This project supports the Broader Impacts and Outreach Network for Institutional Collaboration (BIONIC), a national Research Coordination Network of Broader Impacts to support professionals who assist researchers to design, implement, and evaluate the Broader Impacts activities for NSF proposals and awards. All NSF proposals are evaluated not only on the Intellectual Merit of the proposed research, but also on the Broader Impacts of the proposed work, such as societal relevance, educational outreach, and community engagement. Many institutions have begun employing Broader Impacts support professionals, but in most cases, these individuals have not worked as a group to identify and share best practices. As a consequence, there has been much duplication of effort. Through coordination, BIONIC is expected to improve efficiency, reduce redundancy, and have significant impact in several areas: 1) Researchers will benefit from an increased understanding of the Broader Impacts merit review criterion and increased access to collaborators who can help them design, implement, and evaluate their Broader Impacts activities; 2) Institutions and research centers will increase their capacity to support Broader Impacts via mentoring for Broader Impacts professionals and consulting on how to build Broader Impacts support infrastructure, with attention to inclusion of non-research-intensive universities, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Hispanic- and Minority-Serving Institutions that may not have the resources to support an institutional Broader Impacts office; and 3) NSF, itself, will benefit from a systematic and consistent approach to Broader Impacts that will lead to better fulfillment of the Broader Impacts criterion by researchers, better evaluation of Broader Impacts activities by reviewers and program officers, and a system for evaluating the effectiveness of Broader Impacts activities in the aggregate, as mandated by Congress and the National Science Board. Through its many planned activities, BIONIC will ultimately help advance the societal aims that the Broader Impacts merit review criterion was meant to achieve.
The main goals of the project will be accomplished through the four specific objectives: 1) Identify and curate promising models, practices, and evaluation methods for the Broader Impacts community; 2) Expand engagement in, and support the development of, high-quality Broader Impacts activities by educating current and future faculty and researchers on effective practices; 3) Develop the human resources necessary for sustained growth and increased diversity of the Broader Impacts community; and 4) Promote cross-institutional collaboration and dissemination for Broader Impacts programs, practices, models, materials, and resources. BIONIC will facilitate collaborative Broader Impacts work across institutions, help leverage previously developed resources, support professional development, and train new colleagues to enter into the Broader Impacts field. This project will improve the quality and sustainability of Broader Impacts investments, as researchers continue to create unique and effective activities that are curated and broadly disseminated. BIONIC will create a network designed to assist NSF-funded researchers at their institutions in achieving the goals of the Broader Impacts Review Criterion. In so doing, BIONIC will promote Broader Impacts activities locally, nationally, and internationally and help to advance the Broader Impacts field.
This award is co-funded by the Divisions of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences and Emerging Frontiers in the Directorate for Biological Sciences and by the Division of Chemistry in the Directorate for Mathematics and Physical Sciences.
Summary brief describing summative evaluation associated with the MarcellusByDesign component of Marcellus Matters: EASE. Marcellus Matters: Engaging Adults in Science and Energy (EASE) was a program of Penn State University’s Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research (MCOR), in collaboration with other experts across the university. The first year of program activities took place in 2012, and the project continued through September 2016. EASE was a multidisciplinary initiative that provided adults in rural Pennsylvania with opportunities to increase their knowledge of science and energy
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will continue its collaboration in providing to early- and mid-career scientists and engineers experiential professional development and public service fellowships via the AAAS Science and Technology Fellowship Program. Consistent with the immersion model adopted by AAAS, Fellows at NSF will be selected annually through a competitive process and placed in organizations throughout the Foundation. Fellows will work with NSF staff on a broad range of activities in order to gain insight into how national science and technology policy goals are translated into and reflected by NSF's mission and strategic goals and how and by whom national science and technology policy is driven, shaped and prioritized. NSF fellowship assignments are designed to: educate and expose Fellows to NSF programmatic planning, development and oversight activities in all fields of fundamental research via hands-on engagement; utilize the Fellows' expertise on projects that apprise NSF officials in areas of mutual interest to the Fellow and the host organization; and provide developmental opportunities to inform future career decisions. The program includes an orientation on executive branch and congressional operations, as well as a year-long suite of knowledge- and skill-building seminars involving science, technology and public policy within the federal as well as NSF contexts.
In the long-term, the AAAS Fellowship program seeks to build leadership capacity for a strong national science and engineering enterprise. Upon completion of the Fellowship, Fellows will have gained: a broader understanding and increased insights about the development and execution of federal-level science, technology, engineering and mathematics policies and initiatives as well as how policy and science intersect; enhanced skills in communicating science to support policy development; and a greater capacity to serve more effectively in future leadership roles in diverse environments, including public and policy arenas, academia and the private sector. The ultimate outcome of the Fellowship program experience -- policy savvy science and engineer leaders who understand government and policymaking and are well-trained to develop and execute solutions to address the nation's challenges.
Increasingly, the prosperity, innovation and security of individuals and communities depend on a big data literate society. Yet conspicuously absent from the big data revolution is the field of teaching and learning. The revolution in big data must match a complementary revolution in a new kind of literacy, through a significant infusion of STEM education with the kinds of skills that the revolution in 21st century data-driven science demands. This project represents a concerted effort to determine what it means to be a big data literate citizen, information worker, researcher, or policymaker; to identify the quality of learning resources and programs to improve big data literacy; and to chart a path forward that will bridge big data practice with big data learning, education and career readiness.
Through a process of inquiry research and capacity-building, New York Hall of Science will bring together experts from member institutions of the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub to galvanize big data communities of practice around education, identify and articulate the nature and quality of extant big data education resources and draft a set of big data literacy principles. The results of this planning process will be a planning document for a Big Data Literacy Spoke that will form an initiative to develop frameworks, strategies and scope and sequence to advance lifelong big data literacy for grades P-20 and across learning settings; and devise, implement, and evaluate programs, curricula and interventions to improve big data literacy for all. The planning document will articulate the findings of the inquiry research and evaluation to provide a practical tool to inform and cultivate other initiatives in data literacy both within the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub and beyond.
By engaging diverse publics in immersive and deliberative learning forums, this three-year project will use NOAA data and expertise to strengthen community resilience and decision-making around a variety of climate and weather-related hazards across the United States. Led by Arizona State University’s Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes and the Museum of Science Boston, the project will develop citizen forums hosted by regional science centers to create a new, replicable model for learning and engagement. These forums, to be hosted initially in Boston and Phoenix and then expanded to an additional six sites around the U.S., will facilitate public deliberation on real-world issues of concern to local communities, including rising sea levels, extreme precipitation, heat waves, and drought. The forums will identify and clarify citizen values and perspectives while creating stakeholder networks in support of local resilience measures. The forum materials developed in collaboration with NOAA will foster better understanding of environmental changes and best practices for improving community resiliency, and will create a suite of materials and case studies adaptable for use by science centers, teachers, and students. With regional science centers bringing together the public, scientific experts, and local officials, the project will create resilience-centered partnerships and a framework for learning and engagement that can be replicated nationwide.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Dan Sarewitz
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Climate Change Education Partnership Alliance (CCEPA) is a consortium made up of the six Phase II Climate Change Education Partnership (CCEP-II) program awardees funded in FY 2012. Collectively, the CCEPA is establishing a coordinated network devoted to increasing the adoption of effective, high quality educational programs and resources related to the science of climate change and its potential impacts. The establishment of a CCEPA Coordination Office addresses the need for a coordinating body that leverages and builds upon the CCEPA projects' individual initiatives. The CCEPA Coordination Office facilitates interactions to leverage a successful network of CCEP-II projects and individuals engaged in increasing climate science literacy. The efforts of the Coordination Office advance knowledge and understanding of how to effectively network related, but different, projects into a cohesive enterprise. The goal is to coordinate a functional network, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
The CCEPA Coordination Office at the University of Rhode Island is helping to move the CCEPA network forward on a number of key initiatives that strengthen it, reduce duplication, and enhance its overall impact. An important role of the Coordination Office is the facilitation of the transfer of best practices between projects. An effective network forges collaborations and establishes communities of practice through network working groups, building intellectual capital network-wide. The CCEPA Coordination Office has a key role in assisting the CCEPA project PIs and staff to disseminate the results of their work. Partnerships with other relevant societies and organizations assist the Coordination Office in identifying opportunities and synergies for sharing, disseminating, and leveraging network products as well as best practices that emerge as Earth system science education models and tools are evaluated. This endeavor broadens the collective impact of the individual projects across the country.
Produced by the Climate Change Education Partnership (CCEP) Alliance, the "Climate Change Education: Effective Practices for Working with Educators, Scientists, Decision Makers and the Public" guide provides recommendations for effective education and communication practices when working with different types of audiences. While effective education has been traditionally defined as the acquisition of knowledge, Alliance programs maintain a broader definition of “effective” to include the acquisition and use of climate change knowledge to inform decision-making.
The CCEP Alliance is supported
The scientific community has been under increasing pressure from policymakers and the public to explain how research contributes to the public good. The community has emphasized two distinct approaches to explaining its operations and value. The first is the use of narratives that can make the work of science more accessible and engaging to nonscientists. The other is the use of new data mining and analysis methods to document quantitatively the complex paths by which research progresses and eventually contributes to a variety of societal goals. While both of these approaches have proved useful, the goal of this workshop is to explore ways that they might be combined into a hybrid approach that will be even more effective.
This workshop will assemble experts in the narrative and data-driven science communication approaches with leading science researchers to discuss how these various perspectives can be merged to define a template for a type of communication that encompasses the appeal of narrative, the rigor of new analytic data, and the understanding of how science works in practice.
Much of science communication is peer-to-peer communication in collaborative networks for innovation from the fuzzy front-end of innovation until the marketing back-end. Scientists and engineers at meetings tables talking about new developments. Or scientists and engineers in collaboration with industry and policy makers, discussing various scenarios for implementation of e.g. health care services. However, this focus on science communication 'within the action' of uncertain development of science and technology and its attached academic domains such as innovation studies, high-tech marketing
Written in response to a previous article by Weingart and Guenther [2016] in JCOM, this letter aims to open up some critical issues concerning the ‘new ecology of communication’. It is argued that this evolving ecology needs to be openly explored without looking back to a previous idyll of ‘un-tainted’ science.
In response to Weingart and Guenther [2016], this essay explores the issue of trust in science communication by situating it in a wider communications culture and a longer historical period. It argues that the popular scientific culture is a necessary context not only for professional science, but also for the innovation economy. Given that the neutrality of science is a myth, and that science communication is much like any other form of communication, we should not be surprised if, in an innovation economy, science communication has come to resemble public relations, both for science and for
This study of the science communication views and practices of African researchers ― academics at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Zimbabwe ― reveals a bleak picture of the low status of public science engagement in the developing world. Researchers prioritise peer communication and pay little attention to the public, policy makers and popular media. Most scientists believe the public is largely not scientifically literate or interested in research. An unstable funding environment, a lack of communication incentives and censoring of politically sensitive findings
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Heather NdlovuMarina JoubertNelius Boshoff