The Whaling Museum & Education Center will expand its educational programming to benefit underserved and high-risk students in grades 2 to 5, as well as their teachers and families. The museum will develop, implement, market, and evaluate core components of its programming to reach nearly 3,000 students and 50 teachers. Museum educators will present hands-on activities in nearby schools, using real and replica artifacts and other learning materials. They will also deliver workshops for teachers at the museum to help them incorporate primary resources from the museum's collection into their curricula. A family day event will showcase what students learned from the in-class visit through displays of art projects and science posters. Other project activities will include free afterschool library programs exploring STEAM and history topics and an increase in the number of scholarships to the museum's summer camp program.
The Cincinnati Museum Center will develop a permanent exhibition to showcase its invertebrate paleontology collection and develop related educational programming that builds on a strong commitment to gender equity. Using focus groups, prototypes, surveys, and feedback from existing programs, the museum will incorporate community input from key audiences into the design of the 4,800 square-foot immersive gallery, which will blend science, history, and technology. The museum will engage external designers to create schematic and final exhibit designs. The museum will develop and test related educational programs for families and students, with a special focus on engaging girls ages 7 to 14 in STEM activities.
The L.C. Bates Museum will deliver STEAM programming to neighboring rural, mostly low-income second grade children and their families through the Observing Ornithology science project. Over a two-year period, the museum will work with 40 teachers in 12 schools to support student learning tied to Next Generation core science performance measures. The project activities will use museum collections and other resources to present a series of three ornithology programs designed to motivate curiosity and engage children in observation activities that support a new approach to thinking, analyzing and solving. The museum will loan a new pop-up display to each of the 12 school libraries and will present four family and four children's museum bird days at the museum for participating students and their families during each year of the project. An external evaluator will measure the project's success in achieving defined performance measures that include strengthening the children's knowledge, understanding, and attitude toward the regional environment.
This is an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, under the program Broadening Participation of Groups Under-represented in Biology. The fellow, Robert Habig, is conducting research and receiving training that is increasing the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. The fellow is being mentored by David Lahti at Queens College, City University of New York. The goal of the fellow's project is to perform a comparative evolutionary analysis of nest construction in the weaverbirds (Ploceus spp.). The evolutionary history of behavior can be nearly intractable and resistant to quantitative analysis. One strategy for illuminating our understanding of behavioral evolution is to conduct comparative studies of animal architectures, such as nests. Unlike behaviors themselves, nests persist through time, and have structures that can be disassociated into several quantitative features, which permits easy and comparable measurements and allows scientists to address questions about evolutionary history and functional relevance. The fellow's research addresses two major questions: (1) How do patterns of nest construction vary within and between species? (2) How do interrelated evolutionary processes shape variation in nest structure? This project is important for advancing foundational scientific knowledge, and will be the first study of weavers incorporating both molecular data and nest morphology to better understand the evolutionary underpinnings of a complex behavioral process. The fellow is also broadening participation in science by mentoring students underrepresented in biology.
The Fellow will reconstruct the evolution of nest construction in Ploceus weaverbirds incorporating advanced phylogenetic and morphological techniques including bioinformatics, computer modeling, X-ray computed tomography, and image processing. The Fellow will also conduct fieldwork in two hotspots of weaverbird diversity, the Awash Valley in Ethiopia and the Limpopo Province of South Africa, and collect behavioral data (e.g. rates of predation and brood parasitism; mating and parental behavior) and morphological data (e.g. nest structure) to test hypotheses of how distinct types of evolutionary selection shape the evolution of nest construction. The proposed comparative study can thus address questions such as how rapidly certain nest structural features evolve, which features are ancestral versus derived, which tend to exhibit phylogenetic signal, and which evolve in response to environmental features. The Fellow is receiving training in three-dimensional morphological analyses, phylogenetic tree construction, bioinformatics, computer modeling, and mentoring skills. The plan to broaden participation includes (1) recruitment, training, and mentoring of Queens College students from underrepresented groups in biology; (2) designing an evolutionary biology curriculum that ties in the research of the fellowship; (3) teaching an evolutionary biology class to underrepresented middle and high school students at the American Museum of Natural History; and (4) facilitating a research team for middle school and high school students.
This summative evaluation describes the FOSSIL (Fostering Opportunities for Synergistic STEM with Informal Learners) project activities and outcomes. Over the six-year funding period of this project, we developed a community of practice of more than 10,000 participants (via our web site, social media, and app) who share an interest in fossils and paleontology. This report describes the success and challenges of the FOSSIL project.
Exploratorium’s The Phenomenal Genome: Evolving Public Understanding of Genetics in the Post-Mendelian Era project addresses the increasing need to develop genomic literacy in the public at large. The explosion of genomics research over the past two decades has led to an increasingly complex picture of the determinants of human health and human phenotypes, and the applications of this research are now making their way into the clinic, the media, and the hands of consumers. The goal of this project is to create a model for increasing genomic literacy through Informal Science Education programming (ISE), creating a pathway for better decision making for the health of individuals and society at large. The Phenomenal Genome focuses on general science museum visitors and teachers of middle and high school students.
The core of the Exploratorium’s approach to science education is the creation of intriguing, provocative and investigable phenomena that are experienced directly and personally through exhibits, facilitated explorations, programs, and teacher professional development. Over two years, we will develop, test, and iterate inquiry-based professional development to help teachers develop understanding and integrate the principles of contemporary genomics and genetics into their classrooms. 120 middle and high school teachers will be served during this period, and many more beyond that, as the activities and workshops developed become a regular part of our teacher professional development programming. A learning scientist specializing in teacher learning will conduct research to determine which approaches and experiences are most effective for this context, and why.
In a parallel process, we will develop and test exhibits and experiences on the museum floor for museum visitors, using a similar iterative process of prototype testing with an embedded learning scientist to study visitor learning. We plan to define the approaches that work across audiences and contexts, as well as those that work best in particular contexts.
Through this work, we will develop new resources for teaching and learning contemporary genomics and genetics, and identify promising practices in communicating contemporary genomics and genetics in informal spaces across audiences. We will disseminate our findings via conferences, peer-reviewed articles, and workshops for the ISE community.
Biology has become a powerful and revolutionary technology, uniquely poised to transform and propel innovation in the near future. The skills, tools, and implications of using living systems to engineer innovative solutions to human health and global challenges, however, are still largely foreign and inaccessible to the general public. The life sciences need new ways of effectively engaging diverse audiences in these complex and powerful fields. Bio-Tinkering Playground will leverage a longtime partnership between the Stanford University Department of Genetics and The Tech Museum of Innovation to explore and develop one such powerful new approach.
The objective of Bio-Tinkering Playground is to create and test a groundbreaking type of museum space: a DIY community biology lab and bio-makerspace, complete with a unique repertoire of hands-on experiences. We will tackle the challenge of developing both open-ended bio-making activities and more scaffolded ones that, together, start to do for biology, biotech, and living systems what today’s makerspaces have done for engineering.
A combined Design Challenge Learning, making, and tinkering approach was chosen because of its demonstrated effectiveness at fostering confidence, creative capacity, and problem solving skills as well as engaging participants of diverse backgrounds. This educational model can potentially better keep pace with the emerging and quickly evolving landscape of biotech to better prepare young people for STEM careers and build the next generation of biotech and biomedical innovators.
Experience development will be conducted using an iterative design process that incorporates prototyping and formative evaluation to land on a final cohort of novel, highly-vetted Bio-Tinkering Playground experience. In the end, the project will generate a wealth of resources and learnings to share with the broader science education field. Thus, the impacts of our foundational work can extend well beyond the walls of The Tech as we enable other educators and public institutions around the world to replicate our model for engagement with biology.
American Indian and Alaska Native communities continue to disproportionately face significant environmental challenges and concerns as a predominately place-based people whose health, culture, community, and livelihood are often directly linked to the state of their local environment. With increasing threats to Native lands and traditions, there is an urgent need to promote ecological sustainability awareness and opportunities among all stakeholders within and beyond the impacted areas. This is especially true among the dozens of tribes and over 50,000 members of the Coast Salish Nations in the Pacific Northwest United States. The youth within these communities are particularly vulnerable. This Innovations in Development project endeavors to address this serious concern by implementing a multidimensional, multigenerational model aimed at intersecting traditional ecological knowledge with contemporary knowledge to promote: (a) environmental sustainability awareness, (b) increased STEM knowledge and skills across various scientific domains, and (c) STEM fields and workforce opportunities within Coast Salish communities. Building on results from a prior pilot study, the project will be grounded on eight guiding principles. These principles will be reflected in all aspects of the project including an innovative, culturally responsive toolkit, curriculum, museum exhibit and programming, workshops, and a newly established community of practice. If successful, this project could provide new insights on effective mechanisms for not only promoting STEM knowledge and skills within informal contexts among Coast Salish communities but also awareness and social change around issues of environmental sustainability in the Pacific Northwest.
Over a five-year period, the project will build upon an extant curriculum and findings codified in a pilot study. Each aspect of the pilot work will be refined to ensure that the model established in this Innovations and Development project is coherent, comprehensive, and replicable. Workshops and internships will prepare up to 200 Coast Salish Nation informal community educators to implement the model within their communities. Over 2,500 Coast Salish Nation and Swinomish youth, adults, educators, and elders are expected to be directly impacted by the workshops, internships, curriculum and online toolkit. Another 300 learners of diverse ages are expected to benefit from portable teaching collections developed by the project. Through a partnership with the Washington State Burke Natural History Museum, an exhibit and museum programming based on the model will be developed and accessible in the Museum, potentially reaching another 35,000 people each year. The project evaluation will assess the extent to which the following expected outcomes are achieved: (a) increased awareness and understanding of Indigenous environmental sustainability challenges; (b) increased skills in developing and implementing education programs through an Indigenous lens; (c) increased interest in and awareness of the environmental sciences and other STEM disciplines and fields; and (d) sustainable relationships among the Coast Salish Nations. A process evaluation will be conducted to formatively monitor and assess the work. A cross cultural team, including a recognized Coast Salish Indigenous evaluator, will lead the summative evaluation. The project team is experienced and led by representatives from the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Oregon State University, Garden Raised Bounty, the Center for Lifelong STEM Learning, the Urban Indian Research Institute, Feed Seven Generations, and the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.
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.
With funding from a Smithsonian Institution Youth Access Grant the National Museum of Natural History offered a program pipeline that would engage underserved Washington D.C. students in programming designed to encourage academic and career STEM interest. Beginning with collaboration with community educators, the pipeline funneled students into a Teen Night Out Science Night to interest them in science workshop series offered after school and on weekend and ultimately into volunteer and internship opportunities. This report provides detailed view of methods, analyses, results, and conclusions
Antarctic Dinosaurs: A Giant Screen Film and Outreach Project aims to leverage the popularity and charisma of dinosaurs to draw museum audiences into a captivating educational journey, revealing the history and transformation of Antarctica and the planet’s polar ecosystems, and exploring the forces that continue to shape the continent. In addition to bringing to life a wealth of unfamiliar dinosaurs, amphibians and proto-mammals, this project will journey beyond the bones to reveal a more nuanced, multi-disciplinary interpretation of paleontology and Antarctica’s profound changes.
Centered
This was the poster displayed at the NSF AISL PI Conference in Alexandria, VA, in February of 2019.
Other materials included draft scripts, suggested findings, and VISTA props and stickers that are part of the game/show.
While there is extensive evidence that STEM careers can be important pathways for augmenting social mobility and for increasing individual prestige, many youth perceive a STEM trajectory as an unattractive option. In the US, women and members of historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups, continue to be underrepresented across STEM disciplines. One vehicle for generating and sustaining interest in STEM is providing youth long-term access to informal science education (ISE) institutions. Here, we incorporate triangulation methods, collecting and synthesizing both qualitative and