What is a "learning organization," and does this model help organizations achieve desired outcomes? The impetus for investigating literature and talking with practitioners about organizational learning was to understand whether it is relevant to my thesis project, an endeavor to improve environmental protection work at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR). This project is the focus of my graduate work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Institute for Environmental Studies, Land Resources Program. My advisor, Dr. Patrick Eagan, and I began work on this project in May 2002
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. Informal STEM educational activities have proliferated widely in the US over the last 20 years. Additional research will further validate the long-term benefits of this mode of learning. Thus, elaborating the multitude of variables in informal learning and how those variables can be used for individual learning is yet to be defined for the circumstances of the learners. Thus, the primary objective of this work is to produce robust and detailed evidence to help shape both practice and policy for informal STEM learning in a broad array of common circumstances such as rural, urban, varying economic situations, and unique characteristics and cultures of citizen groups. Rather than pursuing a universal model of informal learning, the principal investigator will develop a series of comprehensive models that will support learning in informal environments for various demographic groups. The research will undertake a longitudinal mixed-methods approach of Out of School Time/informal STEM experiences over a five-year time span of data collection for youth ages 9-19 in urban, suburban, town, and rural communities. The evidence base will include data on youth experiences of informal STEM, factors that exert an influence on participation in informal STEM, the impact of participation on choices about educational pathways and careers, and preferences for particular types of learning activities. The quantitative data will include youth surveys, program details (e.g. duration of program, length of each program session, youth/facilitator ratio, etc.), and demographics. The qualitative data will include on-site informal interviews with youth and facilitators, and program documentation. 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 summative evaluation report presents findings and lessons learned on the STEM Ambassadors project. The STEM Ambassadors project, funded by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, combines elements of existing programs designed to engage STEM professionals with the public around their scientific research to create a new model for public engagement of science. This new model recruits, provides training for, and assists STEM professionals in drawing on their own interests, hobbies and backgrounds to connect with audiences that may not have
This workshop 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 will conduct a two-day workshop that will gather citizen science project leaders to address barriers in citizen science research and infrastructure: The inability to holistically study the movement, engagement, persistence and learning outcomes among volunteers engaged in multiple projects. The past few years have been a time of tremendous growth in awareness of and interest in citizen science projects. The project will address an increasing gap preventing projects in three now-popular categories (apps, projects hosted on government websites, and event-based projects) from adopting the digital tools created and available through SciStarter.com. The workshop will bring citizen science project leaders together to deepen an understanding of their needs regarding the adoption of digital tools, developed by Scistarter, which will result in more comprehensive data in support of research in informal science learning outcomes of volunteers engaged in citizen science across projects and platforms. The in-person and online contributions from participants will guide the development of resources and tutorials to scale adoption.
SciStarter is a repository of hundreds of citizen science projects. Through previous NSF support, SciStarter developed digital affiliate tools which project leaders use on their own websites to enable analytics (statistics gathered from user activity online) to help projects more easily recruit and coordinator volunteers, help volunteers track their contributions across projects and platforms, and help researchers holistically study the movement and learning outcomes across projects and platforms. The proposed workshop will facilitate iteration and adoption of the tools among three classes of projects, not originally accounted for, which have dramatically increased in numbers during the past year: 1) app-based projects, 2) projects hosted on government websites, and 3) event-based projects.. By co-designing and implementing iterative versions of the tools among these projects, the project will address important gaps in research, enable a richer, more comprehensive understanding of volunteer engagement patterns, and discover opportunities to build a stronger community of citizen science practitioners who collaborate to enhance volunteer learning communities. The project will culminate in improved research in this field and improved management of citizen science projects for appropriate recruitment and retention that fosters STEM learning.
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.
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 theme of this conference project by the New York Hall of Science will be exploring how to better design exhibits to promote "public engagement with science." Here, "public engagement with science" refers to opportunities that go beyond traditional approaches to the public understanding of science. The event will invite professionals to consider how to shift exhibit designs toward engaging visitors with STEM in ways that emphasize the intersection of STEM innovation with visitors' daily lives, their personal agency, and their interdependence with their personal social networks and the institutions that advance STEM knowledge and innovation. The conference and its pre- and post-conference activities will bring together curators, exhibition developers, community outreach professionals, museum administrators, and learning scientists from the United States and Canada. They will work together to identify design principles and key obstacles to designing exhibits that can better help science museums achieve two goals: 1) making visitors' diverse and personal questions, concerns, and perspectives central to their experience of the exhibits; and 2) engaging visitors as contributors to the exhibit experience in ways that make their contributions visible and consequential. During this two-day event attendees will consider how exhibits can support broader and more diverse public participation in critical debates about the roles of STEM discovery and innovation in society. The effort is grounded in recent work on public engagement with science; on reorganizing museums to become sites for participation and contribution by visitors, and particularly by institutions' local communities; and on making and engineering design programming within museums. The goal is to chart a course toward a vision of the future of science museums in which they maintain their status as sources of trusted information, while also fulfilling their potential as sites of genuine participation and social interaction, in which visitors make meaningful contributions to the substance and workings of the museum floor while also engaging with, learning about and holding themselves accountable to the core concepts and practices of the STEM disciplines. The conference will build the capacity and collaborative engagement of a network of science centers whose work is central to achieving the museum field's ultimate goal of engaging the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments. The conference and associated activities will be evaluated by staff at the New York Hall of Science, with oversight by an external advisory committee of research and development professionals. 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.
The Multi-Site Public Engagement with Science—Synthetic Biology (MSPES) initiative was an Innovations in Development project funded by the National Science Foundation (DRL-1421179) through the Advancing of Informal STEM Learning program (AISL). MSPES promoted public engagement with science (PES)—a model of mutual dialogue and learning between public and scientist audiences—through the creation and distribution of PES kits to nearly 200 informal science education sites around the country. Kits included two types of learning experiences: (1) forum programs during which scientists and teen or
The Rural Informal STEM Learning Conference, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and held at its headquarters on September 13–14, 2018, was the first of its kind to bring together key innovators and experts in rural STEM learning outside of school. People who live in rural settings are a frequently overlooked and significantly under-represented STEM audience. At the conference, which was led by the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance, we addressed this key question: How can we build on recent innovations to create more effective experiences and pathways for informal (out-of
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. This travel grant focuses on broadening participation in STEM learning and advancing scholarship and practice related to Public Participation in STEM Research (PPSR). In PPSR, members of the public participate voluntarily in scientific processes, addressing real-world problems in ways that may include formulating research questions, conducting scientific experiments, collecting and analyzing data, interpreting results, making new discoveries, developing technologies and applications, and solving complex problems. Currently, participation in many PPSR projects does not often reflect the full range diversity in the nation. The Citizen Science Association (CSA), an organization that seeks to support the rigorous and ethical practice of citizen science--a form of PPSR--across a broad range of issues and communities, brings together PPSR practioners and scholars biennially. The CSA conference, to be held March 13-17, 2019, in Raleigh, North Carolina, will build networks and capacities to support scholarship and practice across the full range of citizen science and across diverse populations.
This travel grant supports 75 participants, 25 local and 50 national, from groups underrepresented in STEM, who are actively engaged in community-based environmental science and have not previously attended a CSA conference. Community-based environmental science projects, which often occur in minority communities, are increasingly relying on PPSR approaches, including engaging public participants in STEM learning through technology and the development of data literacies. Through this travel grant, the 2019 CSA conference will bring together the expertise and experiences of practioners and scholars from citizen science and community-based environmental science projects. The conference will facilitate four days of interactions and mutual learning with significant time for iterative reflection and active discussion to make the sessions personally relevant and meaningful. This intentionally allows for identifying areas of both commonalities and tensions across citizen science and community-based environmental science projects, with time to work through various approaches and issues with colleagues for greater learning. The interactions should allow for meaningful discussion of goals, theory, methods, recruitment and retention and other aspects of projects that make a difference in the success of projects. The structure of the conference includes panels, presentations, poster sessions, and discussion to increase the quality and extent of PPSR and community-based environmental science practice.
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.
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. This Research in Service to Practice project examines how informal place-based collaborative learning can support local communities' planning processes related to current environmental changes. As a part of this study workshops will be conducted in 8 communities that have a range of planning mandates based on recent extreme environmental changes such as drought/wildfires, flooding, invasive species, or loss of native wildlife. Place-based adaptation workshops will be designed to be locally relevant and empower people to learn and act on their newly acquired understandings. Local community collective actions may include a range of decisions (e.g., infrastructure changes such as building defenses against sea level rise in coastal communities or improving the quality of roads to withstand higher temperatures.) Collective action may also lead to community wide behavioral changes such as individuals using less water or farmers planting different crops. The study will focus on the efficacy of the methods used in 8 workshops in communities throughout the country. Research objectives include: 1) identifying experts' belief about the most critical components of successful workshops; 2) Understanding of prior workshop outcomes and 3) test hypothesized effective practices and understand how learning takes place and collective action does or does not take place. The project addresses key AISL solicitation priorities including strategic impact on the field of informal STEM learning, advancing collaboration, and building professional capacity. It engages both public and professional audiences as described in the solicitation. Public audiences include stakeholders in each of the 8 communities such as community environmental groups, NGOs, businesses, landowners, and local government planners. Professional audiences include the workshop scientists and facilitators who will be trained in the experimental workshop approach. The project builds upon and expands the existing AISL portfolio of science communication projects such as science cafes, science festivals, science media, and library based projects. This is a collaborative project of EcoAdapt and Virginia Tech with participants from the National Parks Conservation Association, the Desert Research Institute, and the Wildlife Conservation Society and others. The research will progress through two phases. Phase 1 is designed to identify consensus-based effective practices for promoting learning and action in adaptation workshops. It includes a Delphi study to synthesize beliefs about effective practices held by experienced workshop facilitators across the United States. Phase 2 includes iterative design and research of eight adaptation workshops in various communities with a range of planning mandates and recent extreme weather experience. By iteratively revising the workshop design, the study will elucidate how different workshop components influence participant learning, individual behavioral intentions, and subsequent efforts toward collective action. The overall research design will examine the relationships of pedagogical and collaborative techniques to learner outcomes and collective action. Many of these lessons are likely relevant to other collaborative informal science learning contexts. 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 workshop 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 will conduct an in-person participatory workshop designed to broaden participation in STEM. The project is designed to build the capacity of informal science institutions (ISIs) and their partners to use evidence-based collaborative project management practices and culturally responsive approaches to manage complex partnership efforts. The workshop will develop structure and provide tools for effective collaborative project management between ISIs including science centers and museums, and their research and community partners. To guide the workshops, participants will explore some core dimensions of culture to understand audiences, communities traditionally underserved by informal STEM institutions, and institutional differences. Participants will leave with concrete, actionable plans that will enable them to more effectively bring their collaboration plans to fruition. The project will develop resources including a playbook of project management templates, video vignettes, and summaries of relevant research findings and lessons from the field. Proceedings and resources from the workshop will be shared online with the field and ultimately archived on informalscience.org.
Conference participants will build the human resource expertise, infrastructure, and capacity needed to develop and maintain lasting partnerships that will further their institutions' aspirations to broaden participation in STEM. The project brings together an experienced, multidisciplinary team from informal science education and private industry professionals to advance knowledge of the skills and tools needed for managing complex collaborations between researchers, practitioners, and community stakeholders that will increase their effectiveness when working with diverse audiences. During the workshop, participants will think through their current project work by using a defined collaborative project management process to build a foundation of understanding and trust. Upon completion of the Institute, participants will have: (1) a shared purpose and goals that represent the interests of all parties; (2) identified some cross cultural and organizational differences that need to be accommodated for successful collaboration; (3) fostered joint decision making based on objective steps vs priorities of one organization; and (4) clarified deliverables of their project and how to measure success; (5)identified individual roles and responsibilities within their collaboration.
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.
The Implementation Manual is a practical guide for organizations planning to implement Portal to the Public. It represents the experiences of Portal to the Public sites and is supported by research and evaluation results. The seven chapters in the manual are designed around the main components of the Portal to the Public guiding framework. The chapters guide you through the process of developing successful conversation-based public programs featuring scientists.
Chapter 1: The Guiding Framework
Chapter 2: Conceptual Planning
Chapter 3: Partnership and Relationship Building
Chapter
There are many reasons to be curious about the way people learn, and the past several decades have seen an explosion of research that has important implications for individual learning, schooling, workforce training, and policy.
In 2000, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition was published and its influence has been wide and deep. The report summarized insights on the nature of learning in school-aged children; described principles for the design of effective learning environments; and provided examples of how that could be implemented in the classroom.
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National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine