Fostering greater inclusion in science creates benefits for both science and society. In this Innovations and Development project, the University of Utah will investigate how to sustain and scale the STEM Ambassador Program (STEMAP), begun in 2016 with AISL funding. STEMAP developed an innovative process to train scientists to engage members of the public, who cannot or do not gain access to science via conventional science education venues (such as museums, schools, zoos), by implementing activities in non-traditional settings. The 65 scientists trained by the initial STEMAP effort effectively engaged in over 45 settings including an affordable housing development, a youth residential treatment center, a state prison, a cooking class, a daycare facility, and several senior centers. The number of scientists applying to the program quickly exceeded STEMAP's capacity. Other institutions expressed interest in replicating the training. This project will explore strategies for scaling and sustaining public engagement training to support more scientists who can engage more people in more venues. Outcomes will serve to inform the broader implementation of STEMAP and the efforts of other public engagement programs, many of which face similar scaling and sustainability challenges.
Scaling and sustaining public engagement of science (PES) programs is a central challenge for many in the informal science learning community. This project will explore strategies to scale and sustain the STEM Ambassador Program. Research questions include: (1) How do different program formats increase or restrict program capacity and engagement outcomes? (2) What benefits accrue to scientists and their institutions by participating in public engagement in science activities that might serve as motivators to continue these activities? (3) Are funding and organizational models developed in business and other professional settings applicable to sustaining these programs? To address scalability, this project will explore the effectiveness of three dissemination formats: (1) the creation of a mentorship program for in-person trainees, (2) a train-the-trainer approach, and (3) online training with in-person mentorship. The project team will create an evaluation toolkit with participant surveys, rubrics for observers, and "on-the-spot" assessment tools developed under AISL Award 1811022 to assess the effectiveness of engagement activities delivered by trainees in each of the three formats. To address sustainability, the project team will document the values of public engagement training to both the participating scientists and their institutions via surveys and interviews. Consultants from the business sectors will create a PES Campus Council to explore possible financial, organizational, and leadership plans that will help sustain engagement efforts. Outcomes will be published in peer-reviewed journals and compiled into a dissemination framework to inform actions to scale and sustain STEMAP and other public engagement of science programs to engage more hard-to-reach audiences. Inverness Research will serve as the project's external evaluator.
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.
This project will produce a four-part mini-series on African American Language (AAL) designed for television broadcast as well as for formal and informal public educational distribution. This mini-series addresses the social, cultural, and educational issues related to the most prominent, the most controversial, and the most misunderstood dialect in the history of American English--African American Language. Dialect prejudice, linguistic profiling, and language-based discrimination continue to be "so commonly accepted, so widely perceived as appropriate, that it must be seen as the last back door to discrimination. And the door is still wide open" (Lippi-Green 2012:73). By presenting the history, development, diversity, and symbolic role of language in the lives of African Americans, this documentary series helps to counteract the persistent misinformation and misinterpretation circulated about the language of African Americans. The series builds on the popular public reception to the one-hour documentary, Talking Black in America: The Story of African American Language, and includes the following episodes: 1) the historical and contemporary development of African American Language; 2) the diversity of language use among African Americans based on region, age, status, education, and style; 3) the use of language in expressive performance, including preaching, comedy, music, hip hop, spoken word, and other expressive genres; and 4) the role of language differences in educational achievement. A website accompanying the series will include a variety of educational resources, including streaming, discursive chapters with integrated vignettes from the episodes, additional commentary and background, activities, and discussion questions for each episode, with further online materials for education. The documentary and accompanying activities constitute an important milestone in the effort to educate the public about language diversity in American society.
No dialect in the history of American English has been more prominent, more controversial, and more misunderstood than African American Language, and dialect prejudice, linguistic profiling, and language discrimination still intensely affect speakers of this variety. By presenting the history, development, diversity, and symbolic role of language in the lives of African Americans, this documentary series will help to counteract the persistent misinformation circulated about African American Language. This series and the accompanying online materials offer an important milestone in the effort to educate the public about language diversity that can help to reduce linguistic discrimination in American society.
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.
Research on how museum staff are trained continues to emerge. Training varies considerably across institutions and typically includes observations, shadowing, and trial and error. While museum educators put high value on increasing visitor-centered participatory experiences, engagement based on acquisition-based theories of learning is still common among floor staff, even after training. Facilitating learning about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) topics in ways that support visitors in constructing their own understanding is difficult, especially since floor staff/facilitators may be working simultaneously with children and adults of a range of ages, backgrounds, and goals. This project will advance understanding of how to facilitate open-ended learning experiences in ways that engage visitors in practices that align with the STEM disciplines. The project will result in an evidence-based facilitation framework and training modules for training informal science educators. The work is grounded in constructivist theories of learning and identity work and focuses on visitors constructing understanding of STEM topics through active engagement in the practices of STEM. This model also results in learning experiences in informal settings that are mutually reinforcing with the goals of schools. This research is being conducted through an established researcher-practitioner partnership between MOXI, the Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation and the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB).
The two primary goals of the work are to (1) enable visitors to better engage in STEM practices (practice-based learning) and (2) investigate the role of training in helping facilitators develop the practice-based facilitation strategies needed to support visitors' learning. STEM content in this study is physical science. Prior work resulted in two tools that constitute part of a facilitation framework (a practices-by-engagement matrix and three facilitation pathways) which help educators identify appropriate goals based on how the visitor is engaging with exhibits. The development of the final tool in the framework, facilitation strategies, and the refinement of the first two tools will be done using a design-based implementation research (DBIR) approach. Data collection and analysis will be directed and completed by research-practitioner teams of UCSB graduate students (researchers) and MOXI educators (practitioners); MOXI educators will be both participants and researchers. Data collection activities include: video data using point-of-view cameras worn by visitors and educators; interviews of educators and visitors; observations of the training program; and educator reflections. In the final year, a small field test will be done at six sites, representing different types of museums. Interviews and reflections comprise the data collection at the field sites.
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.
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. The project will develop and research, as a feasibility study, a series of art-inclusive, pop-up Science, Art, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEAM) makerspaces in a high-poverty, primarily rural county in Oklahoma. A makerspace is a collaborative work space inside a library, school or other community space for making, learning, exploring and sharing that uses high tech to low tech tools. The makerspaces will be temporary workshops that are developed through a community planning process that assesses the needs and interests of citizen stakeholders. Scientists, artists and other experts will work together with the community to design a series of thematic pop-up makerspace sessions. The project builds a collaborative infrastructure and capacity for small and rural communities by bringing together resource providers and experts to identify and design science-oriented challenges. Long-term benefits for participants include sustained focus on new approaches for civic engagement through STEAM-driven making which could foster new role identities pertaining to science and art. The project deliverables include: (1) a theoretically informed model to build a community's capacity to collaborate toward fostering civic engagement through science-oriented pop-up makerspaces, (2) Pop-Up STEAM Studio makerspaces, (3) training for pop-up facilitators, and (4) visual documentation panels and web-based digital stories to communicate progress and process.
Project research will enhance knowledge-building of the process of developing a science-oriented community challenge that embraces STEAM and making. A key contribution of the proposed project will be the generation of insights into how community members establish consensus around the joint goal of designing, documenting, and facilitating integrated art and science making activities to address and communicate the challenge. Research will focus on the roles participants take when engaging in the making process through an identity-based model of motivated action. Analysis of advisory board meeting artifacts and focus group data will allow the researchers to identify processes of negotiation and consensus building at the collective level and in relation to each issue to which the group attends. Emergent themes (such as negotiation, shared learning, idea or project revisions, diverse perspectives coming to consensus, etc.) will be examined across individual and group units of analysis, from all data sources, and through the congruent theoretical lenses of role identity theory and negotiated learning pedagogy. The research outcomes should inform efforts to build infrastructure and capacity of community resources by providing a model for developing collaborative pop-up makerspaces.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sheri VasindaJoanna GarnerStephanie HathcockRebecca Brienen
Increasingly, scientists and their institutions are engaging with lay audiences via media. The emergence of social media has allowed scientists to engage with publics in novel ways. Social networking sites have fundamentally changed the modern media environment and, subsequently, media consumption habits. When asked where they primarily go to learn more about scientific issues, more than half of Americans point to the Internet. These online spaces offer many opportunities for scientists to play active roles in communicating and engaging directly with various publics. Additionally, the proposed research activities were inspired by a recent report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that included a challenge to science communication researchers to determine better approaches for communicating science through social media platforms. Humor has been recommended as a method that scientists could use in communicating with publics; however, there is little empirical evidence that its use is effective. The researchers will explore the effectiveness of using humor for communicating about artificial intelligence, climate science and microbiomes.
The research questions are: How do lay audiences respond to messages about scientific issues on social media that use humor? What are scientists' views toward using humor in constructing social media messages? Can collaborations between science communication scholars and practitioners facilitate more effective practices? The research is grounded in the theory of planned behavior and framing as a theory of media effects. A public survey will collect and analyze data on Twitter messages with and without humor, the number of likes and re-tweets of each message, and their scientific content. Survey participants will be randomly assigned to one of twenty-four experimental conditions. The survey sample, matching recent U.S. Census Bureau data, will be obtained from opt-in panels provided by Qualtrics, an online market research company. The second component of the research will quantify the attitudes of scientists toward using humor to communicate with publics on social media. Data will be collected from a random sample of scientists and graduate students at R1 universities nationwide. Data will be analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression modeling.
The broader impacts of this project are twofold: findings from the research will be shared with science communication scholars and trainers advancing knowledge and practice; and an infographic (visual representation of findings) will be distributed to practitioners who participate in research-practice partnerships. It will provide a set of easily-referenced, evidence-based guidelines about the types of humor to which audiences respond positively on social media.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sara YeoLeona Yi-Fan SuMichael Cacciatore
This collaborative project will facilitate rural community education on climate impacts. The Carnegie Natural History Museum and the University of Pittsburgh will work together to form a network of interested community members in Mercer County and Powdermill Nature Reserve in western Pennsylvania to explore the impacts of climate and how its effect could be mitigated or accommodated. The project is has three related ideas: (1) museums hold valuable resources for understanding environmental change, (2) museums are not serving rural audiences well, and (3) complex socio-scientific environmental topics are deeply connected to social decision making in rural communities. This project will bring an inclusive approach to the discussion of socio-scientific issues in rural Western PA, through building relationships between local public audiences, STEM professionals, and informal learning specialists, creating opportunities for co-development of resources and building organizational capacity. The overarching goals of the project are to explore how museums can better serve rural stakeholders and increase the capacity for science-based conversations about human-caused climate impacts.
This project involves a cross-disciplinary team with Carnegie Museum of Natural History providing expertise in interpretation and ecological science, the University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out of School Environments (UPCLOSE) providing expertise in learning research, and rural Hubs centered at Powdermill Nature Reserve (PNR) and the Mercer County Conservation District providing expertise in environmental education, conservation, and engagement with rural communities. The Hubs will coordinate professional development workshops, collaborative design sessions, and community gatherings to bring local stakeholders together to examine and adapt existing resources, including environmental science data and climate education tools, to local issues. These activities will be structured through a Research Practice Partnership. Each will have its own unique mix of geography, demographics, resources, and challenges.
The Research questions are: 1. How can the project effectively support the creation of socially safe spaces for rural Western PA communities to have science-based discussions around climate impacts? 2. How does work with rural partners influence the development of the museum's Center for Climate Studies and its mission to offer programs designed to support public engagement?
3. In what ways have museums been able to support learning about climate topics in rural communities? Data will be gathered from interviews and case studies. There will be two longitudinal studies of local network change and museum change. A survey will also be done to assess the impact of the project on the public. Protocols will be developed in collaboration with the Hubs.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Lauren GiarrataniNicole HellerKevin Crowley
Water is an essential, basic need. It is the sustenance for living organisms. For many Native American communities, like the Ojibwe tribes of Minnesota, water is a sacred valuable life source that permeates all aspects of their culture. In these communities, water stories are often used to communicate the value and impact of water on their lives and the lives of others. These stories signal geohydrologic, sociocultural, and sociopolitical societal shifts over time. This pilot study will explore the feasibility of using Native water stories and informal learning experiences to bring water science and issues of water sustainability to youth and public audiences. A significant outcome of the pilot will be a youth-museum-educator co-created public planetarium show and program based on the water stories collected and archived. This approach is particularly novel. It provides an entry into STEM through a dynamic, multimedia context that typically does not engage youth as co-creators of the experiences. Water Values will give voice and a public platform to youth and their communities to elevate ecological issues that are relevant and timely within their own communities. It will also promote scientific discourse through field experiences, interactions with scientists and STEM professions, and community leadership development. Further, this pilot will also test a reciprocal relationship model among its partners. Analogous feasibility research to the Water Values pilot does not exist in the current NSF portfolio. Therefore, the project will not only contribute to the emerging literature base on the intersectionality of STEM, storytelling and Native cultures, but it will also contribute to broader discourse about water health, access, management, and sustainability.
The pilot study will bring together the long standing gidakiimanaaniwigamig program, with its master teachers who are experts in culturally responsive education for Native American youth, and the Bell Museum, which has decades of experience in developing informal STEM learning programs for a broad community. Thirty-five middle school aged youth, five educators, and over 200 community members will engage in the work. During the summer residential program, youth will be exposed to STEM content and important water science concepts through field-based research and a culturally relevant, placed-based curriculum focused on water and communicating water stories. These experiences will be extended during the academic year through weekend science activities that will focus on the compilation of water stories from Native communities, especially from the Ojibwe tribes of Minnesota, and creatively integrating the stories into a fully operational youth-museum co-created public planetarium program. This capstone planetarium show and program will be piloted at the Bell Museum. With regards to the research, four overarching question will guide the study: (1) How does participation in creating water journey stories increase Native students' motivation to learn and engage with STEM, (2) How does participation in creating and presenting water journey stories build change in sociopolitical awareness among Native students? (3) How do Native community members engage with water stories for sociopolitical change and greater participation in STEM? and (4) How does collaboration between gidakiimanaaniwigamig, the Bell, and the UMN impact STEM interest and participation in students and a Native community for transformative experience? Data will be collected from the youth participants, instructors and leaders, and community members. These data will be collected from content surveys, student logs, self-reported intrinsic motivation instrument, observations, and artifacts. The results will be disseminated through various mechanisms within and beyond the target communities. Formative and summative evaluations will inform that work and will be led by an external evaluation firm, Erikkson Associates.
This feasibility study 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 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:
Bhaskar UpadhyayDiana DalbottenJonee Brigham
The project will develop and research how an emerging technology, immersive virtual reality (IVR) using head mounted displays (HMDs), can enhance ocean literacy and generate empathy towards environmental issues. Recent advances in design have resulted in HMDs that provide viscerally realistic and immersive experiences that situate participants in underwater or other remote environments. IVR can provide many people with virtual access to these environments, including persons with disabilities, people living away from coastal areas, or those who lack access for other reasons (e.g., low-income families, underserved/underrepresented communities, persons untrained in diving). The project will develop a high quality 360-degree underwater film that includes live action footage, animation, and interactive elements. The IVR experience will take the participant through an immersive underwater journey of a Pacific reef, using realistic visualizations, narrative, and a compelling story to engage participants in learning the ecology and biology of coral reefs, as well as the impacts of climate change and human disturbances on ocean ecosystems. In addition to the IVR ocean journey, the project will integrate interactive functionality of being on a reef during mass coral spawning, an annual natural phenomenon through which coral reefs replenish their populations. With hand-held controllers, participants will be able to "swim" through the water, watch the degraded reef recover and grow and will have the ability to change the rate of coral recovery and learn how increases in temperature impede coral recovery. While research has been conducted on early, desk-top versions of IVR, the potential impact of IVR on learning is still unclear. The research findings will help guide the development of IVR for use in informal STEM environments such as aquariums, zoos, science museums, and others. The IVR experience will be shared on online platforms for home viewing, at film festivals and conferences, and in informal learning environments.
The project addresses the need for research on the impacts of IVR devices as it become more affordable and more widely used at home and in other informal and formal environments. Few studies have investigated how design elements impact the user in IVR, in which the increased immersion affects the stimuli perception and cognitive processing. The research will assess the learning affordances and impacts of the IVR experience on participant ocean literacy (adapting items from an existing ocean literacy survey), environmental empathy/feelings of presence (naturalistic observations and post-experience interviews), and perceived self-efficacy (pre-post survey, post-interview interviews). In addition, the project will research how segmentation (i.e., a continuous experience vs. an experience with breaks), generative learning tasks (hands-on experiences and interactive during IVR), and gender of the narrator in an IVR experience supports learning about ocean environments. Researchers will collect data from students attending high schools with predominantly minority student enrollments. Research findings will be widely shared through peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and publications for educators and designers.
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.
Addressing Societal Challenges through STEM (ASCs) received NSF AISL funding to conduct a Literature Review and Synthesis to answer the question: How are informal learning institutions advancing the use of STEM knowledge and scientific reasoning in the ways that individuals, families, and communities understand what they can do, and apply their learning to solving the societal challenges of our time? Using a definition of societal challenges based on research around the public understanding of social problems, this systematic literature review will identify, analyze, and synthesize three bodies of peer and field-reviewed literature (peer-reviewed journals, graduate theses, and evaluation reports of nationally-funded project).
Over the past decade, Informal STEM learning organizations have increasingly engaged in innovative ways to present STEM knowledge within the context of societal challenges such as climate change, energy sources, cyber-security, Nanotechnologies, coastal resilience, and other topics. These efforts significantly expand the traditional work of Informal STEM Learning (ISL) organizations, often leading to new types of interventions, partnerships, impacts, and assessment tools. Analyzing and interpreting the aggregate of this work will advance theoretical and practical knowledge about the potential of ISL’s in advancing the place of STEM in addressing societal challenges.
Demonstrating and articulating the characteristics of how ISL organizations are addressing societal challenges, encourages and informs the ways institutions can address the NSF strategic goal to “Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges.” The project outputs aim to Enhance Knowledge-building, Build Capacity of the Field, and Maximize Strategic Impact by informing the strategies used by organizations and individuals. The results also aim to Broaden Participation by articulating the ways STEM knowledge is embedded and linked to personal experiences and choices.
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.
There is a dearth of prominent STEM role models for underrepresented populations. For example, according to a 2017 survey, only 3.1% of physicists in the United States are Black, only 2.1% are Hispanic, and only 0.5% are Native American. The project will help bridge these gaps by developing exhibits that include simulations of historical scientific experiments enacted by little-known scientists of color, virtual reality encounters that immerse participants in the scientists' discovery process, and other content that allows visitors to interact with the exhibits and explore the exhibits' themes. The project will develop transportable, interactive exhibits focusing on light: how we perceive light, sources of light from light bulbs to stars, uses of real and artificial light in human endeavors, and past and current STEM innovators whose work helps us understand, create, and harness light now. The exhibits will be developed in three stages, each exploring a characteristic of light (Color, Energy, or Time). Each theme will be explored via multiple deliveries: short documentary and animated films, virtual reality experiences, interactive "photobooths," and technology-based inquiry activities. The exhibit components will be copied at seven additional sites, which will host the exhibits for their audiences, and the project's digital assets will enable other STEM learning organizations to duplicate the exhibits. The exhibits will be designed to address common gaps in understanding, among adults as well as younger learners, about light. What light really is and does, in scientific terms, is one type of hidden story these exhibits will convey to general audiences. Two other types of science stories the exhibits will tell: how contemporary research related to light, particularly in astrophysics, is unveiling the hidden stories of our universe; and hidden stories of STEM innovators, past and present, women and men, from diverse backgrounds. These stories will provide needed role models for the adolescent learners, helping them learn complex STEM content while showing them how scientific research is conducted and the diverse community of people who can contribute to STEM innovations and discoveries.
The project deliverables will be designed to present complex physics content through coherent, immersive, and embodied learning experiences that have been demonstrated to promote engagement and deeper learning. The project will research whether participants, through interacting with these exhibits, can begin to integrate discrete ideas and make connections with complex scientific content that would be difficult without technology support. For example, students and other novices often lack the expertise necessary to make distinctions between what is needed and what is extra within scientific problems. The proposed study follows a Design-Based Research (DBR) approach characterized by iterative cycles of data collection, analysis, and reflection to inform the design of educational innovations and advance educational theory. Project research includes conceiving, building, and testing iterative phases, which will enable the project to capture the complexity of learning and engagement in informal learning settings. Research participants will complete a range of research activities, including focus group interviews, observation, and pre-post assessment of science content knowledge and dispositions.
By showcasing such role models and informing about related STEM content, this project will widen perspectives of audiences in informal learning settings, particularly adolescents from groups underrepresented in STEM fields. Research findings and methodologies will be shared widely in the informal STEM learning community, building the field's knowledge of effective ways to broaden participation in informal science learning, and thus increase broaden participation in and preparation for the STEM-based workforce.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Todd BoyetteJill HammJanice AndersonCrystal Harden
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 explore how understanding visitors' experiences with science museum exhibits may contribute to increasing engagement among diverse audiences. Museums have made great strides in understanding how exhibit design can support underrepresented audiences, but often tend to focus on individual demographic groups such as females, certain racial and ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities. This project will explore relationships between visitors' demographic and science identities to assess the affordances of using science identity as an intersectional proxy that could help the field move beyond its reliance on demographics. Building on prior National Science-funded work about museum engagement, the project applies appraisal theory--a psychological model about how people make conscious and subconscious assessments of situations that manifest in emotions--to the informal learning context. To date, museums have tended to focus on cognitive and behavioral aspects of engagement. Appraisal theory can add emotional processes to the conceptual understanding of engagement, and can be applied to help exhibit professionals develop a design framework that upholds complex identities. Such a framework could have implications for inclusive design of learning experiences in museums, schools, and other educational contexts.
This Pilot and Feasibility Study will address methodological and theoretical questions about the feasibility of a research approach that considers the relationships among: 1) exhibit design features; 2) multiple identity factors including science identity, demographics, and self-defined personal identity; 3) visitor appraisals; and 4) engagement with exhibits. Led by researchers at the Museum of Science, Boston and EdTogether, a non-profit research and development organization for inclusive design, the project will begin with a pre-piloting phase during which researchers will work with youth and professional advisors from local community organizations to test a suite of data collection approaches including self-report in the form of questionnaires and interviews; observations of visitor engagement; and biometric data collection including galvanic skin response and eye tracking. Building from this pre-piloting phase, the team will conduct four mini-studies that will iteratively refine measures towards enhanced validity and parsimony while gathering data to test the investigators' hypothesized model of design, identity, appraisal, and engagement. The evidence from testing this model through the four mini-studies will lay the foundation for larger-scale research that intends to explore causal relationships among intersectional identities, science identities, appraisal, and visitor engagement.
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.
It is estimated that there could be 40 billion earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of stars in the Milky Way. Major advances in long range telescopes have allowed astronomers to identify thousands of exoplanets in recent decades, and the discovery of new exoplanets is a now a common occurrence. Public excitement for the discoveries grown alongside these discoveries, thus opening new possibilities for inspiring a new generation of scientists and engineers that may dream of one day visiting these planets. This project investigates the use of interactive, intelligent educational technologies to generate interest in STEM by allowing learners to explore and even create their own exoplanets. Research will occur across several informal learning contexts, including summer camps, after school programs, planetarium shows, and at home. The approach is based on the idea of "What if?"questions about Earth (e.g., "What if the Moon did not exist?"), designed to trigger interest in STEM and frame exploratory and elaborative discussions around hypothetical science questions that are subsequently linked to the search for habitable exoplanets. Learners are able to interact with and explore scientifically accurate simulations of alternative versions of Earth, while making observations and posing explanations for what they see. Technology-based informal learning experiences designed to act as triggers for and sustainment of interest in STEM have the potential to plug the leaky STEM pipeline, and thus have profound implications for the future of science and technology in the United States.
The project seeks to advance the science of designing technologies for promoting interest in STEM and informal astronomy education in several ways. First, the project will develop simulations for exploratory learning about astronomy and planetary science. These simulations will present hypothetical worlds based on what-if questions and feasible models of known exoplanets, thus giving learners a chance to better understand the challenges of finding a habitable world and learning about what is needed to survive there. Second, a new PBS NOVA Lab will be developed that will focus on Exoplanet education. This web-based activity has the potential to reach millions of learners and will help them understand how planets are formed and the requirements for supporting life. Learners who use the lab will have an opportunity to invent their own exoplanets and export them for first-person exploration. Third, researchers on the project will design and implement Artificial Intelligence-based pedagogical agents to support learning and promote interest. These agents will inhabit the simulations with the learner, acting as a coach and guide, and be designed to be culturally responsive and personalized based on learner preferences. Fourth, interactive exoplanet-focused planetarium shows, that will involve live interaction with simulations, will take place at the Fiske Planetarium (Boulder, CO). Finally, the project will develop a server-based infrastructure for tracking and supporting long term development of interest in STEM. This back-end will track fine-grained behaviors, including movement, actions, and communications in the simulations. Such data will reveal patterns about how interest develops, how learners engage in free-choice learning activities, and how they interact with agents and peers in computer simulations. A design-based research methodology will be employed to assess the power of these different experiences to trigger interest and promote learning of astronomy. A range of different pathways for interest in STEM will therefore be considered and assessed. Research will measure the power of these experiences to trigger interest in STEM and promote re-engagement over time. Innovation lies in the use of engaging and intelligent technologies with thought-provoking pedagogy as a method for extended engagement of diverse young learners in STEM. Project research and educational resources will be widely disseminated to researchers, designers developers and the general public via peer-reviewed research journals, conference presentations, informal STEM education networks of science museums, children's museums, Fab Labs, and planetariums, and public media such as public television's NOVA science program website.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
H Chad LaneNeil CominsJorge Perez-GallegoDavid Condon