will draw upon ongoing efforts by ASTC's Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) to address broadening participation challenges in informal STEM learning environments. 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 Inclusion Across the Nation of Communities of Learners that Have Been Underrepresented for Diversity in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES) Leadership Workshop will engage up to 55 local and non-local participants from the higher education, profit, non-profit, K-12 and informal STEM education sectors that have been selected for their extensive but varied experiences with efforts to broaden participation in STEM. Before the workshop, participants will prepare for the plenary talks, panel presentations, and breakout session discussions by reading selected literature about effectively scaling innovations, collective impact strategies, catalytic innovations, and other related theory. Specific goals of this one-day workshop are 1) to consider potential scalable high-impact innovations in STEM education to assure success for all people across the nation; and 2) to generate ideas, strategies, and actions that could substantially alter the current landscape and potentially achieve a transformative change for inclusion. ASTC proposes to disseminate the workshop findings to worksop participants, the broader communities to which participants belong, and even the National Science Foundation. A workshop synthesis report and other content generated at the workshop (speaker slides, presentation video, graphic documentation to name a few) will reside at ASTC's informalscience.org website. ASTC proposes an extensive communications media strategy that will draw stakeholder attention to these resources and support field-wide discussion and action around broadening participation.
Youth Volunteer Interpreters as Facilitators of Learning about Climate Change in Zoo Settings reports on a project to pilot test climate change education resources featuring youth volunteer interpreters as facilitators for zoo visitors’ experiences. Brookfield Zoo tested inquiry-based and specimen-based interpretation at the polar bear and Humboldt penguin exhibits, and Woodland Park Zoo tested a climate-change themed "activity cart" near their Sumatran tiger exhibit. Both the effects of youth volunteer interpretation on the zoo visitors and on the youth volunteer interpreters themselves were
Global Climate Change as Seen by Latin American Zoo Visitors reports on the findings of a summer 2011 survey conducted at eight Latin American zoos in five countries. The study was designed to characterize the readiness of Latin American zoo visitors to engage with the issue of global climate change. This included describing visitors’ cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral predispositions toward climate change in addition to describing their attitudes and beliefs regarding wildlife, nature, and conservation actions. Results indicate that Latin American zoo visitors have a high degree of
Global Climate Change as Seen by Zoo and Aquarium Visitors reports on the findings of a summer 2011 survey conducted at 15 zoos and aquariums. The study was designed to characterize the readiness of U.S. zoo and aquarium visitors to engage with the issue of global climate change. This included describing visitors' cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral predispositions toward climate change in addition to describing their attitudes and beliefs regarding wildlife, nature, and conservation actions. Results indicate that zoo and aquarium visitors are receptive audiences for climate change
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
The objective of this project is to extend the concept of crowdsourcing in citizen science to the interaction design of the organization as well as to data collection. Distributed technologies offer new opportunities for conducting scientific research on a larger scale than ever before by enabling distributed collaboration. Virtual organizations that use distributed technologies in scientific organizations have primarily focused on how dedicated, professional scientists collaborate and communicate. More recently a rapidly increasing number of citizen science virtual organizations are being formed. Citizen scientists participate in scientific endeavors and typically lack formal credentials, do not hold professional positions in scientific institutions, and bring diversity of knowledge and expertise to projects and challenges. They participate in scientific endeavors related to their personal scientific interests and create new challenges for the design of virtual organizations. In terms of intellectual merit, the project will make three specific contributions: a new interaction design for collecting biodiversity data within a nature park, a model for crowdsourcing the design of an social computing approach to citizen science, and an analysis of the impact of crowdsourcing the design on motivating participation in collecting biodiversity data. Interactive tabletop computers will be placed in two nature parks so that the design of the citizen science environment can be embedded in a park experience and engage the public in understanding more about their parks, in data collection, and develop a personal commitment to environmental sustainability issues. In terms of broader impacts, the project provides three types of impact: research training by including graduate students, broad public dissemination to enhance scientific understanding of biodiversity, and benefits to society through association with the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (ACES) and Encyclopedia of Life (EOL).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mary Lou MaherTom YehJennifer Preece