This poster, presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting, shows the impact of an afterschool program that brought hands-on, inquiry-based science to ELL students in a low SES area of Southern California. Data sources included observation of lessons, interviews with students, and collection of student work Results demonstrate a shift in student thinking around students' internalization of becoming a scientist and who is capable of being a scientist.
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University of California, IrvineLauren Shea
To better help museum visitors make sense of large data sets, also called “Big Data”, this study focused on the types of visual representations visitors recognize, and how they make meaning (or not) of various visuals. Individual adults and youths were shown five different data visualizations (one from each of five categories), one at a time, and asked if the visualization looked familiar and how it was read. This study found that Context and previous experience matters. Participants of all ages are familiar with a wide variety of visual displays of data. If a participant encounters a visual
To better help museum visitors make sense of large data sets, also called “big data”, this study focuses on what museum visitors felt individual layers of a visual (alone and in combination with other layers) were communicating to them as the visual was constructed or deconstructed layer by layer. A second, smaller study, collected data to better understand how adult visitors would construct large data visualizations. This study was concerned with how people make sense of “big data” in their daily lives and how they engage with reference systems. The primary study used four different “big data
To better understand how audiences in public spaces, in this case those in a museum setting, relate to and make sense of the phrases “Big Data” and “Data Visualizations”, this study investigated visitors understanding of these terms. This formative study used intercepts; approaching adult visitors and inviting them to participate in a very brief interview. If the person agreed, they were asked additional questions. The first question asked about awareness of the phrase, “Big Data” or for a very small comparison group, “Data Visualization.” Visitors were then asked “How would you explain “Big
To better help museum visitors make sense of large data sets, also called “big data”, this study investigated if there were generalizable ways in which visitors engage with and then make meaning of such data sets. This front-end study was designed to explore if there were different, distinct, and repeatable patterns intuited by individuals as they work with large data sets. This was a descriptive, process method using a complex card sort with an interview. Each card had the name of one food item written on it. Food items were diverse, including eggs, crackers, lasagna, apples, tofu and almonds
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. The project will further develop, roll out, and conduct research on a set of materials that will introduce middle school age youth to innovative and engaging engineering challenges in the Boys and Girls Club (B&GCs) context. Building on substantial prior work and evaluation-based learning, WISE Guys and Gals - Boys & Girls as WISEngineering STEM Learners (WGG) will: (1) combine engineering design activities with the (open source, online) WISEngineering infrastructure; (2) scale-up the infrastructure; (3) engage youth in informal afterschool experiences; and (4) collect a wealth of rich data to further our understanding of how youth learn through these experiences. This work will be conducted by Hofstra University's Center for STEM Research in conjunction with Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), The CUNY Graduate Center's Center for Advanced Study in Education (CASE), the Boys & Girls Club of America, and 25 B&GCs in New York and New Jersey. The underlying theoretical framework builds on proof-of-concept work supported by NSF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. An open source, on-line interface (WISEngineering) provides numerous virtual tools (e.g., social networking, Design Journal, embedded assessments) that promote learning and collaboration through challenging, thoughtful, and creative work. WGG will explore how to incorporate creativity, social networking, connections to real-world STEM needs/careers, and teamwork into challenges that can be completed in a one-hour period, an activity time constraint in many B&GC settings. Staff from the clubs will participate in face-to-face and virtual professional development in an effort to build their capacity as facilitators of STEM learning. Research will focus on: (1) how activities developed for 60-minute implementation and guided by informed engineering design and interconnected learning frameworks support youth learning and engagement; and (2) characteristics of the professional development approach that support B&GC facilitators' capacity development. By the end of the project, over 6,000 middle school aged youth, the majority from groups underrepresented in STEM areas, will gain experience with engineering design as they develop engineering thinking, new STEM competencies, STEM career awareness, and an appreciation for the civic value of STEM knowledge.
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David BurghardtXiang FuKenneth WhiteMelissa Rhodes
For over 60 years annual Science Fairs and Engineering competitions have been held in schools and communities throughout the country, engaging large numbers of middle school students and culminating in national and international events. Science fairs are at the intersection of formal learning in school and informal science learning in other settings including science centers, after-school programs, and clubs. However, in spite of their wide implementation and long history, there are few empirical studies that have examined the relationship between student participation in these fairs and their learning and interest in science. Additionally, there have been no studies to understand the real cost of these programs relative to the student benefits. This educational research project will fill that gap in understanding. It will systematically document and describe science fair models; measure their impact on learning; and provide evidence about the costs of various models and related benefits. The findings from this study will inform a wide range of stakeholders (including teachers, science fair leaders, volunteers, parents, and businesses) about these models and how they impact students' mastery of science and engineering practices. This four-year study in all regions of the country will be conducted in two phases: Phase 1 will be a survey of 3800 middle school science teachers will define the characteristics of science fair models; Phase 2 will use those understandings to conduct case studies in 20 schools. Deliverables include handbooks for teachers and the science fair community, articles in journals summarizing findings, the Science and Engineering Practice and Interest Inventory, and a suite of data collection instruments for scoring rubrics to describe science fairs and measure their impact. Research questions will include: (1) What are the basic models of middle school science fairs? (2) To what extent does participation in a particular model enhance students' mastery of science and engineering practices and/or their interest in science? (3) What student-teacher and school-level factors contribute to or inhibit students' mastery? (4) What resources, human and financial, are required to implement an effective middle school science fair? and (5) What are the most cost-effective aspects of the science fair experience, and how can they be applied or adapted by science fair leaders and teachers to strengthen students' mastery of science and engineering practices? Findings from this study will have the potential to improve current practices in the design and implementation of science fairs and their impact on student learning; they will be widely disseminated to the various stakeholders through publications, conference presentations, and educational association channels.
Native Americans exert sovereignty over vast amounts of United States land and water resources, yet are underrepresented in the disciplines that train our nation's future land and water resource managers. Native American resource managers must walk in two worlds, accommodating both traditional and modern methods that may come into conflict. Building on an existing, NSF-funded Manoomin Science Camp, the Walking Two Worlds (W2W) project will employ a systems view of resource management in considering a broad range of resource management issues affecting the region (including its lakes and wetlands, fisheries, forestry, wildlife, and air quality), with the goal of engaging the entire community in environmental and resource management issues of immediate relevance to the community. W2W will incorporate both Western science concerning the physical, chemical, and biological worlds, and traditional environmental knowledge, culture, language, and the judgment of elders. This holistic approach will not only facilitate effective resource management for the community, it will also serve as a 'hook' for engaging students and the community in STEM. A partnership of the Fond du Lac Band (of Lake Superior Chippewa) and the University of Minnesota (UMN) planned collaboratively with the community, W2W will focus on community-inspired, participatory science research projects related to resource management and environmental science. W2W will be facilitated by local teachers, with former participants as mentors, researchers and resource manages as mentors, and UMN faculty as lecturers. W2W recognizes the critical importance of strong STEM education for natural resource management. Using a mixed-methods approach to external evaluation, the project will build knowledge on the contributions of the W2W holistic, systemic approach and theme of community resource management. This will provide the foundation for a future development project that builds a community of place-based learning and community-inspired research projects.
This Advancing Informal Science Learning Pathways project, Using Technology to Research After Class (UTRAC), explores whether a combination of technology (e.g., iPad-enabled sensors, web-based inquiry-focused portal) and facilitated visits improves learning outcomes for rural and Native American elementary-age youth in after school programs. Expected outcomes include improved engagement, knowledge, skills, and attitudes toward science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Project goals include promoting STEM learning through science inquiry activities keyed to specific Next Generation Science Standards as well as improving how technology can be used to enhance learning outcomes in afterschool programs. The experimental design of this project - testing the effects of physical or virtual facilitation visits on learning outcomes - will lead to improvements in STEM learning outcomes among rural and underrepresented students. This project will employ several innovations in utilizing technology to teach STEM topics including: (i) hands-on, real-time, crowd sourced data collected by participants in their schoolyards; (ii) a pedagogic emphasis on communication of schoolyard data among and between participants; (iii) testing of motivational incentives; and (iv) partnerships between after school providers, preservice teachers, and university researchers as facilitators. The entire process will be modularized so that it can be modified in terms of place, STEM topic or student cohort. The topic focus of the project -- Life Under Snow -- is relevant to participating students, as Montana school playgrounds lie blanketed under snow for the majority of the school year; it includes elements of snow science, carbon cycle science, and a combination at the intersection of three recent literacy initiatives (e.g., Earth Science, Climate, or Energy). UTRAC will pilot and evaluate facilitated snow science/carbon cycle science activities that couple real-time schoolyard data with tools patterned after those available through WISE (Web-based Inquiry Science Environment; wise.berkeley.edu). Participants will collect and compare data with other youth participants, and researchers will use formative assessments to define interventions with potential to maximize student engagement and learning improvements among underserved youth. The project will advance understanding of informal education's potential to improve STEM engagement, knowledge, skills and attitudes by quantifying how - and to what extent - youth engage with emerging technologies iPad-enabled sensors, and crowdsourcing and visualization tools. The deliverables include a quantifying metric for learning outcomes, a training model for the iPad sensors and web application, an orientation kit, a social media portal, and database for the measurements.
The goal of this three-year initiative is to expand the implementation of a currently active and proven climate education method delivered by TV weathercasters around the country. The work is a partnership of George Mason University, Yale University, Climate Central (a non-profit climate science research and media production organization), the American Meteorological Society, and NOAA and NASA. This project will include four activities: (1) recruiting 200 TV more weathercasters nationwide (currently just over 100 are participating); (2) providing participating weathercasters with professional development activities and training on use of Climate Matters materials to help them become confident and competent climate educators; (3) developing and distributing to participating weathercasters timely, localized, broadcast-ready graphics and science information, when possible tied to local weather and climatic events, to make it easy for them to educate their viewers about the local relationships between the climate and the weather; and (4) research and evaluation activities to improve the rate of use and effectiveness of Climate Matters materials by weathercasters over time and to study the effect on learning about climate by the public. Learning outcomes by the public will be evaluated using a quasi-experimental method with nationally representative surveys of the public, conducted twice per year over the course of the project. The guiding hypothesis is that there will be a dose-response relationship between the extent of TV weathercaster use of Climate Matters materials in a community (i.e., a media market) and change over time in viewers' understanding of the climate. The development of Climate Matters is based on theories of informal and experiential learning. The scaling up of the initiative applies methods derived from diffusion of innovation and social marketing theories.
This project supports the development of technological fluency and understanding of STEM concepts through the implementation of design collaboratives that use eCrafting Collabs as the medium within which to work with middle and high school students, parents and the community. The researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the Franklin Institute combine expertise in learning sciences, digital media design, computer science and informal science education to examine how youth at ages 10-16 and families in schools, clubs, museums and community groups learn together how to create e-textile artifacts that incorporate embedded computers, sensors and actuators. The project investigates the feasibility of implementing these collaboratives using eCrafting via three models of participation, individual, structured group and cross-generational community groups. They are designing a portal through which the collaborative can engage in critique and sharing of their designs as part of their efforts to build a model process by which scientific and engineered product design and analysis can be made available to multiple audiences. The project engages participants through middle and high school elective classes and through the workshops conducted by a number of different organizations including the Franklin Institute, Techgirlz, the Hacktory and schools in Philadelphia. Participants can engage in the eCrafting Collabs through individual, collective and community design challenges that are established by the project. Participants learn about e-textile design and about circuitry and programming using either ModKit or the text-based Arduino. The designs are shared through the eCrafting Collab portal and participants are required to provide feedback and critique. Researchers are collecting data on learner identity in relation to STEM and computing, individual and collective participation in design and student understanding of circuitry and programming. The project is an example of a scalable intervention to engage students, families and communities in developing technological flexibility. This research and development project provides a resource that engages students in middle and high schools in technology rich collaborative environments that are alternatives to other sorts of science fairs and robotic competitions. The resources developed during the project will inform how such an informal/formal blend of student engagement might be scaled to expand the experiences of populations of underserved groups, including girls. The study is conducting an examination of the new types of learning activities that are multiplying across the country with a special focus on cross-generational learning.
This multiplatform media and science center project is designed to engage audiences in humanity's deepest questions like the nature of love, reality, time and death in both scientific and humanistic terms. Project deliverables include 5 hour-long radio programs for broadcast on NPR stations, public events/museum exhibits at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, kiosks in venues throughout the city, and a social media engagement campaign. The audience of the project is large and diverse using mass media and the internet. But the project will specifically target young, online, and minority audiences using various strategies. The project is designed to help a diverse audience understand the impact of new scientific developments as well as the basic science, technology, engineering and math needed to be responsible, informed citizens. Innovative elements of the project include the unique format of the radio programs that explore complex topics in an engaging and compelling way, the visitor engagement strategy at the Exploratorium, and the social media strategy that reaches niche audiences who might never listen to the radio broadcasts, but find the podcasts and blogs engaging. The Exploratorium will be opening a new building in 2013 and will include exhibits and programs that are testing grounds for this project. This is a new model that aligns the radio content with exhibitions, social media, and in person events at the Exploratorium, providing a unique holistic approach. The project is designed to inspire people to think and talk about science and want to find out more. The evaluation will measure the impacts on the targeted audiences reached by each of the key delivery methods. Data will be collected using focus groups; intercept interviews with people in public places, and longitudinal panels. The focus will be on 5 targeted audiences (young adults, families with children, non-NPR listeners, underrepresented minorities, and adults without college experience). This comprehensive evaluation will likely contribute important knowledge to the field based on this multiple-platform collaborative model.