The Exploring Engagement and Science Identity Through Participation is a research project that examines the outcomes of various citizen science models for Public Participation in Scientific Research (PPSR). The investigation specifically targets citizen science projects that focus on relationships between science learning and science identity. A mixed-method, meta-analysis approach will be employed. The two primary goals of the study are to better understand science learning and science identify within PPSR contexts and to develop a valid Participant Engagement Metric (PEM) for use within PPSR contexts. Data will be collected and analyzed from several PPSR projects and over 4,000 PPSR participants. The project will address several research questions: (1) What are the dimensions of PPSR engagement and how can we measure them across different project models? The research for this question will include approximately 50 interviews of participants in six primary projects representing a range of PPSR approaches to develop and validate a Participant Engagement Metric (PEM) that will be constructed from the frequency, duration and intensity of involvement in key activities. The project will use a constant comparative method of data analysis (processing of data as they are gathered in order to compare them with emerging categories. The development of the PEM will be one concrete outcome of the proposed research. (2) Within and among projects, what is the relationship between participant engagement and individual learning outcomes? The project will use validated measures of learning outcomes derived from Learning Science in Informal Environments (NRC, 2009) and developed for the DEVISE project described below. The six measures include: Behavior & Stewardship, Skills of Science Inquiry, Knowledge of the Nature of Science, Interest in Science & the Environment, Efficacy, and Motivation. The proposed research will look at how engagement affects learning outcomes, as assessed by these six measures (science interest, efficacy, etc.). The project will conduct participant surveys in the six participating citizen science projects in addition to several other PPSR projects to test the relationship of the PEM and other measures of activity involvement to the learning outcomes measured by the survey instruments developed and validated through a previous project. The data analysis will begin with univariate summary statistics that will provide an overview of the basic dataset. Inferential statistics including multiple regression analysis will be used to test the relationships among the independent variables (type of PPSR project, demographics), PEM as a mediator variable, and the dependent variables. (3) How does degree and quality of participation in scientific research develop and/or reinforce individual science identity? The project will conduct a 3-year longitudinal study using surveys, a series of in-depth interviews, and on-site observations of 36 participants from the six primary projects to understand the development of individual science identity within PPSR environments over time. Quantitative and qualitative data and findings will be "triangulated" to determine if convergent, inconsistent or complementary results can be identified. The project proposes a strong dissemination plan, using these approaches, to present research in journals, disseminate research briefs, host online forums, and launching various listserves and online forums at the citizenscience.org website.
Indianapolis / City as Living Laboratory (I/CaLL) is a city-wide civic collaboration engaging in cross-sector research that builds on prior research in informal science learning in public settings. It extends research in place-based and service learning traditions, and uses the city itself as an informal science learning (ISL) environment for Science and Engineering for Environmental Sustainability learning outcomes. This project is creating place-based science learning experiences as part of public spaces in Indianapolis and establishes the next generation of urban science museums that increase opportunities for learning. The project will develop a self-sustaining program for art/science collaborations as they inaugurate city-sanctioned changeable installations at I/CaLL sites. Data from the project will be used to inform ISL professionals at museums throughout the community and around the country. Thousands of volunteers and their families will help create I/CaLL spaces, engage with communities, and serve as research participants connecting with science learning through site development. The unprecedented scale of this project provides a full measure of informal science service learning at a city scale, offering data that can change how science learning is measured, how people from all walks of life develop science literacy as part of their social public experience, and embodying the concept of the city as a living science learning lab. Broader impacts include the development of the city as an informal science learning environment that will become a new standard for thinking about what cities as cultural units can become as we build a resilient Science and Engineering culture for Environmental Sustainability.
This full-scale development project will address the need for creative models to support STEM learning in underserved rural communities that lack traditional infrastructure such as science centers. The project will create and study an innovative model of capacity-building: viz., small networks of community-embedded “STEM Guides” will be trained to identify a range of existing STEM resources available in their local regions, and to connect STEM-interested youth with them in creative and personal ways. Anticipated learning outcomes for youth and families include greater awareness of and interest in STEM experiences and pathways. At the regional level, the project will build capacity through increasing the STEM Guides’ knowledge of local STEM opportunities, and by enhancing connections among STEM-related resources, programs, and industries. The project will implement and study STEM Guide networks in a staggered series of five low-income, rural regions, providing startup resources and professional development. The project will increase the frequency and depth of out-of-school STEM experiences for approximately 3,000 youth aged 10-18 at a relatively low cost, creating a national model for STEM capacity-building in rural settings. It is led by the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance, with 4-H, Cornerstones of Science (library-based STEM) and Maine’s university system as collaborators. EDC is the primary external evaluator.
The National Research Council's (NRC) Board on Science Education will identify an expert study committee to develop a report identifying the criteria for successful out-of-school STEM learning based on evidence from successful practice. The committee will be informed by commissioned papers and by a 2-day public workshop that explores the current evidence. The report will be written for policy-makers, funders, non-profit and private industry representatives, and other representatives from civic society. The primary goal of the report will be to help these audiences better understand and more strategically support investments in out-of-school STEM education, and to encourage partnerships that promote the linking of out-of-school STEM learning to school-based learning. This study complements the NRC work done to produce the Successful K-12 STEM Education report and builds from prior NRC studies, especially Learning Science in Informal Environments, Surrounded by Science and Education for Work and Life: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century.
The Badges for College Credit project designs and researches: (1) a digital badge system that leads to college credit as the context for investigating how to integrate badges with learning programs; (2) how to assess learning associated with badges; and (3) how badges facilitate learning pathways and contribute to science identity formation. The project is one of the first efforts to develop a system to associate informal science learning with college credit. The project will partner with three regional informal science institutions, the Pacific Science Center, the Future of Flight, and the Seattle of Aquarium, that will facilitate activities for participants that are linked to informal science learning and earning badges. The project uses the iRemix platform, a social learning platform, as a delivery system to direct participants to materials, resources, and activities that support the learning goals of the project. Badges earned within the system can be exported to the Mozilla Open Badges platform. Participants can earn three types of badges, automatic (based on participation), community (based on contributions to building the online community), and skill (based on mastery of science and communication) badges. Using a learning ecologies framework, the project will investigate multiple influences on how and why youth participate in science learning and making decisions. Project research uses a qualitative and quantitative approach, including observations, interviews, case studies, surveys, and learning analytics data, and data analytics. Project evaluation will focus on the nature and function of the collaboration, and on the scale-up aspects of the innovation and expansion, by: (1) analyzing and documenting effective procedures,and optimal contexts for the dissemination of the model and (2) by analyzing the collaboration between informal science organizations and higher education.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Carrie TzouKaren LennonAmanda GoertzGray Kochlar-Lindgren
The project is designed to engage Hispanic students in grades K-5 in STEM in afterschool programs within community-based organizations (CBOs). The project builds on the foundation of an NSF-supported afterschool science program--APEX (Afterschool Program Exploring Science). In collaboration with National Council of La Raza (NCLR), and ASPIRA, the project adapts APEX into a bilingual English/Spanish format and, using a train the trainer model, disseminates it nationally, using a train the trainer model. Each of the ten local project sites will build on a partnership between a science museum and a CBO affiliate of NCLR or ASPIRA. The project is designed to: (1) Build the organizational capacity of partner science museums to work with CBOs and the Hispanic community. (2) Strengthen links between science museums and Hispanic serving CBOs in their communities. (3) Engage the expertise, involvement, and collaboration of national Hispanic-serving organizations, NCLR and ASPIRA, in STEM education. (4) Increase the engagement of Hispanic children and families in STEM. The project evaluation will investigate how effectively the project builds the organizational capacity of partner museums and CBOs in engaging Hispanic children and families in STEM; the types and strength of science museum/CBO partnerships; the effectiveness of the project in increasing Hispanic student and family engagement in STEM, and the types of contributions the project makes to the field of informal STEM learning. The evaluation will use qualitative and quantitative methods, including surveys, interviews, case studies, social network and collaboration analysis, observations, activity tracking, embedded assessment, photo elicitation, and focus groups.
The Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship Program provides a unique professional development opportunity for K-12 educators to inform national STEM policy and improve communication between the STEM education community and national leaders. Albert Einstein Fellows spend eleven months working at the National Science Foundation, bringing extensive knowledge and classroom experience to STEM education programs. In addition, fellows are provided with an extensive program of professional development training during their cohort year. The Albert Einstein Fellows program is run by the non-profit Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education on behalf of the Department of Energy Office of Science. Other federal participants in the fellowship program include NASA, NOAA, and the U.S. Congress. In 2013-14, NSF will host seventeen Albert Einstein Fellows. The Albert Einstein Fellows program is designed to provide substantial STEM work experience beyond the confines of the classroom, as well as extensive training in the individual fields of science, technology, and engineering, STEM education policy, and STEM program outcomes. During the eleven-month fellowship, the Triangle Coalition provides programming that supports professional development in three broad goal areas: 1) development of leadership skills; 2) development as a STEM educator; and, 3) addressing grand challenges in STEM education. The Triangle Coalition engages a third-party evaluator to measure the efficacy of the professional development programming and the overall impact of the program. The evaluators will collect and analyze data that addresses the cumulative impact of the Albert Einstein Fellows program upon the participants and STEM programs with which they engage. The analysis will provide insight into fellows' diversity of experiences post-fellowship that can inform program analyses and research into STEM issues such as resource allocation, teacher preparedness, student interest, and minority participation in STEM. The Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellows Program advances knowledge of STEM disciplines and the critical role educators play in advancing STEM learning and career development. The program increases STEM knowledge and pedagogical skills, provides an opportunity for building leadership capabilities as STEM experts, and assists educators with understanding the policy process. The fellowship equips educators to be STEM capacity-builders and problem-solvers for social, economic, and political challenges created or exacerbated by lack of STEM comprehension. The program also encourages broader diversity in STEM by recruiting in demographic sectors (race, ethnicity, location, etc.) that are historically underrepresented.
This full scale/collaborative research project targets underserved youth who will collaborate with STEM professionals to co-create community-relevant technology and media content creating a potentially scalable model. App Lab DIY is a collaboration between Youth Radio, the MIT Media Lab's Center for Mobile Learning, and the Mozilla Foundation. There are multiple and well integrated project strategies. Youth working with professionals will design, create, and disseminate original apps that engage users around community issues (e.g. urban wildlife mapping; Community DNA). They will work directly with the MIT Media Lab/Mobile Learning Center to improve App Inventor, an open-source tool. Youth participants will create media content for national on-air and online outlets including NPR. They will design digital badges to validate and document what they've learned creating media and apps. Curricular resources and tools for educators will be created and disseminated to advance STEM learning among underserved youth. Deliverables include: 1) creation of three apps (media-rich, STEM-relevant, community valued) that engage communities; 2) improvements in App Inventor, MIT's open-source tool that democratizes app develop for and by all; 3) radio stories that are integrated with the apps; 4) a multimedia toolkit for informal and formal educators to adapt in their programs; 5) a pilot badging system to mark mastery of skills associated with youth-driven media production and technological innovation; and 6) a research study focusing on the use of app development to drive STEM learning and engagement among underserved youth. Original research will be conducted by an embedded Scholar-in-Residence to inform and advance the field about driving STEM engagement via media/tech innovation. The Scholar-in-Residence will use Participant-Action-Research to inform and improve practice and study the big general questions about how the program works and why. The evaluation will leverage the instruments and methods established in Youth Radio's past NSF grants to study the impact on the youth's skills, knowledge and attitudes. They will also study impacts on two additional audiences: educators using the multimedia toolkit and users of the mobile apps. Approximate 1000 Youth Radio students will participate in the project over the three years through contributions to app development, radio production, and digital badges creation. The multimedia toolkit will be nationally disseminated to STEM educators with a large potential reach.
This research project led by the Exploratorium will use a combination of tracking and timing, cluster analysis, and focus groups to seek to answer the research question: To what extent and in what ways do female-responsive designs more effectively engage girls at STEM exhibits? This project addresses the need for more research in this area by pioneering the study of potential female-responsive design (FRD) principles for exhibits across a wide variety of STEM topics and exhibit types. This project includes four phases that will build from the work of the PI that developed an initial Female-Responsive Design (FRD) Framework regarding female engagement and learning in STEM -- based on extensive literature review and practitioner interviews. This project will expand on and validate this FRD Framework, with the ultimate goal of having a set of criteria for female-responsive designs (FRD) that effectively engage girls at STEM exhibits. The four phases of the research project are: Phase 1: Track 1000 boys and girls across three institutions using over 300 physics, engineering, and math exhibits to identify which exhibits engage boys and girls equally, and which are less engaging for girls. Phase 2: A panel of experts and girl advisors identify additional female-responsive design principles, expanding on those identified to date in literature and practice. Phase 3: Combining results from the first two phases, the third phase employs statistical analyses to reveal the most effective combinations of design principles for engaging girls across a variety of exhibits. Phase 4: This qualitative phase conducts focus groups with girls to explore how the final FRD Framework works to better engage them, and how their learning differs at exhibits that exemplify the principles in the Framework.
SciGirls and Citizen Science: Real Data, Real Kids, Real Discoveries SciGirls is showcasing Citizen Science! From their own backyards to a NASA research center, the bright, relatable, real girls featured on the groundbreaking PBS series are seriously into science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM. And Season Three of SciGirls finds these STEM adventurers tracking toads, counting clouds and much more, all in the name of citizen science. The brand-new season of the Emmy-winning show, featuring six stand-out episodes, debuted April 2015 on PBS KIDS (check local listings) and online at http://pbskids.org/scigirls. Citizen science is the newest STEM frontier that engages the general public –and kids – in real science. Scientists worldwide invite ordinary people—like the SciGirls—to observe and record data about everything from birds to beaches, monarch butterflies to maple trees. The data is then shared with scientists, who use it to generate new scientific knowledge. In six exciting new episodes, middle school girls and their female STEM professional mentors hit the great outdoors, cataloging frog calls, tracking the changing seasons, verifying satellite imagery of clouds, monitoring fragile butterfly populations, improving urban bird habitats, and advocating for healthy oceans. In addition, animated characters Izzie and Jake are back and finding themselves in sticky situations that can only be solved by STEM—and the SciGirls. When the SciGirls share their data with professional scientists, they save the day for Izzie and Jake and help save the environment! The new mobile-friendly website at http://pbskids.org/scigirls lets kids play new games, watch episodes and videos, and connect with fellow STEM explorers anywhere, anytime. “Collaboration is the key to successful citizen science,” said SciGirls executive producer Richard Hudson. “Since SciGirls’ beginning, working together—making discoveries, mistakes and friends—is one of the important research-based methods we use to engage girls around STEM. This new season underscores the importance of collaboration within the scientific research community and workforce. SciGirls is fortunate to have powerful partners advising us about citizen science, including the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, NASA and SciStarter.” The SciGirls creative team is headed by Twin Cities Public Television’s Director of Science Content Richard Hudson, Executive Producer of the long-running PBS children’s science series Newton's Apple and creator of DragonflyTV and the SciGirls initiative. Animation is created by Soup2Nuts, producers of PBS’ WordGirl. Strategic partners for the new series are the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Rick Bonney co-PI, and the National Girls Collaborative Project, co-PI Karen Peterson. SciGirls is made possible by a major grant from the National Science Foundation. Additional funding is provided by INFOR, Northrop Grumman Foundation, and PPG Industries Foundation.
The conference, Indigenous Worldviews in Informal Science Education, is designed to advance research on the integration of Native and Western science in relation to informal science learning. The goals of the conference are to integrate and synthesize research and theory, formulate a research agenda, and share the results with the STEM education community. The conference is organized around six strands: Collaboration, Policy, Holistic Education, Next Generation Youth, and Evaluation. A six-week preconference online discussion of conference issues leads into the two-day conference, held at Imiloa Astronomy Center in Hilo, Hawaii. The meeting brings together sixty participants including educators, research scientists, learning researchers, policymakers, and Native youth. The conference includes keynotes, workshops and synthesis discussion groups, which will be synthesized and presented at a policy outcome meeting held in Washington, DC that follows the conference. Conference results will be further disseminated at relevant conferences, in publications, and through online discussions. A full evaluation process will inform the detailed planning of the conference and will evaluate the effectiveness of the conference, based on responses from conference participants.
The Exploratorium, in partnership with Qualcomm, proposes to develop and test a highly accurate indoor positioning system (IPS) at full museum scale. Such a system would increase the feasibility and power of whole-visit research studies and open up opportunities for using IPS to support new and innovative informal STEM learning experiences. Within 3-5 years, museums will likely possess infrastructures capable of easily and effectively integrating IPS. The Exploratorium's project will generate early knowledge about using this technology for developing innovative programmatic strategies and for improving research and evaluation of STEM learning in museums. Program activities include developing processes for creating and updating indoor maps; testing IPS as a tool for program development and delivery; prototyping a research data management system; and the dissemination project findings.