Successful peer-to-peer practices in informal science learning (ISL) are often not well defined, but further investigation has the potential to help uncover how to motivate and scaffold children's joint learning in science and engineering. Team Hamster!, a PBS KIDS interactive digital series that helps youth think creatively and use engineering skills to solve problems with everyday tools, will be used to achieve the goals of this project.
This project will focus on understanding how media can improve boys' and girls' perceptions of female scientists and engineers and increase children's understanding of mixed-gender collaborations in STEM.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sara SweetmanDaniel WhitesonAbdeltawab HendawiJorge Cham
Despite decades of policies and programs meant to increase the representation of girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), girls and women of color still represent a much smaller percent of the STEM workforce than they do in the US population. This lack of representation is preventing the US STEM workforce from reaching its true potential. Intersecting inequalities of gender, race, ethnicity, and class, along with stereotypes associated with who is successful in STEM (i.e., White men), lead to perceptions that they do not belong and may not succeed in STEM. Ultimately, these issues hinder girls’ STEM identity development (i.e., sense of belonging and future success), lead to a crisis of representation for women of color and have compounding impacts on the STEM workforce. Research suggests there are positive impacts of in-person STEM learning after-school and out-of-school time programs on girls’ sense of belonging. The increasing need for online learning initiated by the COVID-19 pandemic means it is vital to investigate girls’ STEM identity development within an online community. Thus, the project will refine and test approaches in online learning communities to make a valuable impact on the STEM identity development of girls of color by 1) training educators and role models on exemplary approaches for STEM identity development; 2) implementing a collaborative, girl-focused Brite Online Learning Community that brings together 400 girls ages 13-16 from a minimum of 10 sites across the United States; and 3) researching the impact of the three core approaches -- community building, authentic and competence-demonstrating hands-on activities, and interactive learning with women role models -- on participating girls’ STEM identities in online settings.
The mixed methods study is guided by guided by Carlone & Johnson’s model of STEM identity involving four constructs: competence, performance, recognition, and sense of belonging. Data collection sources for the quantitative portion of the project include pre- and post-surveys, while qualitative data sources will be collected from six case study sites and will include observations, focus group interviews with girls, artifacts created by girls and educators, educator interviews, and open-ended survey responses. This approach will enable the research team to determine how and the extent to which the Brite Online Learning Community influences STEM identity constructs, interpreting which practices lead to meaningful outcomes that can be linked to the development of STEM identity for participating girls in an online environment. The products of this work will include research-based, tested Brite Practices and a toolkit for fostering girls’ interest, identification, and long-term participation in STEM. The resulting products will increase the reach of informal STEM education programming to girls of color across the nation as online spaces can reach more girls, potentially increasing the representation of women of color in the STEM workforce.
Increasing the diversity of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce hinges on understanding the impact of the many related, pre-college experiences of the nation’s youth. While formal preparation, such as high school course-taking, has a major influence, research has shown that out-of-school-time activities have a much larger role in shaping the attitudes, identity, and career interests of students, particularly those who are members of groups historically underrepresented in STEM fields (Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and/or Pacific Islander). A wide range of both innovative adult-led (science clubs, internships, museum-going, competitions, summer camps) and personal-choice (hobbies, family talk, games, simulations, social media, online courses) options exist. This project studies the variety and availability such experiences to pre-college students. The project is particularly interested in how community cultural capital is leveraged through informal activities and experiences, drawing upon the “funds of knowledge” that culturally diverse students bring to their STEM experiences (e.g., high aspirations, multilingual facility, building of sustaining social networks, and the capacity to challenge negative stereotyping). This study has the capability to begin to reveal evidence-based measures of the absolute and relative effectiveness of promising informal educational practices, including many developed and disseminated by NSF-funded programs. Understanding the ecology of precollege influencers and the hypotheses on which they are based, along with providing initial measures of the efficacy of multiple pathways attempting to broaden participation of students from underrepresented groups in STEM majors and careers, will aid decision-making that will maximize the strategic impact of federal and local efforts.
The project first collects hypotheses from the wide variety of stakeholders (educators, researchers, and students) about the kinds of experiences that make a difference in increasing students’ STEM identity and career interest. Identifying the descriptive attributes that characterize opportunities across individual programs and validating a multi-part instrument to ascertain student experiences will be carried out through a review of relevant literature, surveying stakeholders using crowdsourced platforms, and through in-depth interviews with 50 providers. A sample of 1,000 students from 2- and 4-year college and universities, drawn from minority-serving institutions, such as Historically Black Colleges, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges and Universities will serve to establish the validity and reliability of the derived instrument and provide estimates of the availability and frequency of involvement. Psychometric methods and factor analysis will guide us in combining related variables into indices that reflect underlying constructs. Propensity score weighting will be employed for estimating effects when exposure to certain OST activities is confounded with other factors (e.g., parental education, SES). Path models and structural equation models (SEM) will be employed to build models that use causal or time related variables, for instance, students’ career interests at different times in their pre-college experience. The study goes beyond evaluation of individual experiences in addressing important questions that will help policy makers, educators, parents, and students understand which OST opportunities serve the diverse values and goals of members of underrepresented groups, boosting their likelihood of pursuing STEM careers. This project is co-funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) and EHR CORE Research (ECR) programs.
This project is funded by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, which supports work that advances fundamental research on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. It responds to continuing concerns about racial and social inequities in STEM fields that begin to emerge in the early childhood years. The overarching goal of the project is to identify cultural strengths that support early science learning opportunities among Spanish-speaking children from immigrant Latin American communities, a population that is traditionally underrepresented in STEM educational and career pursuits. Building on a growing interest in the ways stories can promote early engagement in and understanding of science, this project will investigate the role of oral and written stories as culturally relevant and potentially powerful tools for making scientific ideas and inquiry practices meaningful and accessible for young Latinx children. Findings will reveal ways that family storytelling practices can provide accessible entry points for Latinx children's early science learning, and recommend methods that parents and educators can use to foster learning about scientific practices that can, in turn, increase interest and participation in science education and fields.
The project will advance knowledge on the socio-cultural and familial experience of Latinx children that can contribute to their early science learning and skills. The project team will examine the oral story and reading practices of 330 Latinx families with 3- to 5-year-old children recruited from three geographic locations in the United States: New York, Chicago, and San Jose. Combining interviews and observations, the project team will investigate: (1) how conversations about science and nature occur in Latinx children's daily lives, and (2) whether and to what extent narrative and expository books, family personal narratives, and adivinanzas (riddles) engender family conversations about scientific ideas and science practices. Across- and within-site comparisons will allow the project team to consider the immediate ecology and broader factors that shape Latinx families’ science-related views and practices. Although developmental science has long acknowledged that early learning is culturally situated, most research on early STEM is still informed by mainstream experiences that largely exclude the lived experiences of children from groups underrepresented in STEM, especially those who speak languages other than English. The proposed work will advance understanding of stories as cultural resources to support early science engagement and learning among Latinx children and inform the development of high quality, equitable informal and formal science educational opportunities for young children.
Early childhood is a critical time for developing foundational knowledge, skills, and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). For that reason, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) places a great priority on developing early childhood STEM content, especially through its television shows that are watched by over 60% of young children in the United States. Research suggests that adding in-the-moment interaction to television watching promotes learning and engagement. Toward this end, researchers from the University of California, Irvine and PBS KIDS have prototyped interactive versions of science shows that children view on internet-connected devices while they communicate with the main character powered by an AI conversational agent. Pilot studies show that when children watch these new interactive videos with the main character pausing periodically to ask probing questions about the learning goals of the episode and following up with appropriate responses, they are more engaged and learn more about science, with heightened benefits for children who speak languages other than English at home. Based on these early results, in this Innovations in Development project the research team will develop, test and produce publicly available conversational episodes for two PBS KIDS television shows, one focused on science and the other on computational thinking.
The project will iteratively study and develop six conversational videos with novel forms of support for children, including extended back-and-forth conversation that builds upon a child's responses, visual scaffolding that facilitates verbal communication, and bilingual language processing so that children can answer in English or Spanish. The conversational videos will be evaluated in both lab-based and home settings. The lab-based study will involve 600 children ages 3-7 in a predominantly low-income Latino community in Southern California, in which researchers compare children’s learning and engagement when watching the conversational videos with three other formats: (1) watching the non-interactive broadcast version of the video; (2) watching the video with pseudo-interaction, in which the main character asks questions and gives a generic response after a fixed amount of time but can’t understand what the child says; or (3) watching the broadcast version of the video with a human co-viewer who pauses the video and asks questions. The home-based study will involve 80 families assigned to watch either the non-interactive or interactive videos as many times as they want over a month at home. In both the lab-based and home studies, pre- and post-tests will be used to examine the impact of video watching on science and language learning, and log data will be used to assess children’s verbalization and engagement while watching. Following the home study, the six videos will be further refined and made available for free to the public through the PBS KIDS apps and website, which are visited by more than 13 million users a month. Beyond providing engaging science learning opportunities to children throughout the country, this study will yield important insights into the design, usability, feasibility, and effectiveness of incorporating conversational agents into children’s STEM-oriented video content, with implications for extending this innovation to other educational media such as e-books, games, apps, and toys.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mark WarschauerSilvia LovatoAndres BustamanteAbby JenkinsYing Xu
This project investigates long-term human-robot interaction outside of controlled laboratory settings to better understand how the introduction of robots and the development of socially-aware behaviors work to transform the spaces of everyday life, including how spaces are planned and managed, used, and experienced. Focusing on tour-guiding robots in two museums, the research will produce nuanced insights into the challenges and opportunities that arise as social robots are integrated into new spaces to better inform future design, planning, and decision-making. It brings together researchers from human geography, robotics, and art to think beyond disciplinary boundaries about the possible futures of human-robot co-existence, sociality, and collaboration. Broader impacts of the project will include increased accessibility and engagement at two partner museums, interdisciplinary research opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students, a short video series about the current state of robotic technology to be offered as a free educational resource, and public art exhibitions reflecting on human-robot interactions. This project will be of interest to scholars of Science and Technology Studies, Human Robotics Interaction (HRI), and human geography as well as museum administrators, educators and the general public.
This interdisciplinary project brings together Science and Technology Studies, Human Robotics Interaction (HRI), and human geography to explore the production of social space through emerging forms of HRI. The project broadly asks: How does the deployment of social robots influence the production of social space—including the functions, meanings, practices, and experiences of particular spaces? The project is based on long-term ethnographic observation of the development and deployment of tour-guiding robots in an art museum and an earth science museum. A social roboticist will develop a socially-aware navigation system to add nuance to the robots’ socio-spatial behavior. A digital artist will produce digital representations of the interactions that take place in the museum, using the robot’s own sensor data and other forms of motion capture. A human geographer will conduct interviews with museum visitors and staff as well as ethnographic observation of the tour-guiding robots and of the roboticists as they develop the navigation system. They will produce an ethnographic analysis of the robots’ roles in the organization of the museums, everyday practices of museum staff and visitors, and the differential experiences of the museum space. The intellectual merits of the project consist of contributions at the intersections of STS, robotics, and human geography examining the value of ethnographic research for HRI, the development of socially-aware navigation systems, the value of a socio-spatial analytic for understanding emerging forms of robotics, and the role of robots within evolving digital geographies.
This project is jointly funded by the Science and Technology Studies program in SBE and Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) Program in EHR.
Access to STEM information is unequal, with rural and poor communities often receiving the fewest public education science and science literacy opportunities. Rural areas also face unique STEM teaching and technology integration challenges. In fact, LatinX communities in rural areas are less likely to have access to educational resources and language supports available to LatinX communities in urban centers. This project will help address these inequities by engaging rural librarians, bilingual science communicators, polar scientists, and a technical team to create a series of five bilingual virtual reality (VR) experiences to enhance STEM understanding and appreciation. Project researchers will create a new channel for disseminating polar science, working first with rural Latinx communities in Wisconsin to create a new network between rural communities and university researchers. Involving rural librarians in the co-design of instruction process will produce new ways for rural libraries to engage their local communities and their growing Latinx populations with polar science learning experiences. Each of the five VR experiences will focus on a different area of research, using the captivating Arctic and Antarctic environments as a central theme to convey science. VR is a particularly powerful and apt approach, making it possible to visit places that most cannot experience first-hand while also learning about the wide range of significant research taking place in polar regions. After design, prototyping and testing are finished, the VR experiences will be freely available for use nationally in both rural and urban settings. Public engagement with science creates a multitude of mutual benefits that result from a better-informed society. These benefits include greater trust and more reasoned scrutiny of science along with increased interest in STEM careers, many of which have higher earning potential. The project team will partner with 51 rural libraries which are valued community outlets valuable outlets to improve science literacy and public engagement with science. The effects of this project will be seen with thousands of community members who take part in the testing of prototype VR experiences during development and scaled engagement through ongoing library programs utilizing the final VR experiences for years to come.
This project will create new informal STEM learning assessment techniques through combining prior efforts in the areas of educational data mining for stealth assessment and viewpoint similarity metrics through monitoring gaze direction. Results of the project contribute to the field of educational data mining (EDM), focusing on adopting its methods for VR learning experiences. EDM is a process of using fine grained interaction data from a digital system to support educationally relevant conclusions and has been applied extensively to intelligent tutors and more recently, educational videogames. This project will continue building on existing approaches by expanding to include the unique affordances of VR learning media, specifically gaze. The project will focus on predicting user quitting as well as assessing key learning goals within each experience and triangulate these predictive models with user observations and post-experience surveys. The eventual application of this foundational research would address the problem in assessing a learner using measures external to the experience itself (i.e., surveys) and instead provide new methods that instrument learners using only data generated by their actions within the learning context. These techniques will provide a new means for evaluating informal learning in immersive technology settings without need for explicit tagging. The findings from this project will enable a greater understanding of the relationship between a user’s experience and their learning outcomes, which may prove integral in the creation of educational interventions using VR technology.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments. This project is also supported by the Office of Polar Programs.