The employment demands in STEM fields grew twice as fast as employment in non-STEM fields in the last decade, making it a matter of national importance to educate the next generation about science, engineering and the scientific process. The need to educate students about STEM is particularly pronounced in low-income, rural communities where: i) students may perceive that STEM learning has little relevance to their lives; ii) there are little, if any, STEM-related resources and infrastructure available at their schools or in their immediate areas; and iii) STEM teachers, usually one per school, often teach out of their area expertise, and lack a network from which they can learn and with which they can share experiences. Through the proposed project, middle school teachers in low-income, rural communities will partner with Dartmouth faculty and graduate students and professional science educators at the Montshire Museum of Science to develop sustainable STEM curricular units for their schools. These crosscutting units will include a series of hands-on, investigative, active learning, and standards-aligned lessons based in part on engineering design principles that may be used annually for the betterment of student learning. Once developed and tested in a classroom setting in our four pilot schools, the units will be made available to other partner schools in NH and VT and finally to any school wishing to adopt them. In addition, A STEM rural educator network, through which crosscutting units may be disseminated and teachers may share and support each other, will be created to enhance the teachers’ ability to network, seek advice, share information, etc.
This application requests support to enable a team of experienced science educators and biomedical and behavioral health network scientists to develop and implement the Worlds of Connections curriculum. Most middle school students are familiar with patient care-related health careers (e.g., nurses, dentists, surgeons), but few know about emerging careers in network science that can be leveraged to improve population health. This innovative and research-based science program is strategically designed to increase awareness of, understanding of, and interest in the important role of network science for health. This project will design learning activities that incite interest in network science applications to biomedical and public health research. The long- term goal is to enhance the diversity of the bio-behavioral and biomedical workforce by increasing interest in network science among members of underrepresented minority communities and to promote public understanding of the benefits of NIH-funded research for public health. The goal of this application is to identify and create resources that will overcome barriers to network science uptake among underserved minority middle school youth. The central hypothesis is that the technology-rich field of network science will attract segments of today’s youth who remain uninterested in conventional, bio-centric health fields. Project activities are designed to improve understanding of how informal STEM experiences with network science in health research can increase STEM identities, STEM possible selves, and STEM career aspirations among youth from groups historically underrepresented in STEM disciplines at the center of health science research (Aim 1) and create emerging media resources via augmented reality technologies to stimulate broad interest in and understanding of the role of network science in biomedical and public health research (Aim 2). A team led by University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociologists will partner with the University of Nebraska at Omaha; state museums; centers for math, science, and emerging media arts; NIH-funded network scientists; educators; community learning centers at local public schools; learning researchers; undergraduates; software professionals; artists; augmented reality professionals; storytellers; and evaluation experts to accomplish these goals and ensure out of school learning will reinforce Next Generation Science Standards. The Worlds of Connections project is expected to impact 35,250 youth and 20,570 educators in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska by: adding network science modules to ongoing 6th-8th-grade afterschool STEM clubs in community learning centers; adding network science for health resources to a summer graduate course on “activating youth STEM identities” for sixth to twelfth grade STEM teachers; connecting teachers with local network scientists; creating free, downloadable, high-quality emerging media arts-enhanced stories; and publishing peer-reviewed research on the potential of network science to attract youth to health careers. Coupled with the dissemination plan, the project design and activities will be replicable, allowing this project to serve as a model to guide other projects in STEM communication.
PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE:
The lack of public understanding about the role of network science in the basic biological and social health sciences limits career options and support for historically underrepresented groups whose diverse viewpoints and questions will be needed to solve the next generation of health problems. The Worlds of Connections project will combine network science, social science, learning research, biology, computer science, mathematics, emerging media arts, and informal science learning expertise to build a series of monitored and evaluated dissemination experiments for middle school science education in high poverty schools. Broad dissemination of the curriculum and project impacts will employ virtual reality technologies to bring new and younger publics into health-related STEM careers.
For public health to improve, all sectors of society much have access to the highest quality health science news and information possible. How that information is translated, packaged and disseminated is important: the stories matter. Our journalism and mentoring program will grow the health science literacy of the nation by building the next generation of science communicators, ensuring that cadre of youth from historically disadvantaged groups have the discipline, creativity and critical thinking skills needed to be successful health science-literate citizens and advocates within their own communities.
Using a combination of youth-generated videos, broadcast reporting and online curriculum resources, PBS NewsHour will engineer successful educational experiences to engage students from all backgrounds, and particularly underserved populations, to explore clinical, biomedical, and behavioral research. The PBS NewsHour’s Student Reporting Labs program, currently in 41 states, will create 10 health science reporting labs to produce unique news stories that view health and science topics from a youth perspective. We will incorporate these videos into lesson plans and learning tools disseminated to the general public, educators and youth media organizations. Students will be supported along the way with curricula and mentorship on both fundamental research and the critical thinking skills necessary for responsible journalism. This process will ensure the next generation includes citizens who are effective science communicators and self-motivated learners with a deep connection to science beyond the textbook and classroom.
PBS NewsHour will develop a STEM-reporting curriculum to teach students important research skills. The program will include activities that expose students to careers in research, highlight a diverse assortment of pioneering scientists as role models and promote internship opportunities. The resources will be posted on the PBS NewsHour Extra site which has 170,000 views per month and our partner sites on PBS Learning Media and Share My Lesson—the two biggest free education resource sites on the web—thus greatly expanding the potential scope of our outreach and impact.
NewsHour broadcast topics will be finalized through our advisory panel and the researchers interviewed for the stories will be selected for their expertise and skills as effective science communicators, as well as their diversity and ability to connect with youth. Finally, we will launch an outreach and community awareness campaign through strategic partnerships and coordinated cross promotion of stories through social media platforms.
This project specifically addresses the SMRB’s imperative that “NIH’s pre-college STEM activities need a rejuvenated integrated focus on biomedical workforce preparedness with special considerations for under-represented minorities.”
Approximately one-third of CityLab’s participants are under-represented minority (URM) students, but we now have a unique opportunity to build a program that will reach many URM students and position them for undergraduate STEM success. We have partnered with urban squash education organizations in Boston (SquashBusters) and New York (CitySquash and StreetSquash) that recruit URM/low SES students to participate in after-school squash training and academic enrichment programs. We have also partnered with the Squash + Education Alliance (previously named the National Urban Squash and Education Association) to disseminate the new program—first from Boston to New York and later through its national network of affiliated squash education programs.
In order to bring this project to fruition, Boston University is joining forces with Fordham University in New York. Fordham is home to CitySquash so these organizations provide an ideal base for the New York activities. The proposed project will enable us to demonstrate feasibility and replicability within the 5-year scope of this grant. Our shared vision is to develop a national model for informal precollege biomedical science education that can be infused into a myriad of similar athletic/academic enrichment programs.
The squash education movement for urban youth has been highly successful in enrolling program graduates in college. Since the academic offerings of the squash education programs focus on English Language Arts and Mathematics, their students struggle with science and rarely recognize the tremendous opportunities for long- term employment in STEM fields.
This project will bring CityLab’s resources to local squash programs in a coordinated and sustained engagement to introduce students to STEM, specifically the biomedical sciences. Together with the urban squash centers, we will build upon the hands-on life science experiences developed and widely disseminated by CityLab to create engaging laboratory-based experiences involving athletics and physiology.
The specific aims of the proposed project are:
To develop, implement, and evaluate a new partnership model for recruiting URM/low SES students and inspiring them to pursue careers in STEM; and
To examine changes in the science learner identities (SLI) of the students who participate in this program and establish this metric as a marker for continued engagement in STEM.
With the involvement of the two urban research universities, three local squash education programs, and SEA, we see this new SEPA initiative as a unique way to pilot, refine, and disseminate an after-school/informal science education program that can have a significant impact on the nation’s production of talented STEM graduates from URM/low SES backgrounds.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Carl FranzblauDonald DeRosaCarla Romney
This project will examine the characteristics and outcomes of a large sample of environmental education field trip programs for youth to elucidate program characteristics that most powerfully influence 21st century learning outcomes. Environmental education programs for youth, particularly day-long school trip programs, are popular and reside at the intersection of formal and informal STEM education. Such field trips provide opportunities for diverse audiences to participate in shared learning experiences, but current understanding of what leads to success in these programs is limited. This large-scale study will address this gap in knowledge by investigating the linkages between program characteristics and participant outcomes for at least 800 single-day environmental education field trip programs for youth in grades 5-8, particularly programs for diverse and underserved audiences. This study will result in the identification of evidence-based practices that will inform future program design for a wide variety of settings, including nature centers, national parks, zoos, museums, aquaria, and other locations providing informal environmental education programs.
This Research in Service to Practice study is guided by two research questions: 1) What program characteristics (context, design, and delivery) most powerfully influence learner self-determination and learner outcomes? And 2) Do the most influential program characteristics differ across diverse and underserved audiences (e.g. African American, Hispanic/Latino, economically disadvantaged) and contexts (e.g. rural versus urban)? This project will examine a wide range of program-related factors, including pedagogical approaches and contextual characteristics. A valid and reliable protocol for observing 78 program characteristics hypothesized to influence learner outcomes developed by a previous project will be used to systematically sample and observe 500 single-day environmental education field trip programs for youth in grades 5-8 distributed across at least 40 U.S. states and territories. Programs for diverse and underserved youth will be emphasized, and a diverse set of programs in terms of program type and context will be sought. Data from this sample will be combined with those of an existing sample of 334 programs provided by over 90 providers. The final combined sample of over 800 programs will provide sufficient statistical power to confidently identify which program components are most consistently linked with learning outcomes. This sample size will also enable stratification of the sample for examination of these relationships within relevant subpopulations. Principal component analyses will be used to reduce data in theoretically meaningful and statistically valid ways, and multilevel structural equation modeling will be employed to examine the influences of both participants' individual characteristics and program and context characteristics on participant outcomes. Since one research question focuses on whether program outcomes are the same across different audiences, the project will include at least 200 programs for each of three specific audiences to ensure sufficient statistical power for confidence in the results: primarily African American, primarily Hispanic/Latino, and primarily White.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Robert PowellMarc SternBrandon Frensley
Many of the Hispanic children and families who live in the Rio Grande Valley lack opportunities to engage in inspirational and educational experiences introducing Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) concepts and related careers. The University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) will adapt and research the "Energy and U Show," which will introduce thousands of children and families to an exciting and dramatic that shows interconverting different forms of energy. The show will meld the excitement of chemical demonstrations and the natural connection between energy and STEM education in a fully produced, on-stage science extravaganza. A foundational philosophy of the show is that there is additional real value in getting children and youth onto a college campus. For many of its participants, this is their first time sitting in a seat at a university, the first opportunity for them to envision themselves in this environment. In partnership with the University of Minnesota, which originally developed the show, UTRGV will adapt the show, now presented in English, to a bilingual, culturally accessible format that is designed to Hispanic family audiences and student groups in learning about energy and related careers. Evaluation results demonstrate that the show has effectively engaged thousands of Minnesota students. The target audience will be upper elementary (4th-5th grade), middle school students, and their parents. This project will be led by UTRGV, nation's second-largest Hispanic Serving Institution, with a student enrollment of 28,000, of which over 90% are Hispanic and more than 60% are first-generation college students). In addition to the show, the project will include: (1) a manual to guide implementation of the program and related resources at different national or international venues; (2) educational resources for parents, teachers and school counselors introducing STEM careers and specific STEM college majors; (3) mentoring of UTRGV faculty in outreach activities; and (4) dissemination of the show to other campuses and venues.
The project will conduct ongoing research and evaluation guiding the adaptation of the show and investigation of factors contributing to positive educational impacts of the project, which will be carried out by a bilingual/bicultural researcher. Project research instruments will measure student level of engagement, interest and learning, as well as college interest, in surveys and analysis of data pre and post demonstration. The project will specifically investigate the impact of language on student impacts. Each component of this project will be studied to determine program intervention effectiveness (the scientific demonstration and language of the demonstration). To determine program effectiveness, a baseline of data before program implementation will be established concerning Hispanic students, their persistence, and perceptions of the environment. The project will measure parent perceptions of STEM careers for their children through pre and post demonstration surveys and focus groups. Student and parent research participants will be able to use surveys or respond to other research activities in the language of their choice. Project findings will contribute to the knowledge base concerning how linguistically and culturally adapted science shows and related resources adapted into can have positive impacts regarding the STEM knowledge and careers of students and parents from low-income and Hispanic communities.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karen LozanoArturo FuentesAaron MassariBrian Warren
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. The project will develop and research, as a feasibility study, a series of art-inclusive, pop-up Science, Art, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEAM) makerspaces in a high-poverty, primarily rural county in Oklahoma. A makerspace is a collaborative work space inside a library, school or other community space for making, learning, exploring and sharing that uses high tech to low tech tools. The makerspaces will be temporary workshops that are developed through a community planning process that assesses the needs and interests of citizen stakeholders. Scientists, artists and other experts will work together with the community to design a series of thematic pop-up makerspace sessions. The project builds a collaborative infrastructure and capacity for small and rural communities by bringing together resource providers and experts to identify and design science-oriented challenges. Long-term benefits for participants include sustained focus on new approaches for civic engagement through STEAM-driven making which could foster new role identities pertaining to science and art. The project deliverables include: (1) a theoretically informed model to build a community's capacity to collaborate toward fostering civic engagement through science-oriented pop-up makerspaces, (2) Pop-Up STEAM Studio makerspaces, (3) training for pop-up facilitators, and (4) visual documentation panels and web-based digital stories to communicate progress and process.
Project research will enhance knowledge-building of the process of developing a science-oriented community challenge that embraces STEAM and making. A key contribution of the proposed project will be the generation of insights into how community members establish consensus around the joint goal of designing, documenting, and facilitating integrated art and science making activities to address and communicate the challenge. Research will focus on the roles participants take when engaging in the making process through an identity-based model of motivated action. Analysis of advisory board meeting artifacts and focus group data will allow the researchers to identify processes of negotiation and consensus building at the collective level and in relation to each issue to which the group attends. Emergent themes (such as negotiation, shared learning, idea or project revisions, diverse perspectives coming to consensus, etc.) will be examined across individual and group units of analysis, from all data sources, and through the congruent theoretical lenses of role identity theory and negotiated learning pedagogy. The research outcomes should inform efforts to build infrastructure and capacity of community resources by providing a model for developing collaborative pop-up makerspaces.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sheri VasindaJoanna GarnerStephanie HathcockRebecca Brienen
Museums in the US receive approximately 55 million visits each year from students in school groups. Field trip visits to an art museum have been found to positively impact critical thinking skills, empathy and tolerance - an increase that can be even more significant for youth from rural or high-poverty regions. While field trips are popular, especially at science museums, there have been no experimental studies about their impact on STEM career choices and interests, much less any which used a culturally sensitive and responsive approach. Given the resources put into field trips, this study investigates if causal links can be drawn between museum experiences and impact on youth. The Museum of Science & Industry uses a Learning Labs approach for engaging its visitors. These "Learning Labs" are facilitated experiences that run roughly an hour. Currently there are 12 lab topics. This study focuses on MedLab--one of the learning labs--as the setting for the research. MedLab is designed for on-site and online experience using ultra-sophisticated and highly versatile technology in challenges taken from research on the top healthcare issues that face adolescents in their communities.
This study is informed by research and theory on Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) and Racial and Ethnic Identity. The former describes a process many follow when thinking about career options, broadly. The latter describes how people see themselves in the world through their membership with a racial and/or ethnic group. Both processes can collectively influence STEM career choices. This study follows an embedded mixed-method design. The quantitative portion includes an experimental, pre/post/delayed post-test design of both educators and their students using multiple measures taken mostly from previously published instruments. The qualitative portion includes observation rubrics of MedLab sessions along with interviews and focus groups with staff, educators, students and families that take place both within and outside of the museum. This is an experimental study of moderate size of both heterogeneous teacher and student populations in real world settings. It involves comparing youth and educators that participate in MedLab with those who do not. By conducting research that looks at each community through the lens of their unique experiences, the research will measure their impact more sensitively and authentically, addressing a gap in current literature on informal science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) career education with diverse students.
This study is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program and the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program.
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.
Despite the ubiquity of Artificial Intelligence (AI), public understanding of how it works and is used is limited This project will research, design, and develop innovative approaches focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for under-represented youth ages 14-24. Program components include live social media chats with AI leaders, app development, journalistic investigations of ethical issues in machine learning, and review of AI-based consumer products. Youth Radio is a non-profit media and tech organizations that provides youth with skills in STEM, journalism, arts, and communications. They engage 250 youth annually through free after-school classes and work shifts. Participants are 90% youth of color and 80% low income. Project partners include the MIT Media Lab which developed App Inventor which allows novice users to build fully functional apps. Staff from Google will serve as a project advisor on the curriculum. The project has exceptional national reach through the dissemination of its media and apps through national outlets such as NPR and Teen Vogue as well as various platforms including online, on-air, as well as presentations, publications, and training tools. The project broadens participation by engaging these low income youth of color in developing skills critical to the workforce of the future. It will help prepare an upcoming generation of Artificial Intelligence creators, users, and consumers who understand the technology and embrace and encourage its potential.It will give them the necessary knowledge and opportunities for careers in an AI-driven future.
This project is grounded in sociocultural learning theory and practice and is interdisciplinary by design. The theoretical framework holds that Computational Thinking plus Critical Pedagogy leads to Critical Computational Literacy. Also, Digital Age Civics plus Participatory Culture leads to Civic Imagination helping youth build a better world through technology. The driving research questions include: What do underrepresented youth understand about AI and its role in society? What are the ethical dilemmas posed by AI from their vantage point? What are the features of an engaging ethics-centered pedagogy with AI? What impact do the AI products developed by the youth have on the target audience? The research design will use ethnographic techniques and design research to study and analyze youth learning. Data sources will include baseline surveys, audio recordings and transcriptions from learning sessions with the participants, research analytic memos, focus group interviews, student-generating artifacts of learning and finished products, etc. The design-based approach will enable systematic, evidence-based iteration on the initiative's activities, pedagogical approach and products. An independent summative evaluation will provide complementary data and perspective to triangulate with the research findings.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Elisabeth SoepEllin O'LearyHarold Abelson
The project will develop and research how an emerging technology, immersive virtual reality (IVR) using head mounted displays (HMDs), can enhance ocean literacy and generate empathy towards environmental issues. Recent advances in design have resulted in HMDs that provide viscerally realistic and immersive experiences that situate participants in underwater or other remote environments. IVR can provide many people with virtual access to these environments, including persons with disabilities, people living away from coastal areas, or those who lack access for other reasons (e.g., low-income families, underserved/underrepresented communities, persons untrained in diving). The project will develop a high quality 360-degree underwater film that includes live action footage, animation, and interactive elements. The IVR experience will take the participant through an immersive underwater journey of a Pacific reef, using realistic visualizations, narrative, and a compelling story to engage participants in learning the ecology and biology of coral reefs, as well as the impacts of climate change and human disturbances on ocean ecosystems. In addition to the IVR ocean journey, the project will integrate interactive functionality of being on a reef during mass coral spawning, an annual natural phenomenon through which coral reefs replenish their populations. With hand-held controllers, participants will be able to "swim" through the water, watch the degraded reef recover and grow and will have the ability to change the rate of coral recovery and learn how increases in temperature impede coral recovery. While research has been conducted on early, desk-top versions of IVR, the potential impact of IVR on learning is still unclear. The research findings will help guide the development of IVR for use in informal STEM environments such as aquariums, zoos, science museums, and others. The IVR experience will be shared on online platforms for home viewing, at film festivals and conferences, and in informal learning environments.
The project addresses the need for research on the impacts of IVR devices as it become more affordable and more widely used at home and in other informal and formal environments. Few studies have investigated how design elements impact the user in IVR, in which the increased immersion affects the stimuli perception and cognitive processing. The research will assess the learning affordances and impacts of the IVR experience on participant ocean literacy (adapting items from an existing ocean literacy survey), environmental empathy/feelings of presence (naturalistic observations and post-experience interviews), and perceived self-efficacy (pre-post survey, post-interview interviews). In addition, the project will research how segmentation (i.e., a continuous experience vs. an experience with breaks), generative learning tasks (hands-on experiences and interactive during IVR), and gender of the narrator in an IVR experience supports learning about ocean environments. Researchers will collect data from students attending high schools with predominantly minority student enrollments. Research findings will be widely shared through peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and publications for educators and designers.
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.
This project responds to the Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) solicitation (NSF 17-537) and is sponsored by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program at the National Science Foundation. CAREER: Talking Science: Early STEM Identity Formation Through Everyday Science Talk (Talking Science) addresses the critical issue of the development of children's identification with science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields and the limited knowledge about the development of STEM identity through conversations, particularly among very young children from underserved and underrepresented populations. Talking Science is based on the premise that individuals who develop STEM interests and identify with STEM at a young age tend to participate in STEM fields more so than individuals who develop these later in life. This study investigates how STEM-related conversations outside of school with friends and family during formative years (i.e., 7 - 12 years old) shape youths’ STEM identity later in life and their engagement in STEM. The goals of Talking Science are (1) To develop an understanding of the features and context of conversations held between children and their caregivers/teachers that support STEM identity development in both majority and Hispanic/Latine populations; and (2) To translate the research outcomes into informal STEM learning practices that positively contribute to young people's perceptions of STEM fields in their future.
To achieve its goals, this work addresses the following research questions: (1) What is the content, context, and structure of STEM-related conversations with friends and family that youth ages 7 - 12 participate in?; (2) How do the features of conversation (i.e., content, context, structure) relate to the development of youth's STEM interests, sense of recognition as STEM people, and self-identification with STEM?; (3) How do the cultural values and science talk experiences of Hispanic/Latine youth shape conversation features related to youth's STEM interests, sense of recognition as STEM people, and self-identification with STEM?; and (4) Does professional development for practitioners that focuses on encouraging youth to engage in STEM-related conversations with friends and family positively contribute to youth's STEM interest, sense of recognition, and self-identification with STEM? To address these questions, the study adopts a qualitative research approach that applies phenomenological strategies in research design, data collection, and analysis to allow for exploration of the meaning of lived experiences in social and cultural contexts. Participants include elementary-age youths (ages 7 - 12) and caregivers from socially, culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse backgrounds. To inform the development of interview protocols in terms of the kinds of childhood talk that leave a long-term impact on students, including the kinds of talk experiences remembered by students who choose or persist towards a STEM career in college, the project also recruits college students pursuing STEM degrees as participants. Data gathering and interpretation strategies include surveys and interviews. The outcomes of this research will constitute a theoretical framework and models that guide the development of both professionals and programmatic activities at informal learning institutions, particularly around scaffolding participation in STEM through family science talk.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
Science television shows are an important source of informal learning and enrichment for preschool-aged children. However, one limitation of television programming is that it is largely a one-way, non-interactive medium. Research suggests that children learn best through active engagement with content, and that parents can make TV watching more interactive by co-viewing and talking with their children. However, many parents and other adults may lack the time or experience and comfort with science language and content to provide critcial just-in-time support for their children. This study seeks to take advantage of recent advances in artificial intelligence that now allow children to enjoyably interact with automated conversational agents. The research team will explore whether such conversational agents, embedded as an on-screen character in a science video, can meaningfully interact with children about the science content of the show by simulating the benefits of co-viewing with an adult. If successful, the project could lay the foundation for a new genre of science shows, helping transform video watching into more interactive and engaging learning experiences. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
This project will develop interactive videos incorporating a conversational agent in three 11-minute episodes of a future children's animated television program. The videos will enable children to speak with the main character of the show as the character solves everyday science mysteries, thus priming children to engage in observation, prediction, pattern finding, and problem solving through scaffolded conversation. This study will be carried out in two iterative cycles with the goal of developing and testing the embedded conversational function for each episode. In each cycle, the project team, which includes experts in children's TV production, as well as educational and HCI researchers will develop the storyboard and conversation prompts and follow-ups, create animated videos based on the revised script, and create a mobile application of the interactive video integrated with the conversational agent. Field testing with 10 children will be conducted to iteratively improve the embedded conversational function. In the pilot testing stage, a controlled study will be conducted with 30 children in each group (N=120): 1) watching the episode with the embedded conversational function; 2) watching the episode with a human partner carrying out the dialogue in the script rather than the virtual character; 3) watching the episode with pseudo-interaction, in which the animated character asks questions but does not attempt to understand or personally respond to children's answers; and 4) watching the episode with no dialogue. Data collected from the experiments will be used to examine whether and in what ways use of a conversational agent affects children's engagement, attention, communication strategies, perceptions, and science learning, and whether these effects vary by children's age, gender, socioeconomic status, language background, and oral language proficiency in English. The project will provide a comprehensive evaluation of the feasibility and potential of incorporating conversational agents into screen media to foster young children's STEM learning and engagement.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mark WarschauerDaniel WhitesonSara DeWittAndres BustamanteAbby Jenkins