The Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) provides a decision chart as a guide for institutional review boards (IRBs), investigators, and others who decide if an activity is research involving human subjects that must be reviewed by an IRB under the requirements of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regulations at 45 CFR part 46. OHRP welcomes comment on these decision charts. The charts address decisions on the following: whether an activity is research that must be reviewed by an IRB, whether the review may be performed by expedited procedures, and whether informed
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U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
In 2009, The HistoryMakers was awarded a four-year grant from The National Science Foundation (DRL-0917612) to create ScienceMakers: African Americans and Scientific Innovation (ScienceMakers). ScienceMakers builds upon The HistoryMakers’ extant oral history archives by allowing for new interviews with 180 of the nation’s top African American scientists and facilitating dissemination of the information. The overall goal of this endeavor is to increase awareness in the general public of the contributions of African American scientists (i.e., short-term outcomes), thereby ultimately leading to
The authors provide an analysis of pairs of children interacting with a multi-touch tabletop exhibit designed to help museum visitors learn about evolution and the tree of life. The exhibit’s aim is to inspire visitors with a sense of wonder at life’s diversity while providing insight into key evolutionary concepts such as common descent. The authors find that children negotiate their interaction with the exhibit in a variety of ways including reactive, articulated, and contemplated exploration. These strategies in turn influence the ways in which children make meaning through their
Museums continue to invest in and experiment with internet technologies and increasingly with social software environments (i.e., social networking). These technologies have the potential to lead to a number of important intellectual and social outcomes such as learning, community building, and greater public understanding of, in our case, science. It is the possibility of supporting learning in digital environments that is the focus of this research project. In our previous work, online facilitation has emerged as a big deal and perhaps determines successful online museum environments from unsuccessful environments. To study facilitation, we seek to understand facilitation styles and their outcomes in two distinct but representative museum environments. The first, Science Buzz at Science Museum of Minnesota, is a popular website identified by the field to be exemplary because of its educational value and its use of Web 2.0 functionality. The second case is the more distributed use of social software at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science (MLS). Instead of creating learning platforms that are hosted internally, MLS is experimenting with building learning communities where people are already gathering on the web like Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube. We anticipate being able to identify clear, replicable facilitation styles and to identify outcomes associated with those styles.
Realizing the power of CyberLearning to transform education will require vision, strategy, and an engaged, talented community. Activities are needed to energize the community, refine and sharpen the path forward, and provide a more active and ongoing forum for clarifying the big ideas and challenging questions. In response to this need, SRI International, together with the Lawrence Hall of Science and with key support from the National Geographic Society, will organize a set of activities to advance a shared vision of the future of learning, encompassing the systems, people, and technology dimensions mutually necessary for any scalable and lasting advances in education. The innovative format for these activities is inspired by the TED talks, Wikipedia, and social networking. As in TED, a small set of leading researchers will be selected to give very short, very high quality, stimulating talks. These CyberLearning Talks will be featured at a 1-day summit meeting in Washington, DC, streamed so that local cyberlearning research communities may participate at a distance, and posted on a website. As in Wikipedia, CyberLearning Pages will be created, each page featuring a synopsis of a big idea in CyberLearning and the relevant research challenges. The 1-day conference will be followed by a small 1-day workshop focusing on how to evaluate cyberlearning efforts, identify progress, and identify important new directions. Finally, to disseminate and stimulate conversation about both the video talks and Wikipedia entries, a presence for the community will be created on social networking sites. The target outcomes of the effort will be (i) a cyberlearning research community with participants from across the many current constituent communities, and fostered awareness and appreciation of the broad range of expertise and interests across that wider community; (ii) foundations for sustained discussion of big ideas, insights, and challenges to help this new community define a more engaged, crisper vision of its own future, (iii) a community resource that can become a site for interconnecting stakeholders in the CyberLearning community and supporting investigators in improving field-generated proposals, and (iv) an emerging sense of direction for CyberLearning among a wider audience of leaders. Such community building and awareness is expected to foster collaborations that will lead to innovative and research-grounded ways of using technology to transform education -- formal and informal and across a lifetime.
Researchers at Michigan State University, University of Washington, Science Museum of Minnesota, and Museum of Life and Science found that there are clear indicators of learning in Science Buzz (www.sciencebuzz.org), the online museum environment studied as part of the Take 2 project. People who participate in conversations through the Buzz blog demonstrate an interest in science, and they leverage their own experiences and identities in order to share science knowledge with others. Researchers utilized indicators of learning as identified in the National Academies report on Learning Science in Informal Environments. Aspects of learning that were particularly important for an online environment like Science Buzz were interest in science, participating in science through the use of language, and identifying as someone who knows about or uses science. Researchers found that Science Buzz participants had a strong interest in scientific issues, utilized argumentation strategies--an important scientific practice--and identified with the importance of science in their lives. In particular: (1) Interest in scientific issues, caring about scientific issues, identifying personally with scientific issues were commonly evident in Science Buzz; (2) There is widespread use of argumentation in relation to scientific issues, an important scientific practice, although the quality of the scientific reasoning associated with these argumentation practices varies; (3) The co-construction of identity between online participants and the host museum is a potentially powerful outcome, as it suggests that online learning environments can facilitate longer-term relationships; (4) The analytical tools developed by this project advance our ability to understand learning in online environments; (5) While some indicators of learning are present, others, such as reflecting on science or co-constructing science knowledge with others, are not present. For museums, encouraging museum staff to engage digital tools and online participants is relatively easy. However, measuring online activity with regard to complex outcomes like learning is extremely difficult. Perhaps the most useful outcome of the Take 2 project, therefore, is a tool that will enable museums to make sense of online activity in relation to powerful outcomes like learning.
The Internet is a growing source of open educational resources (OERs) focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). These STEM OERs are not only shared openly and free for all to use, but often provide licenses that permit modification and reuse. Educators must have access to tools that pinpoint valuable resources while avoiding substandard ones. The authors discuss how multiple information sources, user communities, and online platforms might be coordinated to craft effective experiences in digital-rich learning environments.
The broad purpose of this project is to contribute to capacity-building efforts—to strengthen the evaluation of programs and learning experiences in informal science education (ISE). We focus on improving the quality of summative evaluations, which have been called upon to inform decision-making and practice, contribute knowledge to the field, and help make the case for the value of informal learning. We previously developed a framework that synthesizes key elements of a high-quality summative evaluation. The framework has three dimensions: (a) examine the underlying rationale of the program, exhibition, experience, or intervention being evaluated; (b) balance methodological rigor with sensitivity to the informal context; and (c) prioritize uses of the evaluation by addressing stakeholders’ needs. Evaluators may draw on all three dimensions to provide summary judgments on the value of what was evaluated. We extend our work in two ways: (1) Examine how the framework could be used as a guiding lens for planning or conducting future or current summative evaluations. We will work with partners in informal science institutions to support and document their evaluation activities along the dimensions of evaluation quality, with the intent of improving the framework and creating concrete exemplars of its application in practice. (2) Conceptualize alternative models for enhancing professional training in ISE evaluation. We will research current programs and practices for building technical evaluation capacity, looking for promising and innovative approaches that include apprenticeship or “hands-on” experiences. This 18-month project (January 2015 through June 2016) is funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Youth Radio, an after-school media production program, consists of a main campus in Oakland, CA, and regional bureaus in Atlanta, GA, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, CA. Youth Radio’s model is to engage underserved young people in broadcast journalism, radio and web production, engineering, and media literacy through media projects that are relevant to the students’ lives and communities. In doing so, Youth Radio prepares young people for college programs and careers in media. The organization also supports young people in their transition from school to career through an externship program
Goodman Research Group, Inc., (GRG), Cambridge, MA, conducted the formative evaluation of The Music Instinct project. The NSF-funded project aims to bring to PBS viewers the strong evidence of the connections between music and science, as well as to facilitate a deeper understanding of both fields. The Music Instinct project, presented by WNET/Thirteen, in collaboration with Mannes Productions, includes a two-hour television program, a website, and ancillary educational materials. The purpose of the formative evaluation is to obtain timely information to support and guide the producers as they
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Rucha LondheMiriam KochmanNivedita RanadeIrene F GoodmanWNET/ThirteenMannes Productions Inc.
With the Role of Media in Supporting Informal Science Learning project, the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI) and Grunwald Associates sought to establish a “national learning initiative” to explore the intersection of media and informal science learning. To do so, ILI proposed an initial conference followed by the development of a website and online community. The National Science Foundation funded this project, with additional funding provided by the National Parks Service. Held in March 2009, the 1.5 day conference was designed to be a “first step” in the development of a conversation
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Elizabeth Bandy, Ph.D.Institute for Learning Innovation
Researchers at the U.C. Davis will carry out observations of museum visitors to plan for a study of how visualizations affect visitors of an Earth Sciences exhibit using 3D technology. The researchers will be able to conduct an experimental study about how much participants in an education center learn from the model of earthquakes and of a model of the Lake Tahoe basin. The researchers will conduct a quasi-experiment of a sample of 100 visitors to the center at Lake Tahoe to study their experience with visualization and learning of science. The funding for this phase of the project will include the development of audience surveys, conducting focus groups to develop types of feedback, train staff to conduct data collection, and to conduct a literature review of technology visualization.