The University of Minnesota is partnering with several nature centers in the Midwest to transform citizen "technicians" into citizen "scientists." The Driven to Discover project will use existing citizen science programs with strong educational components to engage 12-14 year old youth and their adult mentors in authentic research. The goal of the project is to develop a training model for adults who work with youth in a variety of informal education settings to involve them in authentic scientific inquiry via citizen science rather than just data collection activities. In the proof-of-concept phase, teams consisting of 4-H youth, adult leaders, and several scientists are conducting participatory action research to understand what factors lead youth to full engagement in ecological research. In phase two, project personnel are training 4-H educators, naturalists, and teachers how to engage youth and their adult leaders in other 4-H programs and other informal education programs to conduct ecological research with scientists in advisory roles. Phase one involves approximately 10 adults and 70 youth, whereas phase two involves approximately 40 adults and 300 youth. A front-end study defined the project's target audiences and partners. Formative evaluation study will monitor interactions among members of the research teams and summative evaluation will measure impacts on participants' knowledge, skills development, attitudes, and behavior. Project deliverables include youth-generated ecological research findings, web-based program implementation materials, an annual conference, and a model for engaging youth groups in informal settings in authentic scientific inquiry. The model is expected to impact more than six million youth nationwide.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karen OberhauserNathan MeyerAndrea Lorek StraussPamela NippoltKatie ClarkRobert Blair
WGBH is requesting funds to produce a four-hour NOVA television special with accompanying Web and outreach activities about the pervasive role of materials in our lives. The overarching goals of the project are to: 1) enhance public engagement in and understanding of materials science, including appreciation of its effects on society; 2) promote collaboration among educators, scientists and community-based organizations to reach a broad audience; and 3) create effective methods of expanding informal science learning that can be evaluated for their lasting impact on the field. The mini-series, "STUFF: The Materials that Shape our World," will offer an appreciation of the human and scientific factors that drive innovation in materials science, from ancient breakthroughs to today's explosion of biological and nanomaterials. The four episodes, themed around "Stronger," "Smaller," "Smarter" and "Cleaner" will provide a clear focus on the interdisciplinary nature of materials science and showcase dramatic stories of past inventions and exciting new discoveries. The NOVA team in association with the Materials Research Society (MRS) will produce the series. The "STUFF" series is anticipated to be broadcast on PBS in the fall of 2008. WGBH and MRS will work with local PBS stations to train local scientists in public outreach. Multimedia Research will conduct formative evaluation of the project components, and Goodman Research Group will conduct summative evaluation of both the series and the outreach efforts.
Video games have been heralded as models of technology-enhanced learning environments as they exemplify many of the ideas emerging from contemporary learning sciences research. In particular, such games promote learning through goal-directed action in simulated environments, through producing as well as consuming information, embedded assessments, and through participation in self-organizing learning systems. Research suggests that participation in such environments involves many forms of scientific thinking and may lead to increased civic engagement, although to date, there are few examples of game-based learning environments that capitalize on these affordances. This project will investigate the potential of online role playing games for scientific literacy through the iterative design and research of Saving Lake Wingra, an online role playing game around a controversial development project in an urban area. Saving Lake Wingra positions players as ecologists, department of natural resources officials, or journalists investigating a rash of health problems at a local lake, and then creating and debating solutions. Players will solve challenges within an interactive, simulated lake ecosystem as they attempt to save the lake, working for one of several constituencies. This design-based research project will span the full life cycle of a project, from case studies of learning in small, constrained settings to controlled experimental studies of games implemented across classrooms. In addition to asking if participation in scientific role-playing games can produce robust conceptual understandings, it will also examine if role playing games might serve as assessment tools for comprehending scientific texts, assessing conceptual understandings within scientific domains, and designing innovative solutions to environmental problems that draw upon scientific understandings. The education plan includes the production of game-based media that can be used to support a variety of research studies, an online professional development community of educators using games for learning, support for graduate students trained in game theory, the learning sciences, and new forms of assessment, and new courses in game-based learning and assessment.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kurt Squire
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The proposed CAREER study uses a comprehensive mixed-methods design to develop measures of motivational beliefs and family supports for Spanish and English speaking Mexican-origin youth in high school physical science. The research examines a three-part model which may provide a deeper understanding of how Mexican families support youth through their general education strategies, beliefs about physical science, and science specific behaviors. This approach incorporates motivation and ecodevelopmental theories while pursuing an innovative line of research that examines how the contributions of older siblings and relatives complement or supplement parental support. The study has four aims which are to (1) to develop reliable, valid measures of Mexican-origin adolescent motivational beliefs and family supports in relation to high school chemistry and physics, (2) to test whether family supports predict motivational beliefs and course enrollment, (3) to test how indicators in Aim 2 vary based on gender, culture, English language skills and relationship quality, and (4) to examine how family supports strengthen or weaken the relationship between school-based interactions (teachers and peer support) and the pursuit of physical science studies. Spanish and English-speaking Mexican-origin youth will participate in focus groups to inform the development of a survey instrument which will be used in a statistical measurement equivalence study of 300 high school students in fulfillment of Aim 1. One hundred and fifty Mexican high school students and their families will participate in a longitudinal study while students progress through grades 9-12 to examine Aims 2- 4. Data to be collected includes information on science coursework, adolescent motivational beliefs, supports by mothers and older youth in the family, and family interactions. All materials will be in English and Spanish. The educational and research integration plan uses a three pronged approach which includes mentoring of doctoral students, teacher outreach, and the evaluation of the ASU Biodesign high school summer internship program using measures resulting from the research. It is anticipated that the study findings will provide research-based solutions to some of the specific behaviors that influence youth motivation in physical sciences. Specifically, the study will identify youth that might be most affected by an intervention and the age of maximum benefit, as well as valid, reliable measures of youths' motivation that can used in interventions to measure outcomes. The study will also identify family behaviors that may be influenced, including education strategies for school preparation, beliefs about physical science, and sciece-specific strategies such as engaging in science activities outside school. The findings will be broadly disseminated to science teachers, scholars, and families of Mexican-origin youth. This multi-tiered approach will advance current scholarship and practice concerning Mexican-origin adolescents' pursuit of physical science.
This project will develop an interactive application for spherical displays developed by NOAA called Science on a Sphere. The spheres are animated globes that can show dynamic, animated images of the atmosphere, oceans, and land of a planet. NOAA primarily uses SOS as an education and outreach tool to describe the environmental processes of Earth. Science On a Sphere was initially developed as a way to explore environmental data using new visualization techniques. There are about 70 installations of the sphere in science centers, planetariums and museums world-wide with 40 in the US. Currently the spheres only display static content. This project will extend the amount of content available and provide interactivity. The resulting application will be available to both installed spheres and those institutions thinking about purchasing and installing the sphere display. Math on a Sphere will enable users to create 3-D interactive graphic content for spheres. The project will enable users to interact with the displays they develop for the spheres either on-site or remotely. Through the use of a computer-based toolkit, users can create their own programs, build geometric patterns, and send a variety of graphical content to the spherical display. The project hypothesizes that user-directed development combined with a visually compelling spherical display will spark interest in STEM topics and specifically, in the test version, mathematical content. This project will prototype, design, implement, test, and evaluate software that allows users to display their computational work on an installed sphere as well as work remotely on the project and to test their mathematical computations by viewing the spherical display remotely either through a computer monitor or a camera view of the sphere itself. While the prototype will be developed focusing on mathematical concepts, there are clear links between the toolkit being developed to physics, meteorology, oceanography and astronomy. The project will increase the computational and spatial reasoning and thinking of the target audience of middle school and high school students. The application will be available remotely for individual users but could easily be used in classroom settings. The application can be used by teachers and museum and science center staff as well to encourage its use among users both on site and remotely. The successful demonstration of interactive 3-D display of science concepts using the Science on a Sphere installations can lead to interactive use of other large public display installations such as walls or large screen projection. This capability would extend the ability of users to derive greater use of these visually driven devices for learning STEM concepts and content.
The Herpetology Education in Rural Places & Spaces (HERPS) project is a four-year full-scale development project designed to engage diverse North Carolina residents from the Central Piedmont, Eastern Piedmont, and Inner Coastal Plain regions of the state in conservation and field experiences focused on herpetology, the study of reptiles and amphibians. The project targets rural underrepresented groups in STEM; predominately African-Americans, Hispanics, and Lumbee Native Americans. The University of North Carolina-Greensboro and its partner organizations, Elon University and University of North Carolina-Pembroke, will partner to develop and implement all phases of the project. Ultimately, the project aims to increase knowledge of and interest in herpetology and related conservation issues, provide authentic research experiences, and better understand identity-related motivations and affordances of the casual, regular, and enthusiastic participant across project strands. HERPS builds on four pilot studies and will engage people of all ages in a broad range of herpetological activities including: (a) an annual herpetology-focused community event (HERPS Celebrations), (b) technology resources such as a project website and customized mobile applications (HERPS Cyberhub), (c) summer and year-long herpetological research experiences (HREs) for high school students and teachers, and (d) in-depth longitudinal herpetological study opportunities (e.g., box turtle study). In addition, there is separate but integrated research stand that will focus on identity and HERPS experiences, as settings for informal science learning. The identity research will study: (a) identity-related motivations and (b) identity-related affordances of casual, regular and enthusiastic participants across threads. In addition, an extensive formative and summative evaluation will be conducted using a mixed methods approach by an external evaluator. Using a multiple-entry-points approach for learning and engagement, this project could serve as a replicable model for similar efforts in other settings. In addition, the results of the identity reseach strand could fill a critical gap in the identity and informal science education research bases. With an average estimated reach of nearly 15,000 people of all ages and diverse backgrounds, the potential broader impacts of this project could be extensive.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Catherine MatthewsAndy AshTerry TomasekAnn SomersHeidi Carlone
The purpose of this three-year collaborative design research project is to examine the role of culture in the development of knowledge and reasoning about the natural world and the subsequent sense-making of and participation in natural resource management. The PIs propose to examine the ways in which culture impacts observational habits, explanation constructing, uses and forms of evidence, and orientations towards socio-scientific challenges such as natural resource management. Collaborating on this project are researchers from the American Indian Center of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. The audience for this study includes the academic informal science education community and indigenous science educators. This project also offers extensive cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary research opportunities for pre- and post-doctoral research trainees. The project will employ a mixed methods approach and proposes evaluation through an advisory board and community input. A community assessment team is proposed to review activities, obtain feedback from the larger community, and identify challenges to the effective implementation of the program. The project is comprised of two main panels of studies: the first consisting of a series of investigations of learning in everyday activities and the second consisting of two community design experiments that engage two Native American communities and two non-Native communities, one rural and one urban for both communities, in a culturally based citizen science (CBCS) project focused on ecosystem disruption (e.g. invasive species; climate change) and natural resource management. The CBCS project will engage participants in question formation, data collection, data analysis, forming policy recommendations, and citizen action around the findings. This project will develop a citizen science model that effectively engages diverse communities towards productive science learning, helpful scientific data collection, and citizen engagement in community planning and local policy decisions. The researchers believe that fundamental advances in STEM teaching and learning are needed across the broad landscape of learning environments and that the success of such advances may pivot on innovations and discoveries made in informal environments. Insights obtained from prior research on learning in indigenous cultures, especially in biological and environmental sciences, combined with the anticipated results from this study could lead to a deeper understanding of cross-cultural similarities and differences in science learning.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karen WashinawatokMegan BangDouglas MedinUniversity of Washington
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is creating a new type of interactive, question-driven, online bird-identification tool called "Merlin," along with associated games, social networking tools, and other media. Unlike existing bird-identification guides, which are based on traditional taxonomic keys written by scientists, Merlin uses machine learning algorithms and crowd-sourced data (information provided by thousands of people) to identify birds and improve Merlin's performance with each interaction. The tool will help millions of people identify birds and participate in a collective effort to help others. The Crowd ID project will make it easier for people to discover the names of birds, learn observation and identification skills, find more information, and appreciate Earth's biodiversity. The summative evaluation plan is measuring increases in participants' knowledge, engagement, and skills, as well as changes in behavior. Impacts on participants will be compared to a control group of users not using Merlin. Merlin tools will be integrated into the Cornell Lab's citizen science and education projects, which reach more than 200,000 participants, schoolchildren, and educators across the nation. Merlin will be broadly adapted for use on other websites, social networking platforms, exhibits, mobile devices, curricula, and electronic field guides. Once developed, Merlin can be modified to identify plants, rocks, and other animals. Merlin will promote growth of citizen science projects which depend on the ability of participants to identify a wide range of organisms.
The University of Pittsburgh's Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments (UPCLOSE), the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University are building an open access cyberlearning infrastructure that employs super high-resolution gigapixel images as a tool to support public understanding, participation, and engagement with science. Networked, gigapixel image technology is an information and communication technology that creates zoomable images that viewers can explore, share, and discuss. The technology presents visual information of scientifically important content in such detail that it can be used to promote both scientific discovery and education. The purpose of the project is to make gigapixel technology accessible and usable for informal science educators and scientists by developing a robotic imaging device and online services for the creation, storage, and sharing of billion-pixel images of scientifically important content that can be analyzed visually. Project personnel are conducting design activities, user studies, and formative evaluation studies to support the development of a gigapan technology platform for demonstration and further prototyping. The project builds on and leverages existing technologies to provide informal science education organizations use of gigapixel technology for the purpose of facilitating three types of activities that promote participatory learning by the public--Public Understanding of Science activities; Public Participation in Scientific Research activities; and Public Engagement in Science activities. The long-terms goals of the work are to (1) create an accessible database of gigapixel images that informal science educators can use to facilitate public-scientist interactions and promote participatory science learning, (2) characterize and demonstrate the affordances of networked gigapixel technologies to support socially-mediated, science-focused cyberlearning experiences, (3) generate knowledge about how gigapixel technology can enable three types of learning interactions between scientists and the public around visual data, and (4) disseminate findings that describe the design, implementation, and evaluation of the gigapixel platform to support participatory science learning. The project\'s long-term strategic impacts include guiding the design of high-resolution images for promoting STEM learning in both informal and formal settings, developing an open educational resource and science communication platform, and informing informal science education professionals about the use and effectiveness of gigapixel images in promoting participatory science learning by the public.
The University of Minnesota and the University of Florida are collaborating on the creation of a Master Naturalist Program for adults that will serve as a model for nationnwide dissemination. This program, which builds on the existing Florida Master Naturalist Program, will provide intensive 40-hour training sessions in ecology, natural/cultural history and the environment for volunteers in Minnesota. Participants will then complete 40 hours of supervised volunteer service at local natural history centers while volunteers in both Florida and Minnesota will have the option of participating in advanced training workshops. Staff members at informal science education institutions and natural history centers take part in train-the-trainer workshops to assist with dissemination. Deliverables include three training modules (Big Woods, Big Rivers; Prairies and Potholes; North Woods, Great Lakes), advanced training workshops, local Master Naturalist Chapters, annual conferences, training materials and workshops for Master Naturalist Instructors, and a project website. It is anticipated that this project will result in the implementation of 64 Master Naturalist workshops, directly reaching 1,280 volunteers, while 750 participants are anticipated for advanced training workshops. It is estimated that 130 staff will participate as Master Naturalist Instructors. Indirect impacts will be realized as volunteers contribute more than 51,000 hours in service to nature centers and informal science institutions interacting with public audiences while conducting natural history activities. Strategic impact will be realized in the outcomes of the comprehensive evaluation plan that will assess immediate and longitudinal impacts on public and professional audiences.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Robert BlairMartin MainAmy RagerKaren Oberhauser
The Maryland Science Center, in partnership with SK Films, Inc. received NSF funding to produce a large format, 2D/3D film and multi-component educational materials and activities on the annual migration of monarch butterflies, their life cycle, the web of life at select sites where they land, and the citizen science efforts that led to the monarch migration discovery. Project goals are to 1) raise audience understanding of the nature of scientific investigation and the open-ended nature of the scientific process, 2) enhance and extend citizen science programs to new audiences, and 3) create better awareness of monarch biology, insect ecology and the importance of habitat. Innovation/Strategic Impact: The film has been released in both 3D and 2D 15/70 format. RMC Research Corporation has conducted evaluation of the project, both formatively and summatively, including a study of the comparable strengths of the 2D and 3D versions of the film. RMC has conducting formative evaluation and is currently conducting summative evaluation to assess the success of project materials in communicating science and achieving the project's learning goals. Collaboration: This project employs a collaborative model of partnerships between the project team and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the University of Minnesota's Monarchs in the Classroom and Monarch Watch. Project advisors represent world-renown monarch butterfly research scientists and educators, including Dr. Karen Oberhauser, named a "Champion of Change" by President Obama in June 2013, and Dr. Chip Taylor, founder and director of Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas.
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) will create a 5,000 sq ft traveling exhibition designed to engage families with children ages 10-14 with concepts of algebra. Access Algebra will increase visitor awareness of the role of algebra in everyday life and help them to develop algebraic thinking skills. This exhibition will travel to 21 science centers, reaching some 3.5 million visitors on its national tour. It will be accompanied by an Educator's Guide, Family Guide, and complementary web activities. Access Algebra incorporates testing and implementation of an innovative model for professional development for museum exhibit, program, and interpretive staff. It links the exhibition tour to training at each venue designed to increase knowledge of algebra concepts and to develop facilitation skills in family math learning. The package includes workshops, training DVD, printed guide, Math Toolkit, and website support. Project partners include TERC, Oregon State University College of Education (OSU), and Blazer Boys & Girls Club (BBGC). The BBGC members will participate in exhibit development over an extended (12-week) period, helping to create an exhibition that will engage a target audience of underserved low-income youth. The strategic impact of Access Algebra derives from the development and testing of effective strategies for engaging audiences in exhibit-based informal math learning, along with increasing the capacity of the field for facilitating these kinds of experiences through a new model for professional development.