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.
In June of 2017, the Exploratorium hosted the GENIAL Summit which brought together approximately 91 practitioners, community leaders, diversity-focused organization staff, researchers, and media/marketing specialists from across the country and Puerto Rico for a one and a half day gathering. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Summit focused on increasing Latino participation in Informal STEM Learning (ISL) environments by examining these five content strands identified by the GENIAL team:
1. Latino Audiences
2. Marketing, Communicating, and Media
3. Community Collaboration and
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 exploratory Pilot study project brings together a diverse set of partners that include the Watertown Children's Theatre (WCT) which is west of Boston, and, from Boston College a team of science educators, learning science researchers, and positive youth development experts. The goal is to design and develop a project for middle school-aged youth. The pilot project, which integrates hands-on science learning experiences, experiments, and field trips with the student-led production of short plays, will engage youth in expressing their beliefs, passions, and their own identities about STEM by examining how the intersection of skills and practices used in both domains (science and theatre) can enable them to learn about science concepts, principles and methods as well as to develop science-focused identities. Middle-school youth will be engaged in a three-week summer program where they will be led by science teachers, playwrights, and high school students to conduct hands-on investigations in science in conjunction with developing original, ten-minute plays around a specific scientific theme relevant to their life experience, for example, the potential impact on their lives of heavy metals in water and poor air quality. After a science theme is chosen, the principal investigators will identify the big ideas that are important for youth to understand and be able to explain. Upon identification of the key science ideas, youth will then engage in pertinent science activities, visits to local sites, reading current news articles and then in identifying the local impacts and how the underlying science relates to those local impacts. The youth will perform their ten-minute plays at the end of the summer program. Following this showcase event, they will engage in additional science learning experiences and also revise their productions throughout the academic year in preparation for a youth science festival, where their creations will be performed by professional adult actors as a part of the Cambridge Science Festival taking place in the spring. The broader impact of the work focuses on broadening participation in STEM, specifically, the engagement of youth from under-represented populations in the sciences, such as African-Americans, Latinxs, and women with partner Boston Public Schools. The Pilot study will investigate the student learning and organizational dimensions of the model being developed.
The Boston College researchers will study youth's sense of purpose and identity toward science, particularly how youth's identity discrepancy changes through participation in the project. The work places youth voice at the center of the creation of STEM-based theatre plays. The theoretical foundation of the work is grounded in part in the concept of "path to purpose." The major research questions are: How do youth perceptions (interest, science anxiety, identity) toward science shift as they participate in the project? What is the residual impact on parents (family members) and youth on their discussions about science, and how does participation in the project impact those discussions? Research methods include surveys, interviews and observations. The external evaluation study will focus on understanding project implementation and progress toward meeting the project goals, in particular, how well the initiative works to establish a model for the informal STEM learning field that the team and others can apply beyond the Pilot study.
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:
Meghan Hill
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
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 project is a two-day conference, along with pre- and post-conference activities, with the goal of furthering the informal science learning field's review of the research and development that has been conducted on data visualizations that have been used to help the public better understand and become more engaged in science. The project will address an urgent need in informal science education, providing a critical first step towards a synthesis of research and technology development in visualization and, thus, to inform and accelerate work in the field in this significant and rapidly changing domain.
The project will start with a Delphi study by the project evaluator prior to the conference to provide an Emerging Field Assessment on data visualization work to date. Then, a two-day conference at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and related activities will bring together AISL-funded PIs, computer scientists, cognitive scientists, designers, and technology developers to (a) synthesize work to date, (b) bring in relevant research from fields outside of informal learning, and (c) identify remaining knowledge gaps for further research and development. The project team will also develop a website with videos of all presentations, conference documentation, resources, and links to social media communities; and a post-conference publication mapping the state of the field, key findings, and promising technologies.
The initiative also has a goal to broaden participation, as the attendees will include a diverse cadre of professionals in the field who contribute to data visualization work.
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.
Scientists (and engineers) wishing to conduct public engagement do so in the context of established disciplinary norms and complex institutional systems that may support or limit their success. This report seeks to convey the known complexity, unique challenges, and opportunities for universities to better support for scientists in their public engagement work. The report is intended to drive discussion towards deeper exploration and development of actionable next steps.
This is the executive summary of report from Workshop III: Academic Institutions, part of the Support Systems for
Engagement is the cornerstone of learning in informal science education. During free-choice learning in museums and science centers, visitor engagement shapes how learners interact with exhibits, navigate through exhibit spaces, and form attitudes, interests, and understanding of science. Recent advances in multimodal learning analytics are creating novel opportunities for expanding the range and richness of measures of visitor engagement in free-choice settings. In particular, multimodal learning analytics offer significant potential for integrating multiple data sources to devise a composite picture of visitors' cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement. The project will center on providing a rich empirical account of meaningful visitor engagement with interactive tabletop science exhibits among individual visitors and small groups, as well as uncovering broader tidal patterns in visitor engagement that unfold across exhibit spaces. A key objective of the project is creating models and practitioner-focused learning analytic tools that will inform the best practices of exhibit designers and museum educators. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program. As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, AISL funds research and innovative approaches and resources for use in a variety of settings. The research team will conduct data-rich investigations of visitors' learning experiences with multimodal learning analytics that fuse the rich multichannel data streams produced by fully-instrumented exhibit spaces with the data-driven modeling functionalities afforded by recent advances in machine learning and educational data mining. The research team will conduct a series of visitor studies of naturalistic engagement in solo, dyad, and group interactions as visitors explore interactive tabletop science exhibits. The studies will utilize eye trackers to capture visitors' moment-to-moment attention, facial expression analysis and quantitative field observations to track visitors' emotional states, trace logs generated by exhibit software, as well as motion-tracking sensors and coded video recordings to capture visitors' behavioral interactions. The studies will also use conversation recordings and pre-post assessment measures to capture visitors' science understanding and inquiry processes. With these multimodal data streams as training data, the research team will use probabilistic and neural machine learning techniques to devise learning analytic models of visitor engagement. The project will be conducted by a partnership between North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. The research team will 1) design a data-rich multimodal visitor study methodology, 2) create the Visitor Informatics Platform, a suite of open source software tools for multimodal visitor analytics, and 3) launch the Multimodal Visitor Data Warehouse, a curated visitor experience data archive. Together, the multimodal visitor study methodology, the Visitor Informatics Platform, and the Multimodal Visitor Data Warehouse will enable researchers and practitioners in the informal science education community to utilize multimodal learning analytics in their own informal learning environments. It is anticipated that the project will advance the field of informal STEM learning by extending and enriching measures of meaningful visitor engagement, expanding the evidence base for visitor experience design principles, and providing learning analytic tools to support museum educators. By enhancing understanding of the cognitive, affective, and behavioral dynamics underlying visitor experiences in science museums, informal science educators will be well-positioned to design learning experiences that are more effective and engaging. 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:
James LesterJames MinogueJonathan RoweNorth Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
Scientists are increasingly being called upon to play a more prominent role in the interface of science and society by contributing to science literacy in ways that support two-way exchanges with the public. However, many remain reluctant to participate in public engagement activities in part because they feel they lack relevant skills and experience. We surveyed scientists trained on engagement through a nationwide program called Portal to the Public and examined how participation in the program may have influenced their self-efficacy, commitment and attitudes about outreach, and perceived
This research brief highlights findings from the proof of concept pilot year of the Child Trends News Service project. It explores what we have learned regarding best practices for communicating with and engaging Latino parents through short messages on research-informed parenting practices. The findings are grounded in research that substantiates the need to amplify access to child development research, particularly among low-income Latino families; and in communication science research that demonstrates the value of the news media as an information source for child development research.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Alicia TorresSelma CaalLuz GuerraAngela Rojas
European Researchers’ Night is an annual pan-European initiative of the European Commission held on the last Friday in September. In 2015, 1.1 million European citizens and 18,000 researchers took part in events organised in more than 300 cities within Europe and neighbouring countries. The objective of European Researchers’ Night is to encourage the wider public to visit research institutes, engage with researchers, and learn more about European research and potential career opportunities. In this paper, European Researchers’ Night in Ireland is considered through the lens of informal
Why do scientists volunteer to be involved in public engagement in science? What are the barriers that can prevent them participating in dialogue with society? What can be done to facilitate their participation? We report the outcomes of a series of focus groups conducted with the young scientists who volunteered in SISSA for schools (S4S), the Children's University program of the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy.
S4S is based on the contribution of PhD students as volunteers, has a participatory character, and is attentive to social and gender inclusion
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Simona CerratoValentina DaelliHelena PertotOlga Puccioni
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This is a report from Workshop IV, part of the Support Systems for Scientists' Communication and Engagement workshop series. Workshop IV was held May 2-3, 2018 at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, CA. In this study, researchers sought to explore and understand the mechanisms, motivations, and outcome metrics utilized by individuals and organizations that facilitate scientists’ communication with the public. To capture the full range of engagement methods, facilitators from a wide variety of organizations were contacted and interviewed. After contacting 30 leaders the realm of science
In the United States, broad study in an array of different disciplines —arts, humanities, science, mathematics, engineering— as well as an in-depth study within a special area of interest, have been defining characteristics of a higher education. But over time, in-depth study in a major discipline has come to dominate the curricula at many institutions. This evolution of the curriculum has been driven, in part, by increasing specialization in the academic disciplines. There is little doubt that disciplinary specialization has helped produce many of the achievement of the past century
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TEAM MEMBERS:
David SkortonAshley BearNational Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine