In MIT’s NSF-funded Terrascope Youth Radio (TYR) program, urban youth, many from groups historically underrepresented in the sciences, worked as paid interns who received training in radio production, reporting and writing stories with scientific content and audio storytelling to create environmentally oriented audio pieces that were engaging and relevant to their own and their peers’ lives. Teen interns participated between July 2008 and Autumn 2012. TYR’s goals were to improve a broad audience of teens’ engagement with, knowledge of, and attitudes about science, technology, engineering, and
The 2010 Cyberchase Summer Challenge Outreach initiative was designed to allow local public television stations to develop community-appropriate outreach plans as part of a unique summer launch of a new season of shows for a PBS children's television program. The Cyberchase Summer Challenge was a national initiative; eight stations were selected for a pilot study of best practices related to summer programming. Grantee stations were provided modest funding and material support. RMC's evaluation focused on understanding how public television stations and their outreach partners can build
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Alice ApleyWendy GrahamElizabeth GoldmanThirteen/WNET New York
Poster on NSF grant DRL-1008546 (""The Handheld Signing Math & Science Dictionaries for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Museum Visitors Research Project"") at the 2012 ISE PI Meeting.
Presentation on NSF grant DRL-0840230 (""Communities of Learning for Urban Environments"") presented at the CAISE Convening on Organizational Networks, November 17th, 2011.
In 2012, Concord Evaluation Group (CEG) conducted an evaluation of the impact of Peep and the Big Wide World (Peep) resources on Spanish-speaking families with preschool-aged children. The three-pronged evaluation included a National Family Study in which 112 Spanish-speaking families who used the Peep resources were compared to Spanish-speaking families who did not use the Peep resources. It also included an In-Depth Family Study -- an experiment conducted in the metro Boston area in which 36 Spanish-speaking families who used the Peep resources were compared to Spanish-speaking families who
Goodman Research Group, Inc. (GRG) is serving as the external evaluator of the NSF-funded Science Festival Alliance (SFA), a collaborative started by the University of California San Diego, the MIT Museum (Cambridge), the University of California San Francisco, and The Franklin Institute (Philadelphia). The early focus of the SFA has been on helping establish and sustain science festivals in each of these four cities. The Alliance's long-term goal is to facilitate the creation of a growing network of festivals and a community of science festival practitioners. This report focuses on the
Goodman Research Group, Inc. (GRG) is serving as the external evaluator of the three-year, NSF-funded Science Festival Alliance (SFA) project with this report summarizing results from the first year of the project. First year data collection was completed in June 2010. It included: Surveys of 1,411 San Diego Science Festival (SDSF) and 1,054 Cambridge Science Festival (CSF) attendees; End-of-year focus groups with each of the festival (SDSF and CSF) team leaders; and An online survey of 11 principal Alliance team members. The report is organized around four key questions: 1. Who participated
This formative evaluation gathered feedback from after-school group leaders and their 3rd-5th grade youth in response to two activities included in the Cyberchase Workshops-In-A-Box. The user-based feedback will assist with the design of new after-school materials. The general goals for the research were:To explore reactions to the workshop guide generally To assess appeal of the two activities To pinpoint difficulties in the implementation of the two activities To estimate comprehension of the activity content.To evaluate leader interest in further activities.Cyberchase is the Emmy Award
WNET planned an initiative to involve museums in the outreach associated with Season V of Cyberchase. A written feedback survey gathered information from 32 museums as to their current practices and recommendations with respect to museum kits, discovery carts, discovery boxes, video screenings and educational computer games. The goal of the survey was to assess the needs of the museums and to guide the development of an outreach plan for Season V. Cyberchase is the Emmy Award-winning mathematics series and website on PBS KIDS GO! using broadcast, web, new media and educational outreach to
The Salmon Camp Research Team (SCRT) project was created to address the under-representation of Native Americans in information technology (IT) and IT-intensive professions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) partnered with the Native American Youth and Family Association (NAYA) under renewed National Science Foundation funding to strengthen community involvement and work directly with students year round. The 2007-2008 evaluation of the project found evidence of effective implementation and data on important student
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Phyllis AultOregon Museum of Science and Industry
To prepare for future summative research on the synergy among multiple educational media, the present pilot research explored real-life use of Cyberchase outreach materials. The present pilot study included: a Web survey of 48 outreach providers (representing over 3000 children in 19 states), follow-up phone interviews with 26 of these providers, and in-person observations at two outreach sites, one in New York and one in Massachusetts. With an eye toward future summative research, the resulting data yield conclusions and implications in two broadly defined areas: providers' use of Cyberchase