The Lost Ladybug Project (LLP) is a Cornell University citizen science project that connects science to education by using ladybugs to teach non-scientists concepts of biodiversity, invasive species, and conservation. The project has successfully engaged thousands of children (ages 5-11) in collecting field data on ladybugs and building a ladybug biology database that is useful to scientists. It has also reached 80,000 people over the Internet. The goal of the project is to promote lifelong appreciation of biodiversity and science, and provide scientists with data on the changing distribution and abundance of ladybug species across the country. The current project is broadening the Lost Ladybug Project's reach geographically, culturally, demographically, and contextually by creating new tools and materials for the website, and forging new connections with (1) youth groups, (2) science centers, community centers, botanical gardens, nature centers, and organic farms, (3) adults, (4) Native Americans, and (5) Spanish-speakers. The expanded project could potentially involve tens of thousands of new individuals in ladybug monitoring research. An evaluation study is measuring the impacts of the expansion on new participants' knowledge, skills, attitudes, interests, and behavior. The Lost Ladybug Project has been important in advancing scientific discovery and building scientific knowledge. Data collected by the project's volunteers have improved scientists' understanding of (1) ladybug species presence/absence, (2) shifts in ladybug species composition, (3) shifts in ladybug species ranges, and (4) change in ladybug body size and spot number. Evaluation data show that the project has a broad audience reach and is achieving its learning goals for adults and children. Broadening the project's reach will further increase the project's importance to ecology, conservation biology and biodiversity research, as well as education research.
The purpose of this three-year collaborative design research project is to examine the role of culture in the development of knowledge and reasoning about the natural world and the subsequent sense-making of and participation in natural resource management. The PIs propose to examine the ways in which culture impacts observational habits, explanation constructing, uses and forms of evidence, and orientations towards socio-scientific challenges such as natural resource management. Collaborating on this project are researchers from the American Indian Center of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. The audience for this study includes the academic informal science education community and indigenous science educators. This project also offers extensive cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary research opportunities for pre- and post-doctoral research trainees. The project will employ a mixed methods approach and proposes evaluation through an advisory board and community input. A community assessment team is proposed to review activities, obtain feedback from the larger community, and identify challenges to the effective implementation of the program. The project is comprised of two main panels of studies: the first consisting of a series of investigations of learning in everyday activities and the second consisting of two community design experiments that engage two Native American communities and two non-Native communities, one rural and one urban for both communities, in a culturally based citizen science (CBCS) project focused on ecosystem disruption (e.g. invasive species; climate change) and natural resource management. The CBCS project will engage participants in question formation, data collection, data analysis, forming policy recommendations, and citizen action around the findings. This project will develop a citizen science model that effectively engages diverse communities towards productive science learning, helpful scientific data collection, and citizen engagement in community planning and local policy decisions. The researchers believe that fundamental advances in STEM teaching and learning are needed across the broad landscape of learning environments and that the success of such advances may pivot on innovations and discoveries made in informal environments. Insights obtained from prior research on learning in indigenous cultures, especially in biological and environmental sciences, combined with the anticipated results from this study could lead to a deeper understanding of cross-cultural similarities and differences in science learning.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karen WashinawatokMegan BangDouglas MedinUniversity of Washington
This project will develop a prototype intelligent cyberlearning platform for middle school audiences at a museum location to test and evaluate the use of virtual learning technologies. The content for this test is focused on sustainability issues that enable students to develop an age-appropriate understanding of the relationships between specific conservation decisions, energy use, human health, and population growth within Earth's ecosystem. The prototype cyberlearning system will demonstrate how users can learn about science topics by interacting with a display of environmental factors that enable them to explore the impact of social, economic, and technological forces that may change one existing state and condition to another. The system will enable users to understand the interrelationships of those elements by enabling them to change conditions and then observing the effect of the changes they make on the conditions presented in the initial model. The prototype intelligent cyberlearning system will provide a unique integration of a sophisticated agent-based modeling simulation of environmental, social, and economic phenomena with three advanced learning technologies: game-based learning systems, intelligent tutoring systems, and narrative-centered learning systems. The game-based and narrative aspects of the project are embodied in the interactive time-travel focus of the 3D display on a multi-touch surface computing table in which users will play the role of environmental scientists who have been charged with helping earth become a thriving green planet. They will go back in time and be given the opportunity to make different decisions on any range of options. After they make their decisions, they will travel forward in time to see the results of their decisions. All of the interactions will be used to dynamically generate their time-travel adventures. The intelligent tutoring system will track user\'s problem-solving activities in the simulated world. As users make decisions, the intelligent tutoring system will draw inferences about their level of understanding of key environmental concepts. Given the current problem-solving goal (e.g., reduce green house gases) and the current state of the environment (e.g., climatological state, earth's population, factory emissions), the intelligent tutoring system will draw on its knowledge of common environmental misconceptions to assist students as they progress through the sustainability narratives. The intelligent tutoring system will receive the updated state from the agent-based simulation, which will then provide explanatory commentary and advice through the virtual human to the users about the causal connections underlying the results of the decisions they have made. Similarly, during the course of decision-making, users will be able to request advice, and the same computational framework will drive the virtual human\'s advice generation functionalities. The project will design, development, deploy, and evaluate a prototype intelligent cyberlearning platform for sustainability that supports independent, but guided, exploration of science topics. Because all users interactions will be accompanied by a virtual environmental scientist who will narrate their journeys and offer problem-solving advice, users will be afforded rich learning opportunities that support independent inquiry but also provided guided exploration of complex science topics. With a focus on group learning experiences in the out-of-school setting, the virtual environmental scientist will answer questions that will engage groups of users in a collaborative effort to understand the rich interrelationships of sustainability. The project will demonstrate the transformative potential of intelligent cyberlearning systems that integrate agent-based modeling with game-based learning, intelligent tutoring systems, and narrative-centered learning in an out-of-school setting to enable users to experience science in fundamentally new ways.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
James LesterBradford MottJames MinoguePatrick Fitzgerald
Engaging Latinos in Informal Science Education is designed to address the low participation rate of Latino youth and adults in activities conducted by parks, refuges, nature centers, and other informal science education venues. The project objectives are to expand upon existing studies that attempt to identify barriers to Latino participation, work with communities to identify the tools needed to overcome barriers, and utilize the tools in established programs. Surveys and interviews conducted with Latino communities are designed to identify key measures that will improve participation in informal learning programs which are then implemented in the International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD) program. Park Flight international interns from Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and the US will work in Latino communities near seven sites that host annual IMBD. Deliverables include a comprehensive technical report resulting from the analysis of surveys and a toolkit to promote the involvement of Latino communities in informal science education. The multi-stage evaluation includes the annual evaluation of participation levels at seven treatment and five control sites, pilot testing of the key strategies for family involvement identified in the survey results, and formative evaluation of the project toolkit. Project partners are the National Park (NPS) Service, NPS Park Flight Migratory Bird Program, Colorado State University, Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory, PRBO Conservation Services, and six national parks. Strategic impact will be realized through the development and national dissemination of the project toolkit to almost 1000 partner offices across the US.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is creating a new type of interactive, question-driven, online bird-identification tool called "Merlin," along with associated games, social networking tools, and other media. Unlike existing bird-identification guides, which are based on traditional taxonomic keys written by scientists, Merlin uses machine learning algorithms and crowd-sourced data (information provided by thousands of people) to identify birds and improve Merlin's performance with each interaction. The tool will help millions of people identify birds and participate in a collective effort to help others. The Crowd ID project will make it easier for people to discover the names of birds, learn observation and identification skills, find more information, and appreciate Earth's biodiversity. The summative evaluation plan is measuring increases in participants' knowledge, engagement, and skills, as well as changes in behavior. Impacts on participants will be compared to a control group of users not using Merlin. Merlin tools will be integrated into the Cornell Lab's citizen science and education projects, which reach more than 200,000 participants, schoolchildren, and educators across the nation. Merlin will be broadly adapted for use on other websites, social networking platforms, exhibits, mobile devices, curricula, and electronic field guides. Once developed, Merlin can be modified to identify plants, rocks, and other animals. Merlin will promote growth of citizen science projects which depend on the ability of participants to identify a wide range of organisms.
The University of Minnesota and the University of Florida are collaborating on the creation of a Master Naturalist Program for adults that will serve as a model for nationnwide dissemination. This program, which builds on the existing Florida Master Naturalist Program, will provide intensive 40-hour training sessions in ecology, natural/cultural history and the environment for volunteers in Minnesota. Participants will then complete 40 hours of supervised volunteer service at local natural history centers while volunteers in both Florida and Minnesota will have the option of participating in advanced training workshops. Staff members at informal science education institutions and natural history centers take part in train-the-trainer workshops to assist with dissemination. Deliverables include three training modules (Big Woods, Big Rivers; Prairies and Potholes; North Woods, Great Lakes), advanced training workshops, local Master Naturalist Chapters, annual conferences, training materials and workshops for Master Naturalist Instructors, and a project website. It is anticipated that this project will result in the implementation of 64 Master Naturalist workshops, directly reaching 1,280 volunteers, while 750 participants are anticipated for advanced training workshops. It is estimated that 130 staff will participate as Master Naturalist Instructors. Indirect impacts will be realized as volunteers contribute more than 51,000 hours in service to nature centers and informal science institutions interacting with public audiences while conducting natural history activities. Strategic impact will be realized in the outcomes of the comprehensive evaluation plan that will assess immediate and longitudinal impacts on public and professional audiences.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Robert BlairMartin MainAmy RagerKaren Oberhauser
The Maryland Science Center, in partnership with SK Films, Inc. received NSF funding to produce a large format, 2D/3D film and multi-component educational materials and activities on the annual migration of monarch butterflies, their life cycle, the web of life at select sites where they land, and the citizen science efforts that led to the monarch migration discovery. Project goals are to 1) raise audience understanding of the nature of scientific investigation and the open-ended nature of the scientific process, 2) enhance and extend citizen science programs to new audiences, and 3) create better awareness of monarch biology, insect ecology and the importance of habitat. Innovation/Strategic Impact: The film has been released in both 3D and 2D 15/70 format. RMC Research Corporation has conducted evaluation of the project, both formatively and summatively, including a study of the comparable strengths of the 2D and 3D versions of the film. RMC has conducting formative evaluation and is currently conducting summative evaluation to assess the success of project materials in communicating science and achieving the project's learning goals. Collaboration: This project employs a collaborative model of partnerships between the project team and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the University of Minnesota's Monarchs in the Classroom and Monarch Watch. Project advisors represent world-renown monarch butterfly research scientists and educators, including Dr. Karen Oberhauser, named a "Champion of Change" by President Obama in June 2013, and Dr. Chip Taylor, founder and director of Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas.
The University of California-Davis and its collaborators are identifying and testing strategies for implementing a model citizen science program that links the statewide Master Naturalist program with local citizen science projects that engage the public in environmental scientific research. The goals of the project are to develop a mechanism for broadening the reach of master naturalist and citizen science programs, and measure the impact of these programs on participants' science learning and environmental stewardship behavior. The project is (1) implementing strategies for engaging underserved audiences (young adults and communities of color) and enhancing learning for seniors in the California Naturalist program, (2) developing and testing a citizen science training module, (3) establishing two regional volunteer naturalist networks in Northern California that have links to local citizen science projects, and (4) developing web tools for use by program providers and naturalists to connect to projects and promote science learning. Project deliverables include training sessions, support services, network coordination, web tools, research on impacts on science learning, and participant tracking. By bringing together young and older adults to learn together, merging these audiences will result in the formation of a diverse corps of citizen naturalists who participate in ecological monitoring of local natural areas and conduct land stewardship activities. The project's findings will help program administrators scale-up the approach statewide and across the nation.
In Terrascope Youth Radio, urban teens develop, report, write, produce and host radio programming on environmental topics. Their work is broadcast and distributed nationally and online through partnerships with the Public Radio Exchange and numerous local stations. Terrascope Youth Radio leverages the success of the rapidly growing youth radio movement, empowering teen participants while reaching thousands of their peers with relevant, interesting and scientifically accurate information. The project has major impacts on three primary audiences: Urban youth, a notoriously difficult audience for messages having to do with science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Who better than their peers to understand what will interest, inspire and excite them? Through Terrascope Youth Radio they hear stories told in voices like their own, by other young people who understand what they care about and want to hear. The program's teen participants, who emerge with greater interest in STEM subjects, greater communication skills and valuable work experience that empowers them to continue their studies. Other youth radio programs nationwide, with whom Terrascope Youth Radio collaborates, helping their participants to acquire greater appreciation and understanding of STEM topics and strengthening their ability to present these subjects to their listeners. Some Terrascope Youth Radio special projects: In collaboration with New Hampshire Public Radio and Generation PRX, created two nationally distributed, hour-long specials about teens and the environment, produced entirely by young people from around the country. Worked with Boston Children's Museum to create an audio tour of green features of the museum's new LEED-certified building. This is now the museum's only official audio tour. Partnered with Hudson River Clearwater to create a series of Clearwater Moments, broadcast weekly on Northeast Public Radio.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ari EpsteinRafael BrasIrene GoodmanMichelle Farnum
The Institute for Learning Innovation, in collaboration with Mary Miss Studio and the Institute for Urban Design, is conducting an exploratory research and development project on sustainable practices related to the built infrastructure of New York City. The work will (1) pilot test and study new interpretive strategies for urban "place-based" public learning experiences that focus pedestrians' attention on a city's ecology and existing built sustainability infrastructure; (2) engage urban design professionals and STEM researchers to explore how these new strategies have the potential to transform how urban design fields inform, dialog and interact with the public about sustainable urban design and planning; and (3) assess the effectiveness of these public interpretation programs on STEM learning beyond traditional Informal Science Learning Environments (ISEs) such as science museums. Project participants also include faculty from the City College of NY Graduate Program in Urban Design, STEM faculty from Columbia University, and staff of the Provisions Library in Washington, D.C. The project is an early phase of the "City as Living Laboratory" initiative that can leverage the Rockefeller Foundation-funded Urban Design Week program in New York City scheduled to occur September 15 - 20, 2011. This request to NSF adds an additional track to the process to specifically focus on STEM learning and urban sustainability. From the promotional materials: "The Institute for Urban Design is currently preparing for the first annual Urban Design Week, a public festival created to engage New Yorkers in the fascinating and complex issues of the public realm and celebrate the city's exceptional urbanity. Through a rich roster of charettes, summits, installations, film screenings, exhibitions, and tours, Urban Design Week will draw in citizens from every borough and walk of life and highlight the idea that cities are made by collective effort, and that each of us can be a part of that great endeavor." The project goal is to generate new models for public engagement with science in the city environment and to explore how urban designers and planners, as they design for sustainability, can more effectively collaborate with STEM researchers and with the public. The project has both research and programmatic deliverables. Research activities include: Public Audiences: observational study of pedestrians in the installation environment; intercept surveys of the public about their experiences with the streetscape installations. Professional Audiences: pre-installation surveys on the role of public space science interpretation for altering public discourse about urban planning and sustainable cities; focus group assessment of professionals\' experiences with observing public interactions with the installations; online delayed- post experience survey on learning outcomes in terms of knowledge, attitude, motivation and anticipated impacts on professional practices; analysis of blog postings and public media surrounding the installation; survey of attendees at an ISE forum on the project, its goals, outcomes and potential for future developments. Programmatic deliverables include: a workshop that engages urban design students in the development of experimental streetscape installations; a pilot installation on streets in the City College of NY (consistent with approvals already received by NYC Dept. of Transportation); a City as Living Laboratory art-science workshop for Urban Design Week professionals to highlight possible benefits of inter-disciplinary collaboration; a panel discussion around new forms of citizen engagement through a "city as a science learning environment"; a forum specifically for ISE professionals to explore the research findings and potential for use as a strategy to increase science learning in city places.
This two-year project is communicating the results of scientific discoveries produced by an on-going LTER (Long-term Ecological Research) project devoted to understanding the Everglades ecosystem. Specifically, Dr. Heithaus is capitalizing on the discoveries funded through 0620409 (Coastal Oligotrophic Ecosystems Research) about the role of large-bodied, top predators in the Everglades, including bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas) and American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis). The STEM content of this project is biology, in particular ecology, the environment, and conservation. These results are being communicated via: (1) multimedia exhibit presentations at multiple museums and nature centers in southern Florida, primarily the Museum of Discovery and Science (MODS), located in Ft. Lauderdale near the Everglades and (2) online dissemination of mini-documentaries and other educational components at social media websites and the LTER web site. The target audience for the museum exhibit components includes learners from diverse cultural backgrounds, such as urban family groups reflecting the demographics of southern Florida. This project will also develop a documentary about Everglades ecology that is planned for dissemination on a cable TV channel devoted to natural history. In order to link with formal education, related educational deliverables are being produced for use in science classroom settings (grades 4 through 12) that are aligned with the state science standards and benchmarks. Formative assessment conducted by museum staff and university students will evaluate learning outcomes as they relate to STEM content learning goals. After the two-year funding period, the science learning opportunities produced from the current Communicating Research to Public Audiences (CRPA) project will be sustained as the exhibit travels to other venues and as web deliverables are accessed on-line.
The Louisiana State Museum and Tulane University/Xavier University Center for Bioenvironmental Research and the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography, along with several other research collaborators, designers, evaluators, and the Times-Picayune newspaper are partnering to develop a multi-pronged approach on educating the general public, school children, teachers and public officials on the STEM-related aspects of Hurricane Katrina and its implications for the future of New Orleans and other parts of the country. The major products will be an 8,500 square-foot semi-permanent exhibit, smaller exhibits for Louisiana regional libraries, a comprehensive Web site on hurricanes, a set of studies on informal learning, a case study for public officials about the relevance of science research to policy and planning, teacher workshops, and a workshop for interested exhibit designers from around the country. This project advances the field of informal science education by exploring how museums, universities, and their communities can work together to provide meaningful learning experiences on STEM topics that are critical to solving important community and national issues.