ChemAttitudes: Using Design-Based Research to Develop and Disseminate Strategies and Materials to Support Chemistry Interest, Relevance, and Self-Efficacy (ChemAttitudes, NSF DRL-1612482) is a collaborative project between the Museum of Science, Boston (MOS), the National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Net), and the American Chemical Society (ACS) among others. As a part of this project, researchers and educators from MOS and the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) used design-based research to create chemistry hands-on activities meant to positively impact visitors’ attitudes towards
Among scientists, science communication is an increasingly important area of practice, scholarship, and research, especially with early career scientists. The growing interest in combating widespread disinformation and inaccurate public perception of science has increased demand for training in science communication; however, there is a significant gap in both research and training for scientists from diverse racial and ethnic cultural backgrounds. The project will address this knowledge and research gap by applying intercultural communication theory to the design, development, and testing of a new curriculum that will provide evidence-based methods to make science communication trainings inclusive and intersectional. The curriculum will be designed and evaluated to build capacity among science communication trainers and practitioners. Sixty pre-tenure environmental science faculty of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds will be trained in strategic science communication skills using cultural perspectives and academic goals in science communication. The project will gather research data in collaboration with the national SciComm Trainers Network. In addition to advancing science communication research, training, and practice, the project will implement a novel, peer-reviewed podcast for broader impact. The project Fellows will be prepared to engage in a wide range of science communication activities throughout their careers and lead related efforts at their home institutions. Following a final workshop to develop culturally responsive guidance for science communication trainers, the project team will share findings to the field to inform future practice and societal impacts from advancing culturally relevant science communication in training programs. This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
The project will address two significant gaps in science communication and intercultural communication research. First, despite the recognition that more research about race and ethnicity is needed in science communication, few studies have been conducted. Second, while findings on intercultural communication research are consistent across fields, such as health communication and business communication, the research has yet to examine how well-established theories in this area of study apply to the unique norms and processes of science. Investigators will test a novel theoretical framework grounded in two intercultural communication theories: identity negotiation theory and communication accommodation theory. The project will test the extent to which the professional norms and processes of STEM and academia relate to cultural norms and communication styles of underrepresented racial and ethnic minority scientists, and how these factors influence their science communication efforts. The project will use a mixed methods approach including in-depth interviews and surveys. The results of the study will be used to develop and adapt culturally tailored science communication training for 60 pre-tenure environmental science faculty from underrepresented groups. The results of the project will provide evidence to make science communication training and practice more inclusive and effective. The collaboration with the national SciComm Trainers Network will ensure broad dissemination and professional application of project findings. The project will increase representation of racial and ethnic minority scientists as science communicators, including in environmental news coverage; provide a new peer-reviewed podcast series for public audiences that will introduce listeners to environmental research through a culturally responsive lens; provide tested methods for designing inclusive and effective science communication training curricula; and will inform faculty efforts to incorporate science communication activities as part of career advancement.
Wireless radio communications, such as Wi-Fi, transmit public and private data from one device to another, including cell phones, computers, medical equipment, satellites, space rockets, and air traffic control. Despite their critical role and prevalence, many people are unfamiliar with radio waves, how they are generated and interact with their surroundings, and why they are the basis of modern communication and navigation. This topic is not only increasingly relevant to the technological lives of today’s youth and public, it is critical to the National Science Foundation’s Industries of the Future activities, particularly in advancing wireless education and workforce development. In this project, STEM professionals from academia, industry and informal education will join forces to design, evaluate, and launch digital apps, a craft-based toolkit, activity guides, and mobile online professional learning, all of which will be easily accessed and flexibly adapted by informal educators to engage youth and the public about radio frequency communications. Experiences will include embodied activities, such as physically linking arms to create and explore longitudinal and transverse waves; mobile experiences, such as augmented reality explorations of Wi-Fi signals or collaborative signal jamming simulations; and technological exploration, such as sending and receiving encrypted messages.
BSCS Science Learning, Georgia Tech, and the Children’s Creativity Museum (CCM) with National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Net) museum partners will create pedagogical activity designs, digital apps, and a mobile online professional learning platform. The project features a rigorous and multipronged research and development approach that builds on prior learning sciences studies to advance a learning design framework for nimble, mobile informal education, while incorporating the best aspects of hands-on learning. This project is testing two related hypotheses: 1) a mobile strategy can be effective for supporting just-in-time informal education of a highly technical, scientific topic, and 2) a mobile suite of resources, including professional learning, can be used to teach informal educators, youth, and the general public about radio frequency communications. Data sources include pre- and post- surveys, interviews, and focus groups with a wide array of educators and learners.
A front-end study will identify gaps in public understanding and perceptions specific to radio frequency communications, and serve as a baseline for components of the summative research. Iterative formative evaluation will incorporate participatory co-design processes with youth and informal educators. These processes will support materials that are age-appropriate and culturally responsive to not only youth, with an emphasis on Latinx youth, but also informal educators and the broader public. Summative evaluation will examine the impact of the mobile suite of resources on informal educators’ learning, facilitation confidence and intentions to continue to incorporate the project resources into their practice. The preparation of educators in supporting public understanding of highly technological STEM topics can be an effective way for supporting just-in-time public engagement and interests in related careers. Data from youth and museum visitors will examine changes to interest, science self-efficacy, content knowledge, and STEM-related career interest. If successful, this design approach may influence how mobile resources are designed and organized effectively to impact future informal education on similarly important technology-rich topics. All materials will be released under Creative Commons licenses allowing for widespread sharing and remixing; research and design findings will be published in academic, industry, and practitioner journals.
This project is co-funded by two NSF programs: The Advancing Informal STEM Learning 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. The Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers.
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.
Ecology Plus (Ecology+) is an NSF INCLUDES Launch Pilot project with a goal of increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities in a broad range of career pathways where ecology plays a role. This project recognizes that both innovative scientific research and wider societal participation are needed for effective and equitable solutions to environmental issues that directly impact societal well-being and national security. Both research and policy are enhanced by full participation of all sectors of society. Despite the existence of multiple programs over many years, barriers to the participation of underrepresented minorities in ecology persist. One overarching systemic issue remains critical: that insufficient connections among programs result in breaks along critical transition points in career pathways. Project activities will lay the groundwork by developing a regional approach to alliance-building that can be extended across the nation.
Ecology+ will use a collective impact framework -- characterized by a common agenda, shared measurement, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and backbone support -- to optimize career guidance and support for undergraduate students, graduate students and early career technical and professional scientists. Starting in the Washington-Baltimore region, key objectives of the project are to develop infrastructure for effective communications among partners with the capacity to expand nationally; map potential career pathways with associated sets of necessary competencies, opportunities and mentors, and; empower alliance participants to overcome institutional barriers and patterns of unconscious bias. Ecology+ will: a) establish an online mentoring platform; b) offer a career fair with motivational talks and guidance on individual career development plans; c) offer a series of relevant skills workshops; d) arrange research or internship experiences, and; e) facilitate awareness and networking opportunities with employers from agencies, business and nonprofit sectors. The value of Ecology+ lies in its comprehensive, integrated approach that will bring new partners and their resources into a transformative and systemic response to the key barriers affecting underrepresented minorities in science.
Underrepresented minorities (URMs) are less than 10% of engineering faculty, despite comprising nearly a third of the nation's population. A common explanation for their disproportionate representation, at the engineering faculty level, is related to a lack of access to effective mentorship from other faculty. This NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot project will expand a new mentoring and advocacy-networking paradigm to bring together two stakeholder groups: (1) underrepresented minorities (URMs) who are engineering faculty and (2) well-regarded (primarily non-URM) emeriti/retired engineering faculty. A previously-funded NSF project found that this mentor-mentee pairing was viewed favorable by both parties and beneficial, particularly by the URM engineering faculty. Because of these results, the investigators proposed to scale, test, and evaluate the approach on a broader scale by creating national infrastructural network partners to help increase capacity to serve a greater number of URM engineering faculty and to introduce tele-mentoring and training models to serve URM faculty who work in remote geographical locations with very little access to mentors.
The project will use a multi-phased phenomenological, mixed method research design to gain greater understanding of the ways in which the URM faculty and emeriti faculty experience the opportunities afforded by the project. Further, the investigators plan to collect data to examine how project participants perceive and experience conventional, direct communications (e.g., telephone calls, e-mail, and in-person meetings)through the mentoring process versus the use of Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs), anthropomorphic interface agents that engage a user in real-time dialogue by using verbal-nonverbal channels to emulate the in-person experience. This project has the potential to broaden participation in the engineering professoriate and opens up new possibilities for supporting URM engineering faculty.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Comas HaynesValerie ConleySylvia MendezKinnis GoshaRosario Gerhardt
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
EvaluATE is a national resource center dedicated to supporting and improving the evaluation practices of approximately 250 ATE grantees across the country. EvaluATE conducts webinars and workshops, publishes a quarterly newsletter, maintains a website with a digital resource library, develops materials to guide evaluation work, and conducts an annual survey of ATE grantees. EvaluATE's mission is to promote the goals of the ATE program by partnering with projects and centers to strengthen the program's evaluation knowledge base, expand the use of exemplary evaluation practices, and support the continuous improvement of technician education throughout the nation. EvaluATE's goals associated with this proposal are to: (1) Ensure that all ATE Principal Investigators and evaluators know the essential elements of a credible and useful evaluation; (2) Maintain a comprehensive collection of online resources for ATE evaluation; (3) Strengthen and expand the network of ATE evaluation stakeholders; and (4) Gather, synthesize, and disseminate data about the ATE program activities to advance knowledge about ATE/technician education. The Center plans to produce a comprehensive set of evaluation resources to complement other services, engaging several community college-based Principal Investigators and evaluators in that process.
EvaluATE's products are informed by current research on evaluation, the National Science Foundation's priorities for the evaluation of ATE grants, and the needs of ATE PIs and evaluators for sound guidance that is immediately relevant and usable in their contexts. The fundamental nature of EvaluATE's work is geared toward supporting ATE grantees to use evaluation regularly to improve their work and demonstrate their impacts. All of EvaluATE's products are available to the public. EvaluATE's findings from the annual survey of ATE grantees aid in advancing understanding of the status of technician education and illuminate areas for additional research. The new survey investigates ATE grantees' work to serve underrepresented and special populations, including women, people of color, and veterans. Survey data are available upon request for research and evaluation purposes.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Lori WingateArlen GullicksonEmma PerkKelly RobertsonLyssa Becho
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The University of Georgia, Florida International University, Savannah State University, Clark Atlanta University and Fort Valley State University will lead this Design and Development Launch Pilot to address enhancing recruitment, retention, productivity and satisfaction of historically underrepresented minority (URM) undergraduate students who enroll in STEM graduate programs at primarily white (PWI) and research intensive (RI) universities. This project was created in response to the Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES) program solicitation (NSF 16-544). The INCLUDES program is a comprehensive national initiative designed to enhance U.S. leadership in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) discoveries and innovations focused on NSF's commitment to diversity, inclusion, and broadening participation in these fields. The INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilots represent bold, innovative ways for solving a broadening participation challenge in STEM.
The full participation of all of America's STEM talent is critical to the advancement of science and engineering for national security, health and prosperity. Our nation is advancing knowledge and practices to address the STEM education practices for retaining and educating URM undergraduate STEM students at our nation's research intensive universities (RIs). This project, NSF INCLUDES: An Integrated Approach to Retain Underrepresented Minority Students in STEM Disciplines, has the potential to advance a collaborative approach by a group of organizations to improve the success of URM undergraduates in STEM disciplines.
The collaborating universities will work together for the purposes of empowering URM students to more effectively navigate STEM undergraduate and graduate education at minority serving institutions (MSIs) and PWIs, and for transforming the culture of PWIs and RIs. The team plans to use evidence-based approaches to gain insights into cultural differences that impact the success of URM STEM students. Three interventions will be included in the pilot study: (1) undergraduate URM student exchanges between MSIs and PWIs, (2) collaborative inquiry to engage URM students in social science research about issues and experiences of under-representation in STEM, and (3) the adaptation of resources from the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) to train STEM faculty to embrace diversity and improve teaching in diverse classroom settings. The project team plans to develop strategies to scale approaches and develop an alliance of institutions to maximize potential project outcomes.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Suzanne BarbourJuan GutierrezMichelle CookJoachim WaltherTimothy BurgJaideep ChaudharyShekhar BhansaliSarwan DhirMohamad Mustafa