This project 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 a feasibility study of an informal youth STEM learning program. High school students from under served communities in New York City will use existing historical, cultural and environmental data to investigate selected UNESCO World Heritage sites. Participants will apply the skills and knowledge they have developed from their analysis of the UNESCO sites and apply them to their local communities. Participants will identify, map, and analyze their own community heritage sites, using relevant citizen science, environmental and cultural data. Throughout the program, the project will involve participants in maker-related activities. Participants will design devices to collect data, explore variables through model making, and communicate findings through models and artistic forms with the to spur both individual and community action for selected heritage sites.
The project will be implemented as a 9-month weekly after school program in Long Island City, New York. Most students from the school will be from low-income families and are youth of color. The research the question for the study is "How does access to STEM increase for historically underrepresented youth populations when culturally relevant curriculum connects citizen science and making practices?" During the first phase of the program, participants will engage with core STEM concepts and making/design processes through an engaging curriculum that explores damaged UNESCO World Heritage Sites. During the second phase, youth will identify, map, and plan enhancements for their own community heritage sites or environmental landmarks. A condensed version of the program will be piloted in the summer with youth from across the city. The Educational Development Corporation will conduct a process and summative evaluation of the project. Process evaluation, which will provide ongoing feedback to the project team, will include document review, observation of program implementation, and interviews with project partners. Summative evaluation will continue these methods, supplemented by pre- and post-participation participant surveys and focus-groups. Validated survey instruments, such as the Growth Mindset Scale, and the Common Instrument Suite (PEAR Institute) will be used. Resources from research and program practices will be disseminated through publications and conference presentations to the education research community, global learning and design fields, and practitioners from after school and other informal learning environments. Participants will share project results with their communities.
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.
Water is an essential, basic need. It is the sustenance for living organisms. For many Native American communities, like the Ojibwe tribes of Minnesota, water is a sacred valuable life source that permeates all aspects of their culture. In these communities, water stories are often used to communicate the value and impact of water on their lives and the lives of others. These stories signal geohydrologic, sociocultural, and sociopolitical societal shifts over time. This pilot study will explore the feasibility of using Native water stories and informal learning experiences to bring water science and issues of water sustainability to youth and public audiences. A significant outcome of the pilot will be a youth-museum-educator co-created public planetarium show and program based on the water stories collected and archived. This approach is particularly novel. It provides an entry into STEM through a dynamic, multimedia context that typically does not engage youth as co-creators of the experiences. Water Values will give voice and a public platform to youth and their communities to elevate ecological issues that are relevant and timely within their own communities. It will also promote scientific discourse through field experiences, interactions with scientists and STEM professions, and community leadership development. Further, this pilot will also test a reciprocal relationship model among its partners. Analogous feasibility research to the Water Values pilot does not exist in the current NSF portfolio. Therefore, the project will not only contribute to the emerging literature base on the intersectionality of STEM, storytelling and Native cultures, but it will also contribute to broader discourse about water health, access, management, and sustainability.
The pilot study will bring together the long standing gidakiimanaaniwigamig program, with its master teachers who are experts in culturally responsive education for Native American youth, and the Bell Museum, which has decades of experience in developing informal STEM learning programs for a broad community. Thirty-five middle school aged youth, five educators, and over 200 community members will engage in the work. During the summer residential program, youth will be exposed to STEM content and important water science concepts through field-based research and a culturally relevant, placed-based curriculum focused on water and communicating water stories. These experiences will be extended during the academic year through weekend science activities that will focus on the compilation of water stories from Native communities, especially from the Ojibwe tribes of Minnesota, and creatively integrating the stories into a fully operational youth-museum co-created public planetarium program. This capstone planetarium show and program will be piloted at the Bell Museum. With regards to the research, four overarching question will guide the study: (1) How does participation in creating water journey stories increase Native students' motivation to learn and engage with STEM, (2) How does participation in creating and presenting water journey stories build change in sociopolitical awareness among Native students? (3) How do Native community members engage with water stories for sociopolitical change and greater participation in STEM? and (4) How does collaboration between gidakiimanaaniwigamig, the Bell, and the UMN impact STEM interest and participation in students and a Native community for transformative experience? Data will be collected from the youth participants, instructors and leaders, and community members. These data will be collected from content surveys, student logs, self-reported intrinsic motivation instrument, observations, and artifacts. The results will be disseminated through various mechanisms within and beyond the target communities. Formative and summative evaluations will inform that work and will be led by an external evaluation firm, Erikkson Associates.
This feasibility study 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.
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.
DATE:
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Bhaskar UpadhyayDiana DalbottenJonee Brigham
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This project will consider how research on imaginative thinking, and perspectives on the role of imagination in STEM practice and STEM education, can be systematically applied to support STEM learning in museum contexts. Common conceptions of science as non-imaginative are persistent, but scholarship across disciplines suggests critical roles for imagination, both in the practice of STEM and in shaping learners' perceptions of themselves as part of STEM. Further, evidence from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, child development and education suggests ways that imagination can be fostered and improved, and that these understandings could be applied to the design of museum experiences in order to improve STEM outcomes.
The activities of this project, led by the Museum of Science, Boston, both synthesize and generate knowledge at the intersections of imagination, STEM, and education practice in ways that are actionable for museum professionals. Activities include: a literature review, a document review, and a survey of ISE professionals; an in-person convening of STEM professionals (researchers, practitioners, educators and others); and the development and dissemination of products designed to inform future project development. The goals of the project are to: 1) prompt conversations about imaginative thinking across the Informal Science Education (ISE) field, and between ISE and other fields; 2) identify priority areas for research and development that can advance the field's understandings at the intersections of imagination, STEM, and learning; and 3) catalyze future research and development efforts that can advance the field. The intent is for the integration scholarship on imagination, STEM, and learning within museums' research and development efforts to lead to projects that describe, test, and refine theoretical frameworks and concrete strategies for supporting imaginative thinking among public audiences through exhibitions, programs, and other designed experiences.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
Vassar College is conducting a 2.5-day conference, as well as pre- and post-conference activities, that convenes a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional (USA and international) team to conceptualize and plan various research, education and outreach activities in informal learning, focusing on the seminal concept of tensegrity and its applications in many fields of science and mathematics. Tensegrity is the characteristic property of a stable three-dimensional structure consisting of members under tension that are contiguous and members under compression that are not.
The conference will bring together researchers and practitioners in informal learning and researchers in the various disciplines that embrace tensegrity (mathematics, engineering, biology, architecture, and art) to explore the potential that tensegrity has to engage the public in informal settings, especially through direct engagement in creating such structures. This project 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.
To date there have been no sustained informal educational projects and research around the topic of tensegrity. However, there is considerable related work on learning through "making and tinkering" upon which the participants will adapt and expand. The intended conference outcomes are to produce prototypes of activities, a research agenda, and lines of development with the potential to engage the wider public. A key priority of the gathering is the development of new partnerships between researchers and creators of tensegrity systems and the informal learning professionals. The long-term project hypothesis is that children and adults can engage with tensegrity through tinkering with materials and becoming familiar with a growing set of basic structures and their applications. The activities will include evaluation of the conference and a social network analysis of the collaborations that result.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
This conference grant will support professional development at Jackson WILD. Jackson WILD (formerly the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival) is the premier industry conference for science and natural history documentary filmmakers and distributors, bringing the world's top factual storytellers together with inspiring STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) professionals at a biennial industry conference and juried film festival. This project supports a robust thematic strand of professional development within the conference focused on strategies for making the science of science communication more accessible to an industry that has significant influence over the accuracy, quality and quantity of STEM stories reaching mainstream audiences through popular media.
The conference grant strategies are scaffolded upon the results of Jackson WILD's previous two conference awards which have employed multiple interventions aimed at 1) understanding how science communication expertise is perceived and gained by media content creators, 2) identifying the demographics and professional development needs of both emerging and seasoned STEM storytellers, and 3) finding pathways to enhance science communication expertise for STEM professionals seeing to increase their reach to public audiences. The current conference grant will build upon lessons learned and offer thematic professional development programming advancing science communication literacy and best practices among media professionals and STEM communicators. The 2019 Jackson WILD industry conference will also further expand the cross-industry STEM media fellows program, which offers professional development and cohort-building opportunities to emerging professionals in both STEM and media fields. The driving theory of change is that access to research-informed professional development and increased science communication fluency among content creators and STEM communicators results in products (i.e. documentary programs, podcasts, social media content, etc.) that are in better alignment with evidence-based best practices for communicating STEM topics to lay audiences. Therefore, the resulting media products will be more effective in engaging and educating those audiences, resulting in increased STEM literacy and informal STEM learning. To extend the reach and impact of the conference, the program content will be available on line via streaming videos and podcasts on various channels. Investing in professional development for science media professionals will strength the ecosystem of quality STEM media and help support public engagement in STEM more broadly. This project 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 understanding of deeper learning by participants.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
Libraries can provide unique opportunities for rural youth and communities. Phase III of the STAR Library Network will be a collaboration with 12 rural school districts in largely Latinx communities to address the challenges faced by rural youth, particularly English Language Learners. The project will use a coordinated and tested strategy to establish three learning pathways in public libraries: science learning spaces with exhibits, library programs, and science kits. These resources will provide learners with art-rich STEM learning opportunities.
Partners
Project partners include the Space Science Institute, the American Library Association (ALA), the Institute for Learning Innovation, and Twin Cities Public Television. The project will rely significantly on expertise from the Latinx community.
Project Plan
Building on an established librarian training model, the project will introduce library staff to the STEAM content and guide them in developing their own STEAM Learning Pathways. The project will draw on existing professional infrastructure from the ALA and the Institute for Learning Innovation’s established community of practice. SciGirls digital media, hands-on activities, family resources, and a training network will expand the depth and reach of the project.
The Research
The research team will study the efficacy of each pathway, alone and in tandem, on participant’s interest development and persistence. The research will use a mixed-methods design-based approach that involves questionnaires, interviews, and case studies. The results should yield a model for nationwide application and contribute insights for the formal education sector.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
This project responds to the Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) solicitation (NSF 17-537) and is sponsored by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program at the National Science Foundation. CAREER: Talking Science: Early STEM Identity Formation Through Everyday Science Talk (Talking Science) addresses the critical issue of the development of children's identification with science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields and the limited knowledge about the development of STEM identity through conversations, particularly among very young children from underserved and underrepresented populations. Talking Science is based on the premise that individuals who develop STEM interests and identify with STEM at a young age tend to participate in STEM fields more so than individuals who develop these later in life. This study investigates how STEM-related conversations outside of school with friends and family during formative years (i.e., 7 - 12 years old) shape youths’ STEM identity later in life and their engagement in STEM. The goals of Talking Science are (1) To develop an understanding of the features and context of conversations held between children and their caregivers/teachers that support STEM identity development in both majority and Hispanic/Latine populations; and (2) To translate the research outcomes into informal STEM learning practices that positively contribute to young people's perceptions of STEM fields in their future.
To achieve its goals, this work addresses the following research questions: (1) What is the content, context, and structure of STEM-related conversations with friends and family that youth ages 7 - 12 participate in?; (2) How do the features of conversation (i.e., content, context, structure) relate to the development of youth's STEM interests, sense of recognition as STEM people, and self-identification with STEM?; (3) How do the cultural values and science talk experiences of Hispanic/Latine youth shape conversation features related to youth's STEM interests, sense of recognition as STEM people, and self-identification with STEM?; and (4) Does professional development for practitioners that focuses on encouraging youth to engage in STEM-related conversations with friends and family positively contribute to youth's STEM interest, sense of recognition, and self-identification with STEM? To address these questions, the study adopts a qualitative research approach that applies phenomenological strategies in research design, data collection, and analysis to allow for exploration of the meaning of lived experiences in social and cultural contexts. Participants include elementary-age youths (ages 7 - 12) and caregivers from socially, culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse backgrounds. To inform the development of interview protocols in terms of the kinds of childhood talk that leave a long-term impact on students, including the kinds of talk experiences remembered by students who choose or persist towards a STEM career in college, the project also recruits college students pursuing STEM degrees as participants. Data gathering and interpretation strategies include surveys and interviews. The outcomes of this research will constitute a theoretical framework and models that guide the development of both professionals and programmatic activities at informal learning institutions, particularly around scaffolding participation in STEM through family science talk.
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.
This four-year research study will investigate families' joint media engagement (JME) and informal STEM learning while listening to the child-focused STEM podcast, Brains On! Prior research has shown that the setting where families most often listen to this podcast together is the family automobile as children are being driven to school, on road trips, or other activities. Brains On! is rooted in the mission-driven principle of public radio to educate and inspire. The target audience is children 5-12 years old and their parents or caregivers. Each episode ranges from 20-45 minutes in length and presents ideas from a variety of STEM disciplines such as physics, chemistry, biology and engineering featuring sound-rich explanations of concepts through fun skits, original songs and interviews with scientists. The episodes use a light-hearted, humorous approach to share oftentimes complex STEM information. To provide an interactive experience, hosts encourage the audience to participate with the show by sending in drawings, emailing photos of plants and animals, or posing questions to be answered in future episodes. Every episode is co-hosted by a different child who interviews top scientists about their work. The scientists are selected to be representative of the range of topics presented and are meant to serve as role models for the listeners and demonstrating a wide range of career options in the STEM field.
The research adds to the social learning theory of joint media engagement (JME) which has shown that interactions between people sharing a media experience can result in learning together. Recent work on Joint Media Engagement has focused on parent/child interactions with television/video in the home. But little is known about how families engage with children's STEM podcasts together and what learning interactions occur as a result. Even less is known about this engagement within an automobile setting. This research project will build new knowledge filling a gap in the informal STEM learning field. It will use a mixed-methods research design with three phases of research to answer these questions: 1) How does the Brains On! podcast mediate STEM-based joint media engagement and family learning in an automobile setting? 2) What does STEM based joint media engagement and family learning look and sound like in this setting? 3) How do "in-automobile" factors foster or impede STEM-based joint media engagement and family learning? Phase 1 is a listener experience video study of 30 families listening to the Brains On! episodes. Phase 2 is video-based case studies of the natural automobile-based listening behaviors of eight Phase 1 families. Phase 3 is an online survey of Brains On! listeners to understand how representative the findings from Phases 1 and 2 are to the larger Brains On! Research. Results will be shared widely with key audiences that can use the findings (media developers, ISE practitioners, ISE evaluators and researchers, and families). It will also make an important contribution to the Joint Media Engagement literature and the ISE field.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
Addressing Societal Challenges through STEM (ASCs) received NSF AISL funding to conduct a Literature Review and Synthesis to answer the question: How are informal learning institutions advancing the use of STEM knowledge and scientific reasoning in the ways that individuals, families, and communities understand what they can do, and apply their learning to solving the societal challenges of our time? Using a definition of societal challenges based on research around the public understanding of social problems, this systematic literature review will identify, analyze, and synthesize three bodies of peer and field-reviewed literature (peer-reviewed journals, graduate theses, and evaluation reports of nationally-funded project).
Over the past decade, Informal STEM learning organizations have increasingly engaged in innovative ways to present STEM knowledge within the context of societal challenges such as climate change, energy sources, cyber-security, Nanotechnologies, coastal resilience, and other topics. These efforts significantly expand the traditional work of Informal STEM Learning (ISL) organizations, often leading to new types of interventions, partnerships, impacts, and assessment tools. Analyzing and interpreting the aggregate of this work will advance theoretical and practical knowledge about the potential of ISL’s in advancing the place of STEM in addressing societal challenges.
Demonstrating and articulating the characteristics of how ISL organizations are addressing societal challenges, encourages and informs the ways institutions can address the NSF strategic goal to “Advance the capability of the Nation to meet current and future challenges.” The project outputs aim to Enhance Knowledge-building, Build Capacity of the Field, and Maximize Strategic Impact by informing the strategies used by organizations and individuals. The results also aim to Broaden Participation by articulating the ways STEM knowledge is embedded and linked to personal experiences and choices.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
Future educational robots are emerging as social companions supporting learning. By socially interacting with such a robot, learners can potentially reason and talk about the things they are learning and receive help in seeing the relevance of STEM in their daily lives. However, little is known about how to design educational robots to work with youth at home over a long period of time. This project will develop an informal science learning program, called STEMMates, in collaboration with a local community center, for youth with little interest in science. The program will partner learners with an in-home learning companion robot, designed to read books with youth and provide science activities for them at the community center, where youth will engage in exciting and personally relevant science learning. As the learner reads books, the robot will make comments about what is happening in the book to help connect the reading to the science activities at the community center. The overarching goals of STEMMates are to: (a) positively support youth's individual interest in science and future science learning, (b) connect in-home learning experiences with out-of-school community-based learning, (c) bridge the gap between formal and informal engagement and learning in science, and (d) encourage the participation of youth who are underrepresented and who have low interest in STEM learning. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, which seeks to advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning opportunities for the public in informal environments.
Researchers will work with youth and staff at the community center, alongside experts in informal science learning, to design the program and then test how learners respond to reading with the robot and participating in the science activities and whether this program has a lasting impact on their science interest. Social interactions with a robot may help distribute cognitive load during learning activities to help youth reason about STEM and also supplement learning by improving feelings of value and belongingness in order to facilitate lasting interest development. Following a mixed-methods research approach using qualitative and quantitative data-collection techniques, the research team will investigate the following research questions: (1) What social and interest-development supports and activities can be utilized as socially situated interest scaffolds in an informal and in-home, augmented reading and science activity program to promote individual interest and learning in science for low interest learners? How can a social robot best facilitate this program? (2) How do learners perceive and interact with the robot in authentic, in-home, long-term situations, and how does this interaction change over time? (3) Does working with a robot designed with socially situated interest scaffolds increase individual interest in science when compared to a pre-intervention baseline, and do these effects impact future (long-term) interest and engagement in formal science learning? To answer these research questions, researchers will implement the science learning program during an 11-week summer deployment and utilize an AB single-case research design. Interview-based qualitative data and self-report surveys to examine the learner?s perception of the robot and their evolving interest in science and quantitative data on science learning using pre-/post-measure comparisons will be collected. Log data of time-on-task, reading rate, book selection and reading goal attainment will also be collected by the robot. The outcomes of this project will lay the groundwork for future investigations of the design of social robots for a diversity of learner populations and their use in different informal learning settings.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of settings. This project will explore how understanding visitors' experiences with science museum exhibits may contribute to increasing engagement among diverse audiences. Museums have made great strides in understanding how exhibit design can support underrepresented audiences, but often tend to focus on individual demographic groups such as females, certain racial and ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities. This project will explore relationships between visitors' demographic and science identities to assess the affordances of using science identity as an intersectional proxy that could help the field move beyond its reliance on demographics. Building on prior National Science-funded work about museum engagement, the project applies appraisal theory--a psychological model about how people make conscious and subconscious assessments of situations that manifest in emotions--to the informal learning context. To date, museums have tended to focus on cognitive and behavioral aspects of engagement. Appraisal theory can add emotional processes to the conceptual understanding of engagement, and can be applied to help exhibit professionals develop a design framework that upholds complex identities. Such a framework could have implications for inclusive design of learning experiences in museums, schools, and other educational contexts.
This Pilot and Feasibility Study will address methodological and theoretical questions about the feasibility of a research approach that considers the relationships among: 1) exhibit design features; 2) multiple identity factors including science identity, demographics, and self-defined personal identity; 3) visitor appraisals; and 4) engagement with exhibits. Led by researchers at the Museum of Science, Boston and EdTogether, a non-profit research and development organization for inclusive design, the project will begin with a pre-piloting phase during which researchers will work with youth and professional advisors from local community organizations to test a suite of data collection approaches including self-report in the form of questionnaires and interviews; observations of visitor engagement; and biometric data collection including galvanic skin response and eye tracking. Building from this pre-piloting phase, the team will conduct four mini-studies that will iteratively refine measures towards enhanced validity and parsimony while gathering data to test the investigators' hypothesized model of design, identity, appraisal, and engagement. The evidence from testing this model through the four mini-studies will lay the foundation for larger-scale research that intends to explore causal relationships among intersectional identities, science identities, appraisal, and visitor engagement.
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.
Science television shows are an important source of informal learning and enrichment for preschool-aged children. However, one limitation of television programming is that it is largely a one-way, non-interactive medium. Research suggests that children learn best through active engagement with content, and that parents can make TV watching more interactive by co-viewing and talking with their children. However, many parents and other adults may lack the time or experience and comfort with science language and content to provide critcial just-in-time support for their children. This study seeks to take advantage of recent advances in artificial intelligence that now allow children to enjoyably interact with automated conversational agents. The research team will explore whether such conversational agents, embedded as an on-screen character in a science video, can meaningfully interact with children about the science content of the show by simulating the benefits of co-viewing with an adult. If successful, the project could lay the foundation for a new genre of science shows, helping transform video watching into more interactive and engaging learning experiences. This project 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.
This project will develop interactive videos incorporating a conversational agent in three 11-minute episodes of a future children's animated television program. The videos will enable children to speak with the main character of the show as the character solves everyday science mysteries, thus priming children to engage in observation, prediction, pattern finding, and problem solving through scaffolded conversation. This study will be carried out in two iterative cycles with the goal of developing and testing the embedded conversational function for each episode. In each cycle, the project team, which includes experts in children's TV production, as well as educational and HCI researchers will develop the storyboard and conversation prompts and follow-ups, create animated videos based on the revised script, and create a mobile application of the interactive video integrated with the conversational agent. Field testing with 10 children will be conducted to iteratively improve the embedded conversational function. In the pilot testing stage, a controlled study will be conducted with 30 children in each group (N=120): 1) watching the episode with the embedded conversational function; 2) watching the episode with a human partner carrying out the dialogue in the script rather than the virtual character; 3) watching the episode with pseudo-interaction, in which the animated character asks questions but does not attempt to understand or personally respond to children's answers; and 4) watching the episode with no dialogue. Data collected from the experiments will be used to examine whether and in what ways use of a conversational agent affects children's engagement, attention, communication strategies, perceptions, and science learning, and whether these effects vary by children's age, gender, socioeconomic status, language background, and oral language proficiency in English. The project will provide a comprehensive evaluation of the feasibility and potential of incorporating conversational agents into screen media to foster young children's STEM learning and engagement.
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.
DATE:
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mark WarschauerDaniel WhitesonSara DeWittAndres BustamanteAbby Jenkins