The Science and Math Informal Learning Education (SMILE) pathway is serving the digital resource management needs of the informal learning community. The science and math inquiry experiences offered by science and technology centers, museums, and out-of-school programs are distinct from those found in formal classrooms. Interactive exhibits, multimedia presentations, virtual environments, hands-on activities, outdoor field guides, engineering challenges, and facilitated programs are just some of the thoughtfully designed resources used by the informal learning community to make science and math concepts come alive. With an organizational framework specifically designed for informal learning resources, the SMILE pathway is empowering educators to locate and explore high-quality education materials across multiple institutions and collections. The SMILE pathway is also expanding the participation of underrepresented groups by creating an easily accessible nexus of online materials, including those specifically added to extend the reach of effective science and math education to all communities. To promote the use of the SMILE pathway and the NSDL further, project staff are creating professional development programs and a robust online community of educators and content experts to showcase best practices tied to digital resources. Finally, to guarantee continued growth and involvement in the SMILE pathway, funding and editorial support is being provided to expansion partners, beyond the founding institutions, to add new digital resources to the NSDL.
The purpose of this document is to build on best practices and offer new approaches toward creating "a bold new initiative" to augment the Foundation's ongoing efforts to increase participation in STEM from underrepresented groups.
This presentation was shared at the 2014 Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) annual conference. It describes 4 websites designed for informal science education (ISE) professionals, including: InformalScience.org, Relating Research to Practice (RR2P), the Building Informal Science Education (BISE) project, and CitizenScience.org. The presentation ended with questions to the audience asking what might project leaders of these sessions do next with regards to building out online infrastructure.
The Global Soundscapes! Big Data, Big Screens, Open Ears Project uses the new science of soundscape ecology to design a variety of informal science learning experiences that engage participants through acoustic discovery Soundscape ecology is an interdisciplinary science that studies how humans relate to place through sound and how humans influence the environment through the alteration of natural sound composition. The project includes: (1) an interface to the NSF-funded Global Sustainable Soundscapes Network, which includes 12 universities around the world; (2) sound-based learning experiences targeting middle-school students (grades 5-8), visually impaired and urban students, and the general public; and (3) professional development for informal science educators. Project educational components include: the first interactive, sound-based digital theater experience; hands-on Your Ecosystem Listening Labs (YELLS), a 1-2 day program for school classes and out-of school groups; a soundscape database that will assist researchers in developing a soundscape Big Database; and iListen, a virtual online portal for learning and discovery about soundscape. The project team includes Purdue-based researchers involved in soundscape and other ecological research; Foxfire Interactive, an award-winning educational media company; science museum partners with digital theaters; the National Audubon Society and its national network of field stations; the Perkins School for the Blind; and Multimedia Research (as the external evaluator).
The project's goal is to facilitate the growth and use of the web site informalscience.org for posting reports of research and evaluation of Informal Science Education (ISE) funded projects. The project leaders will also synthesize the posted evaluation reports of informal science education research and development projects into readable documents. This synthesis will cover all available data from evaluation and research studies reported to informalscience.org across all sectors of ISE (e.g., museums, after school programs, video, radio, film, and technology). The investigators will provide the ISE community with information about these studies through publication on the site, through peer-reviewed publications for a research and evaluation audience, and through communications at conferences focused on ISE policy-makers and ISE practitioners. The report writing will be managed by a small staff of professional researchers and practitioners at the University of Pittsburgh, Minnesota Museum of Science, and Visitors Studies Association. The project will be continually evaluated by a board of advisors that will provide a yearly written report about the web site and synthesis work. The evaluators are researchers familiar with syntheses and meta analysis methods, experts from media, museum, and community programs, and also experts on development and use of professional development web sites. The evaluation will address whether or not the syntheses of evaluation reports was as rigorous as possible given the type of reports that are available. The usefulness of the reports and web site to the field of practice and research will also be a matter for concern by the advisory board. The long term aim of the project is to create a network that promotes deeper connections between evaluation and practice. Also, the network is expected to meet the needs and working styles of the various ISE sectors and to create exchanges and synergies among them. The site is expected to become more usable and useful to the field in each succeeding year, and it is expected to maximize its impact for practitioners, evaluators, policy makers, and funders.
The Exploratorium comes together with the Education Development Center, Inverness Research, TERC, the University of Colorado - Boulder, and the University of Washington to form a Research+Practice (R+P) Collaboratory. The Collaboratory seeks to address and reframe the gap between research and practice in K-12 STEM education. This gap persists despite decades of work by many leading organizations, associations, and individuals. Attempts to close the gap have generally focused on creating resources and mechanisms that first explain or illustrate "what research says" and then invite educators to access and integrate findings into practice. Recently, however, attention has turned to the ways in which the medical sciences are addressing the gap between research and clinical practice through the developing field of "translational research." In medicine, the strategy has been to shift the focus from adoption to adaptation of research into practice. Implicit in the notion of adaptation is a bi-directional process of cultural exchange in which both researchers and practitioners come to understand how the knowledge products of each field can strengthen the professional activities in the other. Along these lines, the R+P Collaboratory is working with leading professional associations and STEM improvement efforts to leverage their existing knowledge and experience and to build sustainable strategies for closing the gap. The R+P Collaboratory is developing an online 'Go-To' Resource Center website that houses the resources collected, created, and curated by the Collaboratory. The Resource Center also has significant 'Take-Out' features, with all materials meta-tagged so that they can be automatically uploaded, reformatted, and integrated into the existing communication and professional development mechanisms (e.g., newsletters, digests, conferences, and websites) of a dozen leading professional associations within a Professional Association Partner Network. In light of new and emerging standards in the STEM disciplines, the Collaboratory is focusing its work on four salient and timely bodies of research: (a) STEM Practices, (b) Formative Assessment, (c) Cyberlearning, and (d) Learning as a Cross-Setting Phenomenon. Special emphasis is being placed on research and practice that focuses on the learning of children and youth from communities historically underrepresented in STEM fields.
QUEST is a unique cross-platform science journalism collaborative that creates and distributes content for radio, television, interactive, and education audiences. The project collaborative comprises six leading public media providers representing markets across the country: KQED (San Francisco), Nebraska Educational Television (NET) and Radio, UNC-TV (North Carolina), WVIZ/ideastream (Cleveland), Wisconsin Public TV (WPT) and Radio, and KCTS (Seattle). QUEST is built on the success of the local, cross-editorial QUEST model, in which professionals from multiple disciplines--radio, television