Changes in household-level actions in the U.S. have the potential to reduce rates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change by reducing consumption of food, energy and water (FEW). This project will identify potential interventions for reducing household FEW consumption, test options in participating households in two communities, and collect data to develop new environmental impact models. It will also identify household consumption behavior and cost-effective interventions to reduce FEW resource use. Research insights can be applied to increase the well-being of individuals at the household level, improve FEW resource security, reduce climate-related risks, and increase economic competitiveness of the U.S. The project will recruit, train, and graduate more than 20 students and early-career scientists from underrepresented groups. Students will be eligible to participate in exchanges to conduct interdisciplinary research with collaborators in the Netherlands, a highly industrialized nation that uses 20% less energy and water per person than the U.S.
This study uses an interdisciplinary approach to investigate methods for reducing household FEW consumption and associated direct and indirect environmental impacts, including GHG emissions and water resources depletion. The approach includes: 1) interactive role-playing activities and qualitative interviews with homeowners; 2) a survey of households to examine existing attitudes and behaviors related to FEW consumption, as well as possible approaches and barriers to reduce consumption; and 3) experimental research in residential households in two case-study communities, selected to be representative of U.S. suburban households and appropriate for comparative experiments. These studies will iteratively examine approaches for reducing household FEW consumption, test possible intervention strategies, and provide data for developing systems models to quantify impacts of household FEW resource flows and emissions. A FEW consumption-based life cycle assessment (LCA) model will be developed to provide accurate information for household decision making and design of intervention strategies. The LCA model will include the first known farm-to-fork representation of household food consumption impacts, spatially explicit inventories of food waste and water withdrawals, and a model of multi-level price responsiveness in the electricity sector. By translating FEW consumption impacts, results will identify "hot spots" and cost-effective household interventions for reducing ecological footprints. Applying a set of climate and technology scenarios in the LCA model will provide additional insights on potential benefits of technology adoption for informing policymaking. The environmental impact models, household consumption tracking tool, and role-playing software developed in this research will be general purpose and publicly available at the end of the project to inform future education, research and outreach activities.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
David WatkinsBuyung AgusdinataChelsea SchellyRachael ShwomJenni-Louise Evans
This INSPIRE project addresses the issue of high volume hydraulic fracturing, also called fracking, and its effects on ground water resources. Fracking allows drillers to extract natural gas from shale deep within the earth. Methane gas sometimes escapes from shale gas wells and can contaminate water resources or leak into the atmosphere where it contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Monitoring for these potential leaks is difficult because methane is also released into aquifers naturally, and because monitoring is time- and resource-intensive. Such subsurface leakage may also be relatively rare. This project seeks to improve overall understanding of the impacts of natural gas drilling using both advances in computer science and geoscience, and to teach the public about such impacts. The project will elucidate both the effects of human activities such as shale gas development as well as natural processes which release methane into natural waters. Results of the proposed research will lead to a better understanding of water quality in areas of shale-gas development and will highlight problems and potentially problematic management practices. The research will advance both the fields of geoscience and computer science, will train interdisciplinary graduate students, and involve citizen scientists in collecting data and understanding environmental data analysis.
The project combines new hydro-geochemical strategies and data mining approaches to study the release of methane into streams and ground waters. For example, researchers will explore how to analyze the heterogeneous spatial data that describe distributions of methane concentrations in natural waters. The objectives of this project are to i) transform the ability to measure methane in streams; ii) train citizen scientists to work with project scientists to sample streams in an area of shale-gas development and publish large-volume datasets of methane in natural waters and aquifers; iii) innovate data mining and machine learning methods for environmental data to identify anomalous spots with potential leakage; iv) run field campaigns to measure methane concentrations and isotopic signatures of water samples in these spots; v) foster dialogue among nonscientists, consultants, university scientists, members of the gas industry, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations in and beyond the target region. Toward this end, the team will host workshops aimed to build dialogue among stakeholders and will release data analytic software for environmental measurements to benefit a broader research community.
This is an Early-concept Grant for Exploratory Research supporting research in Smart and Connected Communities. The research supported by the award is collaborative with research at the University of Colorado. The researchers are studying the use of technologies to enable communities to connect youth and youth organizations to effectively support diverse learning pathways for all students. These communities, the youth, the youth organizations, formal and informal education organizations, and civic organizations form a learning ecology. The DePaul University researchers will design and implement a smart community infrastructure in the City of Chicago to track real-time student participation in community STEM activities and to develop mobile applications for both students and adults. The smart community infrastructure will bring together information from a variety of sources that affect students' participation in community activities. These include geographic information (e.g., where the student lives, where the activities take place, the student transportation options, the school the student attends), student related information (e.g., the education and experience background of the student, the economic status of the student, students' schedules), and activity information (e.g., location of activity, requirements for participation). The University of Colorado researchers will take the lead on analyzing these data in terms of a community learning ecologies framework and will explore computational approaches (i.e., recommender systems, visualizations of learning opportunities) to improve youth exploration and uptake of interests and programs. These smart technologies are then used to reduce the friction in the learning connection infrastructure (called L3 for informal, formal, and virtual learning) to enable the student to access opportunities for participation in STEM activities that are most feasible and most appropriate for the student. Such a flexible computational approach is needed to support the necessary diversity of potential recommendations: new interests for youth to explore; specific programs based on interests, friends' activities, or geographic accessibility; or programs needed to "level-up" (develop deeper skills) and complete skills to enhance youths' learning portfolios. Although this information was always available, it was never integrated so it could be used to serve the community of both learners and the providers and to provide measurable student learning and participation outcomes. The learning ecologies theoretical framework and supporting computational methods are a contribution to the state of the art in studying afterschool learning opportunities. While the concept of learning ecologies is not new, to date, no one has offered such a systematic and theoretically-grounded portfolio of measures for characterizing the health and resilience of STEM learning ecologies at multiple scales. The theoretical frameworks and concepts draw together multiple research and application domains: computer science, sociology of education, complexity science, and urban planning. The L3 Connects infrastructure itself represents an unprecedented opportunities for conducting "living lab" experiments to improve stakeholder experience of linking providers to a single network and linking youth to more expanded and varied opportunities. The University of Colorado team will employ three methods: mapping, modeling, and linking youth to STEM learning opportunities in school and out of school settings in a large urban city (Chicago). The recommender system will be embedded into youth and parent facing mobile apps, enabling the team to characterize the degree to which content-based, collaborative filtering, or constraint based recommendations influence youth actions. The project will result in two measurable outcomes of importance to key L3 stakeholder groups: a 10% increase in the number of providers (programs that are part of the infrastructure) in target neighborhoods and a 20% increase in the number of youth participating in programs.
This is an Early-concept Grant for Exploratory Research supporting research in Smart and Connected Communities. The research supported by the award is collaborative with research at DePaul University. The researchers are studying the use of technologies to enable communities to connect youth and youth organizations to effectively support diverse learning pathways for all students. These communities, the youth, the youth organizations, formal and informal education organizations, and civic organizations form a learning ecology. The DePaul University researchers will design and implement a smart community infrastructure in the City of Chicago to track real-time student participation in community STEM activities and to develop mobile applications for both students and adults. The smart community infrastructure will bring together information from a variety of sources that affect students' participation in community activities. These include geographic information (e.g., where the student lives, where the activities take place, the student transportation options, the school the student attends), student related information (e.g., the education and experience background of the student, the economic status of the student, students' schedules), and activity information (e.g., location of activity, requirements for participation). The University of Colorado researchers will take the lead on analyzing these data in terms of a community learning ecologies framework and will explore computational approaches (i.e., recommender systems, visualizations of learning opportunities) to improve youth exploration and uptake of interests and programs. These smart technologies are then used to reduce the friction in the learning connection infrastructure (called L3 for informal, formal, and virtual learning) to enable the student to access opportunities for participation in STEM activities that are most feasible and most appropriate for the student. Such a flexible computational approach is needed to support the necessary diversity of potential recommendations: new interests for youth to explore; specific programs based on interests, friends' activities, or geographic accessibility; or programs needed to "level-up" (develop deeper skills) and complete skills to enhance youths' learning portfolios. Although this information was always available, it was never integrated so it could be used to serve the community of both learners and the providers and to provide measurable student learning and participation outcomes. The learning ecologies theoretical framework and supporting computational methods are a contribution to the state of the art in studying afterschool learning opportunities. While the concept of learning ecologies is not new, to date, no one has offered such a systematic and theoretically-grounded portfolio of measures for characterizing the health and resilience of STEM learning ecologies at multiple scales. The theoretical frameworks and concepts draw together multiple research and application domains: computer science, sociology of education, complexity science, and urban planning. The L3 Connects infrastructure itself represents an unprecedented opportunities for conducting "living lab" experiments to improve stakeholder experience of linking providers to a single network and linking youth to more expanded and varied opportunities. The University of Colorado team will employ three methods: mapping, modeling, and linking youth to STEM learning opportunities in school and out of school settings in a large urban city (Chicago). The recommender system will be embedded into youth and parent facing mobile apps, enabling the team to characterize the degree to which content-based, collaborative filtering, or constraint based recommendations influence youth actions. The project will result in two measurable outcomes of importance to key L3 stakeholder groups: a 10% increase in the number of providers (programs that are part of the infrastructure) in target neighborhoods and a 20% increase in the number of youth participating in programs.
InformalScience.org is an online collection of resources designed to serve a broad community of professionals whose work relates to informal education in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Funded by the National Science Foundation and managed by the Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE), InformalScience hosts a variety of usercontributed resources, including a wiki of evidence-based information on the impacts of informal STEM and a database of over 7,000 reports, articles, project descriptions, and other items uploaded by CAISE and website members.
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Well-designed educational games represent a promising technology for increasing students interest in and learning of STEM topics such as physics. This project will research how to optimally combine and embed dynamic assessment and adaptive learning supports within an engaging game design to build effective educational games. The project will add enhancements to a physics game called Physics Playground. The general goal of this research is to test a valid methodology that can be used in the design of next-generation learning games. The enhancement of Physics Playground will leverage the popularity of video games to capture and sustain student attention and teach physics to a much broader audience than is currently the case in traditional physics classrooms. To be most effective, this new genre of learning games needs to not only be highly engaging as a game but also to provide real-time assessment and feedback to students; support understanding of science content (i.e.,Newtonian physics); be accessible to beginners; accommodate a range of proficiencies and interests; and support equity. The research will have particular relevance to designers developing other science games and simulation by providing information about the kinds of learning supports and feedback to students are most effective in promoting engagement and learning. The project is supported by the Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies Program, which funds efforts that will help envision the next generation of learning technologies and advance what we know about how people learn in technology-rich environments. Cyberlearning Exploration (EXP) Projects explore the viability of new kinds of learning technologies by designing and building new kinds of learning technologies and studying their possibilities for fostering learning and challenges to using them effectively.
The project will systematically develop, test, and evaluate ways to integrate engaging, dynamic learning supports in Physics Playground to teach formal conceptual physics competencies. More generally, the project aims to advance the learning sciences, particularly in the fields of adaptivity and assessment in educational technology. Using a design-based research approach spanning three years, the research team will: (1) develop and test the effectiveness of various learning support features included in the game in Year 1; (2) develop and test an adaptive algorithm to manage the progression of difficulty in game levels in Year 2; and (3) test learning supports and adaptive sequencing in a controlled evaluation study. This research will provide evidence of the instructional effectiveness of an educational game designed using principles of instructional, game, and assessment design. It will advance understanding of the contributions of different kinds of learning supports (e.g., visualizations and explanations) and adaptivity to game-based learning and contribute to the design of next-generation learning games that successfully blur the distinction between assessment and learning. The project will generate research findings that can be incorporated into other types of STEM learning games.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Valerie ShuteRussell AlmondFengfeng Ke
Summary
Girlstart’s mission is to increase girls’ interest and engagement in STEM through innovative, nationally-recognized informal STEM education programs. Girlstart examines in this report how STEM education directed toward elementary school girls influences long-term readiness and participation to math and science learning. This report compares Girlstart After School participants’ academic performance to nonparticipant performance. Specifically, it examines how Girlstart After School influences science STAAR performance and course enrollment in subsequent elementary and early middle
This project will develop culturally responsive making and makerspaces with Indigenous communities in Arizona and Utah. The investigators will work in and with these communities to design maker activities utilizing technologies that complement existing cultural practices where the communities are located. This will be done by addressing the following research questions: 1) How does the design of a community makerspace located at a community college on tribal lands differ from the design of a mobile makerspace that travels between tribal communities? What are the affordances and constraints of each model?; 2) How do high-low tech making activities implemented in these two distinct makerspaces support culturally responsive making and STEM learning in American Indian communities?; and 3) How do these new makerspaces and activities impact youth, teacher, and community conceptions of and interest in STEM learning?
By leveraging heritage craft practices, Indigenous technologies, and a mixture of high-low tech tools and materials, this project will expand the range of available maker activities and broaden our definitions of making to encompass craft practices and Indigenous technologies, which are often excluded from the maker literature and makerspaces. Through the design and development of local and mobile makerspace models serving American Indian communities, knowledge of how to design makerspaces that meet community needs and foster STEM learning will be generated. In terms of broader impact, the project will diversify making activities and makerspaces in ways that allow broadened participation in making for underserved American Indian communities. A key project goal is to critically explore making as a democratizing practice that can broaden Indigenous communities' access to and participation in STEM learning. This project is a part of NSF's Maker Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) portfolio (NSF 15-086), a collaborative investment of Directorates for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR) and Engineering (ENG).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Bryan BrayboyYasmin KafaiKristin SearleBreanne Litts
This project will make synthetic biology activities accessible to high school students and teachers by providing them with an authentic but safe context to learn. These activities will also broaden their understanding and perspectives about how synthetic biology and bioengineering is used in personal, health, and food production contexts as well as raise their interest in STEM. The design of bioMAKERlab will generate an educational version of an existing professional-grade lab for synthetic biology to promote safe production, accessibility, and affordability for high schools and community colleges interested in integrating such wetlab activities into their curriculum.
Most current efforts to broaden access to maker activities for K-12 students have focused on developing collaborative fabrication workspaces (fablabs) involving 3D printers, laser cutters, and other digital and traditional tools. This project will develop and implement bioMAKERlab, an innovative wetlab starter kit and activities that will enable high school students and teachers to engage in synthetic biology by building genetic circuits that let microorganisms change color, smell, and shape. In synthetic biology, participants make their own DNA--gene by gene--and then grow their designs into real applications by inserting them into microorganisms to develop different traits and characteristics provided by the genes. The project will involve students from a Philadelphia public high school and young people participating in weekend workshops at The Franklin Institute, a Philadelphia-based science museum.
This project is a part of NSF's Maker Dear Colleague Letter portfolio (NSF 15-086), a collaborative investment of Directorates for Computer & Information Science & Engineering, Education and Human Resources, and Engineering.
As a part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds research and innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. This media and technology project will scale up Youth Radio's proven model of STEM education through youth-driven multimedia journalism and related app development using the MIT App Inventor. A new Youth News Network (YNN) will implement a nationwide feeder system of youth reporters and educators using the previously developed and proven STEM curriculum. Previous research and evaluation has demonstrated that this model can engage underserved youth and put them in leadership positions in technological innovation. Key deliverables include the YNN STEM Desk that will produce 15-20 STEM-related stories each year; bootcamps (1-3 day workshops) training youth around the country focusing on app development and media links; and new toolkits providing resources to help with app development, data analysis and other STEM-specific skills. Project partners include MIT Media Lab, National Public Radio, Best Buy's Teen Tech Centers, National Writing Project, Computer Clubhouses, and PBS Learning Media among others.
Over the previous eight years, research and evaluation findings had been used to refine the project. These data served as the foundation for this scale-up project. The research conducted by the investigator and the Scholar-in-Residence in this scale-up uses an embedded ethnographic approach that combines field notes, recorded meetings and discussions, media artifacts, etc.--data that is transcribed and coded for indicators of STEM learning and critical computational literacy. The external summative evaluation will build on prior evidence regarding how this unique model engages youth and impacts their skills in STEM related media and technology.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Elisabeth SoepEllin O'LearyHarold Abelson
While the term 'failure' brings to mind negative associations, there is a current focus on failure as a driver of innovation and development in many professional fields. It is also emerging from prior research that for STEM professionals and educators, failure plays an important role in designing and making to increase learning, persistence and other noncognitive skills such as self-efficacy and independence. By investigating how youth and educators attend to moments of failure, how they interpret what this means, and how they respond, we will be better able to understand the dynamics of each part of the experience. The research team will be working with youth from urban, suburban and rural settings, students from Title I schools or who qualify for free/reduced-price lunches, those from racial and ethnic minority groups, as well as students who are learning English as a second language. These youth are from groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM and in making, and research indicates they are more likely to experience negative outcomes when they experience failure.
The intellectual merit of this project centers on establishing a baseline understanding of how failure in making is triggered and experienced by youth, what role educators play in the process, and what can be done to increase persistence and learning, rather than failure being an end-state. The research team will investigate these issues through the use of qualitative and quantitative research methods. In particular, the team will design and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions on increasing the abilities of youth and educators in noticing and responding to failures and increasing positive (e.g., resilience) outcomes. Research sites are selected because they will allow collection of data on youth from a wide range of backgrounds. The research team will also work to test and revise their hypothesized model of the influence of factors on persistence through failures in making. This project is a part of NSF's Maker Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) portfolio (NSF 15-086), a collaborative investment of Directorates for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR) and Engineering (ENG).
The project will research and further develop an interactive platform, Visitor Interactions in Microbiology (VIM), that enables museum visitors to influence and learn about the behavior of live microorganisms. Hands-on museum exhibits encourage visitors to engage with, and manipulate, scientific content. Currently, museum visitors experience microbiology by observing microorganisms through a microscope, through models, or through simulations, all of which limit interactivity. With the VIM platform, visitors draw on a screen or use a Kinect motion sensor to generate microscopic light images. The single celled organisms respond to these images in real-time. Preliminary testing shows that the platform has significant potential to promote prolonged engagement and science inquiry by visitors. The project will develop and research additional technological and design considerations to understand how VIM can be translated into effective museum exhibits. This project is supported by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program which funds research and innovative resources for use in a variety of settings as a part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments.
Project researchers will first compare VIM to existing microscopic exhibits to investigate both advantages as well as limitations with the platform. Based on that research, three iterations of prototypes of VIM and user testing will explore possible extensions of VIM with respect to modes of visitor interactions, types of organisms and types of stimuli. In addition to improving the VIM platform, the knowledge gained from this study will inform a new approach to informal science learning -- an approach that supports self-directed inquiry, interest in microbiology, and interest in underlying technology. The project will produce: (1) research results concerning the potential of VIM and the variety of interaction modes that are effective using the system and (2) an open-source catalogue of hardware, software and protocol instructions that will enable other institutions to take advantage of the research on VIM. Project research findings and resources will be widely disseminated to practitioners via conferences and professional journals. The research will provide the foundation for future work that will include the design of a permanent exhibition.