The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), with six science centers across the U.S., will develop, implement, and evaluate the National Center for Blind Youth in Science (NCBYS), a three-year full-scale development project to increase informal learning opportunities for blind youth in STEM. Through partnerships and companion research, the NCBYS will lead to greater capacity to engage the blind in informal STEM learning. The NCBYS confronts a critical area of need in STEM education, and a priority for the AISL program: the underrepresentation of people with disabilities in STEM. Educators are often unaware of methods to deliver STEM concepts to blind students, and students do not have the experience with which to advocate for accommodations. Many parents of blind students are ill-equipped to provide support or request accessible STEM adaptations. The NCBYS will expose blind youth to non-visual methods that facilitate their involvement in STEM; introduce science centers to additional non-visual methods that facilitate the involvement of the blind in their exhibits; educate parents as to their students' ability to be independent both inside and outside the STEM classroom; provide preservice teachers of blind students with hands-on experience with blind students in STEM; and conduct research to inform a field that is lacking in published material. The NCBYS will a) conduct six regional, two-day science programs for a total of 180 blind youth, one day taking place at a local science center; b) conduct concurrent onsite parent training sessions; c) incorporate preservice teachers of blind students in hands-on activities; and d) perform separate, week-long, advanced-study residential programs for 60 blind high school juniors and seniors focused on the design process and preparation for post-secondary STEM education. The NCBYS will advance knowledge and understanding in informal settings, particularly as they pertain to the underrepresented disability demographic; but it is also expected that benefits realized from the program will translate to formal arenas. The proposed team represents the varied fields that the project seeks to inform, and holds expertise in blindness education, STEM education, museum education, parent outreach, teacher training, disability research, and project management. The initiative is a unique opportunity for science centers and the disability population to collaborate for mutual benefit, with lasting implications in informal STEM delivery, parent engagement, and teacher training. It is also an innovative approach to inspiring problem-solving skills in blind high school students through the design process. A panel of experts in various STEM fields will inform content development. NCBYS advances the discovery and understanding of STEM learning for blind students by integrating significant research alongside interactive programs. The audience includes students and those responsible for delivering STEM content and educational services to blind students. For students, the program will demonstrate their ability to interface with science center activities. Students will also gain mentoring experience through activities paired with younger blind students. Parents and teachers of blind students, as well as science center personnel, will gain understanding in the experiences of the blind in STEM, and steps to facilitate their complete involvement. Older students will pursue design inquiries into STEM at a more advanced level, processes that would be explored in post-secondary pursuits. By engaging these groups, the NCBYS will build infrastructure in the informal and formal arenas. Society benefits from the inclusion of new scientific minds, resulting in a diverse workforce. The possibility for advanced study and eventual employment for blind students also reduces the possibility that they would be dependent upon society for daily care in the future. The results of the proposed project will be disseminated and published broadly through Web sites; e-mail lists; social media; student-developed e-portfolios of the design program; an audio-described video; and presentations at workshops for STEM educators, teachers of blind students, blind consumer groups, researchers in disability education, and museum personnel.
In concert with the overall strategy of the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments, Principal Investigators from Oregon State University, University of Idaho, and University of Texas at Dallas, will study a range of data in online social networks to identify evidence of the long-term impact of informal STEM education. Tracking informal learners over time to understand the impact of informal learning experiences has been a longstanding, daunting, and elusive challenge. Now, with massive amounts of data being shared and stored online, education researchers have an unprecedented opportunity to study such data and apply data analytics and visualization technologies to identify the long-term, cascading effects of informal STEM learning. Research findings will inform the design and development of a data-analysis tool for use by education practitioners to improve STEM learning experiences online, through television and film, and at informal education institutions. An independent external critical review board of learning scientists, computer scientists, engineers, informal STEM education practitioners, participating partners, broadcast media professionals, and policymakers, will ensure a robust evaluation of the research and effectiveness and utility of the data analysis tool to improve practice. A summary report for the field will be written on the scientific and practical reliability and validity of the research and data-analysis model, and the value of the work for audiences beyond informal STEM education practitioners and policymakers. The research is contemporaneously relevant, advancing innovative use of data-mining and data-analysis processes to better understand how informal learners communicate STEM learning experiences and interact with STEM content over time, across a range of social networks. Investigators will research: 1) whether learners who engage in informal STEM education experiences further their learning through discussions and sharing of information in social media networks, 2) which types of data are present in social media that are relevant for understanding the cascading impacts of learning over time, and 3) how learning may evolve independently within shared social networks, which, if discovered, could provide a predictive computational model with implications for significant impact across both formal and informal education. Investigators will employ existing and modified data crawlers to search for key terms and phrases, assess spikes and deformations in posts, queries, and blogs, and experiment with their test data to find which types or configurations of keywords or search terms deliver the most reliable and accurate results. A variety of formats will be explored to test various strategies with participating partners and practitioners. Data will be visualized to represent the following dimensions of learning: a) Interest/Affect, b) Recommendations, c) Understanding/Knowledge-Seeking, and d) Deeper Engagement.
A recent report by the Association for Computing Machinery estimates that by decade's end, half of all STEM jobs in the United States will be in computing. Yet, the participation of women and underrepresented groups in post-secondary computer science programs remains discouragingly and persistently low. One of the most important findings from research in computer science education is the degree to which informal experiences with computers (at many ages and in many settings) shape young people's trajectories through high school and into undergraduate degree programs. Just as early language and mathematics literacy begins at home and is reinforced throughout childhood through a variety of experiences both in school and out, for reasons of diversity and competency, formal experiences with computational literacy alone are insufficient for developing the next generation of scientists, engineers, and citizens. Thus, this CAREER program of research seeks to contribute to a conceptual and design framework to rethink computational literacy in informal environments in an effort to engage a broad and diverse audience. It builds on the concept of cultural forms to understand existing computational literacy practices across a variety of learning settings and to contribute innovative technology designs. As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in these settings. This CAREER program of research seeks to understand the role of cultural forms in informal computational learning experiences and to develop a theoretically grounded approach for designing such experiences for youth. This work starts from the premise that new forms of computational literacy will be born from existing cultural forms of literacy and numeracy (i.e., for mathematical literacy there are forms like counting songs -- "10 little ducks went out to play"). Many of these forms play out in homes between parents and children, in schools between teachers and students, and in all sorts of other place between friends and siblings. This program of study is a three-phased design and development effort focused on key research questions that include understanding (1) how cultural forms can help shape audience experiences in informal learning environments; (2) how different cultural forms interact with youth's identity-related needs and motivations; and (3) how new types of computational literacy experiences based on these forms can be created. Each phase includes inductive research that attempts to understand computational literacy as it exists in the world and a design phase guided by concrete learning objectives that address specific aspects of computational literacy. Data collection strategies will include naturalist observation, semi-structured, and in-depth interviews, and learning assessments; outcome measures will center on voluntary engagement, motivation, and persistence around the learning experiences. The contexts for research and design will be museums, homes, and afterschool programs. This research builds on a decade of experience by the PI in designing and studying computational literacy experiences across a range of learning settings including museums, homes, out-of-school programs, and classrooms. Engaging a broad and diverse audience in the future of STEM computing fields is an urgent priority of the US education system, both in schools and beyond. This project would complement substantial existing efforts to promote in-school computational literacy and, if successful, help bring about a more representative, computationally empowered citizenry. The integrated education plan supports the training and mentoring of graduate and undergraduate students in emerging research methods at the intersection of the learning sciences, computer science, and human-computer interaction. This work will also develop publically available learning experiences potentially impacting thousands of youth. These experiences will be available in museums, on the Web, and through App stores.
The objective of this project is to extend the concept of crowdsourcing in citizen science to the interaction design of the organization as well as to data collection. Distributed technologies offer new opportunities for conducting scientific research on a larger scale than ever before by enabling distributed collaboration. Virtual organizations that use distributed technologies in scientific organizations have primarily focused on how dedicated, professional scientists collaborate and communicate. More recently a rapidly increasing number of citizen science virtual organizations are being formed. Citizen scientists participate in scientific endeavors and typically lack formal credentials, do not hold professional positions in scientific institutions, and bring diversity of knowledge and expertise to projects and challenges. They participate in scientific endeavors related to their personal scientific interests and create new challenges for the design of virtual organizations. In terms of intellectual merit, the project will make three specific contributions: a new interaction design for collecting biodiversity data within a nature park, a model for crowdsourcing the design of an social computing approach to citizen science, and an analysis of the impact of crowdsourcing the design on motivating participation in collecting biodiversity data. Interactive tabletop computers will be placed in two nature parks so that the design of the citizen science environment can be embedded in a park experience and engage the public in understanding more about their parks, in data collection, and develop a personal commitment to environmental sustainability issues. In terms of broader impacts, the project provides three types of impact: research training by including graduate students, broad public dissemination to enhance scientific understanding of biodiversity, and benefits to society through association with the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (ACES) and Encyclopedia of Life (EOL).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mary Lou MaherTom YehJennifer Preece
This document is a “think piece” about why and how informal science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education institutions could be placing amusing, novel experiences in people’s paths to create memorable STEM experiences embedded in their everyday lives. The report focuses on what we learned about creating interactive STEM exhibits in public spaces outside of a science center. That said, the content can inform hands-on learning experiences on other topics, as well, within the limits outlined.