The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County will design and fabricate the La Brea Tar Pits Mobile Museum to provide kindergarten to 2nd grade students with hands-on, immersive experiences based on its Ice Age fossil collections. The traveling exhibition will reach 20 underserved schools and 7,500 students annually. Programming will use early childhood play-based models. These models allow students time to explore and observe followed by periods of play that allow time to process, reflect, and retain. A museum educator will prepare classroom teachers for the school residency by providing a workshop and orientation to the Tar Pits, pre-visit classroom activities and lesson plans aligned with Next Generation Science Standards. The mobile museum will also be deployed at community parks, festivals, and special events on weekends and during the summer, reaching a total of 15,000 youth and families each year.
Polar Literacy: A model for youth engagement and learning will foster public engagement with polar science. The project targets middle-school aged underserved youth and polar research scientists, with the goal to increase youth interest in and understanding of Polar Regions, and to hone researchers' science communication skills. The project will develop affordable and replicable ways of bringing polar education to informal learning environments, extend our understanding of how polar education initiatives can be delivered to youth with maximum effect, and design a professional development model to improve the capacity for Polar Region researchers to craft meaningful broader impact activities. Polar Literacy will create and test a model which combines direct participation by scientists in after-school settings, with the use of curated polar research data sets and data visualization tools to create participatory learning experiences for youth. Beyond the life of the project funding, many of the project deliverables (including kits, videos, and other resources) will continue to be used and disseminated online and in person through ongoing work of project collaborators.
Polar Literacy: A model for youth engagement and learning will advance the understanding of informal learning environments while leveraging the rich interdisciplinary resources from polar investments made by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The project's key audiences -- polar researchers, informal educators, and out-of-school time (OST) youth in grades 4-7 (ages 9-13) -- will connect through both place-based and internet-based experiences and work collaboratively to generate a flexible, scalable, and transferable education model. The project will 1) design OST kits and resource guides (focused on Polar Literacy Principles) and include "Concept in a Minute" videos designed to highlight enduring ideas, 2) provide professional development for informal educators, 3) synthesize a club model through adaptation of successful facets of existing informal learning programs, and 4) create Data Jam events for the OST Special Interest (SPIN) clubs and camp programs by modifying an existing formal education model. A research design, implemented at four nodes over three years, will answer three research questions to evaluate the impact of professional development on informal educators, as well as the impact of programs on youth, and the effectiveness of the model. In addition to the project team and collaborators who are informal education practitioners, an advisory board composed of experts in youth programming, informal education, and evaluation will guide the project to ensure that it advances the body of informal STEM learning research.
Polar Literacy is an Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) Innovations in Development project in response to the Dear Colleague Letter: Support for Engaging Students and the Public in Polar Research (NSF 18-103). Polar Literacy 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 (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) learning in informal environments. This project has co-funding support from the Antarctic section of the Office of Polar Programs.
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:
Janice McDonnellOscar SchofieldCharles LichtenwalnerJason Cervenec
This research in service to practice project will examine the impact of a 12-year statewide science field trip program called LabVenture. This hands-on program in discovery and inquiry brings middle school students and teachers across the State of Maine to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) in Portland, Maine to become fully immersed in explorations into the complexities of local marine science ecosystems. These intensive field trip experiences are led by informal educators and facilitated entirely within informal contexts at GMRI. Approximately 70% of all fifth and sixth grade students in Maine participate in the program each year and more than 120,000 students have attended since the program's inception in 2005. Unfortunately, little is known to date on how the program has influenced practice and learning ecosystems within formal, informal, and community contexts. As such, this research in service to practice project will employ an innovative research approach to understand and advance knowledge on the short and long-term impacts of the program within different contexts. If proven effective, the LabVenture program will elucidate the potential benefits of a large-scale field trip program implemented systemically across a community over time and serve as a reputable model for statewide adoption of similar programs seeking innovative strategies to connect formal and informal science learning to achieve notable positive shifts in their local, statewide, or regional STEM learning ecosystems.
Over the four-year project duration, the project will reach all 16 counties in the State of Maine. The research design includes a multi-step, multi-method approach to gain insight on the primary research questions. The initial research will focus on extant data and retrospective data sources codified over the 12-year history of the program. The research will then be expanded to garner prospective data on current participating students, teachers, and informal educators. Finally, a community study will be conducted to understand the potential broader impacts of the program. Each phase of the research will consider the following overarching research questions are: (1) How do formal and informal practitioners perceive the value and purposes of the field trip program and field trip experiences more broadly (field trip ontology)? (2) To what degree do short-term field trip experiences in informal contexts effect cognitive and affective outcomes for students? (3) How are community characteristics (e.g., population, distance from GMRI, proximity to the coast) related to ongoing engagement with the field trip program? (4) What are aspects of the ongoing field trip program that might embed it as an integral element of community culture (e.g., community awareness of a shared social experience)? (5) To what degree does a field trip experience that is shared by schools across a state lead to a traceable change that can be measured for those who participated and across the broader community? and (6) In what ways, if at all, can a field trip experience that occurs in informal contexts have an influence on the larger learning ecosystem (e.g., the Maine education system)? Each phase of the research will be led by a team of researchers with the requisite expertise in the methodologies and contexts required to carry out that particular aspect of the research (i.e., retrospective study, prospective study, community study). In addition, evaluation and practitioner panels of experts will provide expertise and guidance on the research, evaluation, and project implementation. The project will culminate with a practitioner convening, to share project findings more broadly with formal and informal practitioners, and promote transfer from research to practice. Additional dissemination strategies include conferences, network meetings, and peer-reviewed publications.
The potential insights this research could garner on intersectionality between formal and informal STEM learning are substantial. As a consequence, this project is co-funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) and Discovery Research K-12 (DRK-12) Programs. 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. Likewise, the Discovery Research-K12 Program seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools.
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 Space and Earth Informal STEM Education (SEISE) project, led by the Arizona State University with partners Science Museum of Minnesota, Museum of Science, Boston, and the University of California Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science and Space Sciences Laboratory, is raising the capacity of museums and informal science educators to engage the public in Heliophysics, Earth Science, Planetary Science, and Astrophysics, and their social dimensions through the National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Net). SEISE will also partner on a network-to-network basis with other existing coalitions and professional associations dedicated to informal and lifelong STEM learning, including the Afterschool Alliance, National Girls Collaborative Project, NASA Museum Alliance, STAR_Net, and members of the Association of Children’s Museums and Association of Science-Technology Centers. The goals for this project include engaging multiple and diverse public audiences in STEM, improving the knowledge and skills of informal educators, and encouraging local partnerships.
In collaboration with the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD), SEISE is leveraging NASA subject matter experts (SMEs), SMD assets and data, and existing educational products and online portals to create compelling learning experiences that will be widely use to share the story, science, and adventure of NASA’s scientific explorations of planet Earth, our solar system, and the universe beyond. Collaborative goals include enabling STEM education, improving U.S. scientific literacy, advancing national educational goals, and leveraging science activities through partnerships. Efforts will focus on providing opportunities for learners explore and build skills in the core science and engineering content, skills, and processes related to Earth and space sciences. SEISE is creating hands-on activity toolkits (250-350 toolkits per year over four years), small footprint exhibitions (50 identical copies), and professional development opportunities (including online workshops).
Evaluation for the project will include front-end and formative data to inform the development of products and help with project decision gates, as well as summative data that will allow stakeholders to understand the project’s reach and outcomes.
In this project, education researchers, environmental scientists, and educators will develop a computer tool to let STEM educators and curriculum developers build local environmental science models. The system will use data about land use to automatically construct map-based simulations of any area in the United States. Users will be able to choose from a range of environmental and economic issues to include in these models. The system will create simulations that ask students to change to patterns of land use -- for example, increasing land zoned for housing, or open land, or industrial development -- to try to meet environmental and social goals. As a result, students will be able to learn about the interaction of environmental and economic issues relevant to their own city, town, neighborhood, or region. These map-based simulations will be incorporated into an existing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education tool, Land Science, in which learners work in a fictional planning office to study how zoning affects economic and environmental issues in a community. Research has shown that Land Science is mode effective when learners are exploring issues in an area near their home, and the current study will investigate how and why local simulations improve environmental science learning. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program which supports work to enhance learning in informal environments by funding innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of settings.
In this project, the research team will build, test, and deploy a toolkit that will allow informal STEM educators and developers of informal STEM programming to easily adapt an existing environmental science learning environment, which consists of a place-based virtual internship in urban planning and ecology, to their local contexts, learning objectives, and learner populations. Land Science is a virtual internship in which young people explore the environmental and socio-economic impacts of land-use decisions. To do so, they play the role of interns at an urban planning firm developing a new land-use proposal for the city of Lowell, Massachusetts: they read reports, virtually visit sites, determine stakeholder priorities, and use a geographic information system (GIS) model to evaluate the socio-economic and environmental impacts of land-use choices. No one plan can satisfy all stakeholders, so learners must compromise to create an effective plan and justify their decisions. Land Science has been shown to improve civic engagement, interest in eco-social issues, and understanding of scientific models, but it is most effective when the location of the virtual internship is in or near the learners' home town. To improve the accessibility and impact of this effective learning intervention, the interdisciplinary research team, which includes learning scientists, land-use experts, and informal STEM educators, will develop a Local Environmental Modeling toolkit, which will allow educators to change the location of the simulation and the stakeholder groups, zoning codes, and environmental and socio-economic indicators included in the land-use model. The system will ensure that the model produced is functional, realistic, and appropriately complex. The localized versions of Land Science produced by informal STEM educators will be used in a range of contexts and locations, allowing the research team to study the effects of an online, place-based learning intervention on environmental science learning, STEM interest and motivation, and civic engagement.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
David ShafferKristen ScopinichHolly GibbsJeffrey Linderoth
Lineage is a comprehensive educational media and outreach initiative that will engage individuals and families in learning about deep time and evolution, helping audiences come to newfound understandings of the connections between the past, present, and future of life on Earth. The project is a partnership between Twin Cities PBS (TPT) and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and is linked to the opening of that museum's new Deep Time Fossil Hall in June 2019. The project includes a two-hour film for national broadcast on PBS, and a 20-minute short version for exhibition in science centers. The documentaries will show how scientists, using paleontology, genetics, earth science and other disciplines, can reconstruct in detail the origins of living animals like birds and elephants, revealing their ancient past as well as evidence of ecological change that can inform our understanding of Earth today. Extensive educational outreach will include the creation of "Bone Hunter," an innovative VR (Virtual Reality) game designed for family co-play that engages multiple players in the process of paleontology as they piece together a fossil in a digital lab. Bone Hunter and other collaborative educational activities will be deployed at Family Fossil Festivals that will attract multi-generational learners. One such Festival will take place at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., while others will be based at geographically diverse institutions that serve underserved rural as well as urban communities. Lineage is a collaboration between national media producers, noted learning institutions and researchers, including Twin Cities Public Television, the Smithsonian Institution / National Museum of Natural History, Schell Games, the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI), and Rockman et al. One of the project's primary innovations is its exploration of new learning designs for families that use cutting-edge technologies (e.g. the Bone Hunter virtual reality game) and collaborative multi-generational learning experiences that advance science knowledge and inquiry-based learning. An external research study conducted by ILI will investigate how intergenerational co-play with physical artifacts compared to virtual artifacts influences STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) learning and engagement. The findings will lead to critical strategic impacts for the field, building knowledge about ongoing innovation in the free choice learning space. The project's external evaluation will be conducted by Rockman et al and evaluative findings, as well as the educational materials derived from the project, will be widely disseminated through partnerships with professional and educator groups. Clips from the Lineage film and related learning resources will be hosted on PBS LearningMedia, so educators can incorporate these resources into their classrooms, and students and lifelong learners can explore and discover on their own. The project outcomes will have broad impact on public audiences, deepening and advancing knowledge and understanding about important scientific concepts, and promoting continued, family-based collaborative learning experiences to expand and deepen STEM knowledge. 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.
Recharge the Rain moves sixth through twelfth grade teachers, students and the public through a continuum from awareness, to knowledge gain, to conceptual understanding, to action; building community resiliency to hazards associated with increased temperatures, drought and flooding in Arizona. Watershed Management Group with Arizona Project WET will utilize NOAA assets and experts from the National Weather Service and Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) to inform citizens and galvanize their commitment to building a community, resilient to the effects of a warming climate. Project activities will be informed by Pima County’s hazard mitigation plan and planning tools related to preparing for and responding to flooding and extreme heat. Starting January 2017, this four-year project will 1) develop curriculum with Tucson-area teachers that incorporates systems-thinking and increases understanding of earth systems, weather and climate, and the engineering design of rainwater harvesting systems 2) immerse students in a curricular unit that results in the implementation of 8 teacher/student-led schoolyard water harvesting projects, 3) train community docents in water harvesting practices and citizen-science data collection, 4) involve Tucson community members in water harvesting principles through project implementation workshops, special events, and tours, and 5) expand program to incorporate curriculum use in Phoenix-area teachers’ classrooms and 6) finalize a replicable model for other communities facing similar threats. Environmental and community resiliency depends upon an informed society to make the best social, economic, and environmental decisions. This idea is not only at the core of NOAA’s mission, but is echoed in the programs provided by Watershed Management Group and Arizona Project WET.
This project will bring STEM education to rural communities through local public libraries. Museum quality exhibits labelled as "Discover Earth", "Discover Technology", and "Discover Space" will spend 3 months at a series of locations around the Nation. Twenty four medium sized libraries will be chosen for the large exhibits and forty small libraries will be chosen for scaled down versions. The project's intent is to provide exhibits in every state and to reach as many under-represented individuals as possible. The significance of this project is that rural areas of this country are underserved regarding STEM education and since this segment of society is represented by 50-60 million residents, it is important to reach out to them. There is a significant segment of the Nation's population (50-60 million) that is underserved by out-of-school learning venues such as museums and science centers. An earlier phase 1 project demonstrated at 18 sites that rural libraries and librarians could provide STEM education to community members ranging in age from adults to children using these hands-on exhibits. Each exhibit (earth, space or technology) includes information about the topic and technologically enabled models to provide interesting and fun discovery mechanisms. They use common layman friendly language that highlights the most recent discoveries in each area. Each exhibit will be placed in the selected library for 3 months during which the library will organize events to feature and advertise the STEM learning opportunities. Another feature of this project will be to determine the models of learning in library settings and as a function of the demographics. The partners in this project that bring the necessary expertise are the American Library Association, the Afterschool Alliance, the Association of Rural and Small Libraries, the University of Colorado Museum, Datum Advisors, LLC, Evaluation and Research Associates, the Lunar and Planetary Institute, the American Geophysical Union, and the Space Science Institute.