Indianapolis / City as Living Laboratory (I/CaLL) is a city-wide civic collaboration engaging in cross-sector research that builds on prior research in informal science learning in public settings. It extends research in place-based and service learning traditions, and uses the city itself as an informal science learning (ISL) environment for Science and Engineering for Environmental Sustainability learning outcomes. This project is creating place-based science learning experiences as part of public spaces in Indianapolis and establishes the next generation of urban science museums that increase opportunities for learning. The project will develop a self-sustaining program for art/science collaborations as they inaugurate city-sanctioned changeable installations at I/CaLL sites. Data from the project will be used to inform ISL professionals at museums throughout the community and around the country. Thousands of volunteers and their families will help create I/CaLL spaces, engage with communities, and serve as research participants connecting with science learning through site development. The unprecedented scale of this project provides a full measure of informal science service learning at a city scale, offering data that can change how science learning is measured, how people from all walks of life develop science literacy as part of their social public experience, and embodying the concept of the city as a living science learning lab. Broader impacts include the development of the city as an informal science learning environment that will become a new standard for thinking about what cities as cultural units can become as we build a resilient Science and Engineering culture for Environmental Sustainability.
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 Chicago Zoological Society (CZS) in collaboration with Eden Place Nature Center, the Fuller Park Community Corporation, and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) will implement the SCIENCES Program, Supporting a Community's Informal Education Needs: Confidence and Empowerment in STEM. The primary goals of this Full Scale Development project are to broaden access to and participation in environmental science, strengthen partnerships between CZS, Eden Place, and UIC, and gain insights into the 'ecosystemic' learning model which promotes scientific literacy and agency in the community. The project targets a low-resource community with a minority audience while the secondary audience is informal science learning organizations and researchers who will advance research in informal learning. The theoretical framework for the project design draws on conservation psychology, informal science learning, civic ecology education, and urban science education to create an ecosystematic, geographically centered approach. The deliverables include research, curriculum, and engaging hands-on programs for youth, families, adults, and teachers, reaching both in-school and out-of-school audiences, in addition to the SCIENCES Implementation Network. Three potential curriculum themes to be explored are water conservation and protection, pollinators for healthy ecosystems, and community resilience to climate change. The SCIENCES project offers a comprehensive suite of engaging programs for community audiences. For example, the year-long Zoo Adventure Passport (ZAP) program for families includes hands-on experiments and field trips, while project-based learning experiences enable teens to create wetlands, design interpretive signage, and develop associated public programming. School-based programs include professional development for teachers on the Great Lakes ecosystem and invasive species. Existing programs that have been previously evaluated and demonstrated to show learning impacts will be adapted and modified to meet the goals of the ecosystemic learning model by providing multiple learning opportunities. New learning resources will also be created to support the content themes and provide continuity. The result will be a comprehensive approach that ensures deep community engagement by individuals, families, and organizations, with cohesiveness provided by the overarching content themes which broaden access to STEM learning resources and leverages partnerships. The project includes both a research and evaluation plan. The primary research question to be addressed is: How does a large informal science learning institution work with a community-based organization to support environmental scientific literacy and agency at all levels of the community? A sociocultural framework will be used for this mixed-methods case study research. Study participants include community leaders, youth, parents, teachers, and staff from Eden Place. The case study sample will include 20 focal individuals drawn from the participant groups and approximately 300 survey participants. Case study data will be triangulated with evaluation data and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. By examining changes from the baseline following the implementation of the community programs, the findings may provide insight on agency and science literacy among community members. The comprehensive, mixed-methods evaluation plan employs a quasi-experimental design and incorporates front-end, formative, and summative evaluation components. The evaluation questions address the quality of the processes and products, access to environmental science learning opportunities, environmental science literacy, sustainability, and barriers to implementation. An extensive dissemination plan is proposed with a dual emphasis on meeting stakeholders' needs at multiple levels. The evaluation and research teams will emphasize publication in peer reviewed journals and presentations at conferences for informal science education professionals. Findings will be shared with the Fuller Park community stakeholders using creative methods such as one-page research briefs written in layperson's language, videos, and recorded interviews with participants. The local project Advisory Board will also be actively involved in the dissemination of findings to community constituents. The SCIENCES National Amplification Network will be created and work collaboratively with the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the Metropolitan Green Spaces Alliance to disseminate the model. Collectively, the activities and deliverables outlined in this proposal will advance the discovery of sustainable models of community-based learning while the research will advance the understanding of informal learning support for science literacy and agency.
With the Museum's increasing interest in urban biodiversity, we have started looking at all types of wildlife in our highly modified industrial, suburban, and urban habitats. One thing that quickly struck us was that in our own backyard, Exposition Park, nobody had documented any lizards since 1988. This seemed strange, as lizards are common in other parts of Los Angeles, and it led to the question, "Why are there no lizards here?" We hope to answer this question with the LLOLA (pronouced "lola") project. LLOLA aims to do two things: 1) Confirm the presence or absence of lizards in Exposition park. (After all, nobody has looked extensively for them! 2) Find out where lizards DO occur in the Los Angeles Basin, and start to hypothesize why they can survive there.
In this article, Lyon, Jafri, and St. Louis discuss the limitations of the concept of the “STEM pipeline,” an analogy commonly used in education and policy discussions to describe the academic progression of students from elementary school through higher education in STEM, ideally resulting in employment in a science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) field. Based on a decade of experience with the urban out-of-school time (OST) program Project Exploration, the authors propose a conceptual framework that supports youth development goals in addition to STEM learning. The Youth-Science
This pathways project from Boston College will test the efficacy of an intergenerational interdisciplinary hydroponics program involving curriculum development and activities at the Salvation Army's Kroc Center and the STEM Garden Institute for 4-6th grade youths and seniors. The primary research includes an examination of the efficacy of intergenerational interdisciplinary community based research. Additional goals of the hydroponic program include the examination of the ways in which urban community-based hydroponic programs foster motivation and self-efficacy, and how well youths and seniors understand the scientific inquiry process involving technology, economics and plant production. The research design includes qualitative and quantitative methods. The project will evaluate the ways in which the instructors implement the program with youth and seniors. The project will also evaluate the effectiveness of the technologies associated with plant production and knowledge acquisition in the area of hydroponics from the development through the delivery of the plant products to sell at the local Farmer's Market. Interviews, focus groups and survey will be administered to seniors and youth throughout the project. The project will disseminate a science inquiry based instructional guide for informal providers and youth who are involved with informal science education programs. The guide will focus on hydroponics with an emphasis on the electromagnetic spectrum, photosynthesis, pH, and nutrients, and electrical conductivity science concepts. More than 120-150 youth and 200 seniors will participate in the hydroponics program. Additional materials on the development of economic and business planning will be developed for the use of planning and setting up a Farmer's Market retail business. The materials will be available through the Salvation Army's Kroc Center. The Kroc Center averages 500-1000 visitors per day in addition to the Center's website, which averages 1200 unique visits per day.
The goal of the FOCUSSS project is to engage high school students in a need-to-know pursuit for learning science that leads to the discovery of sustainable resources and practices for use in their communities. The project is a collaboration among Loyola University Chicago, Adler Planetarium, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, and four local, urban high schools to construct student and family activities involving essential science concepts and tools within a sustainability context. Through this project, high school students engage in school and family activities around specific themes related to sustainable resources and practices in their communities, such as the availability and access to nutritious food, the quality of air or availability of clean water resources, the effective use of energy resources, or similar topics. The project intends to help students develop as informed and responsible citizens who utilize the principles and tools of basic science for their decisions and actions. The blended instructional model that deeply involves family and community will be studied for its potential to make formal learning relevant to the lives of children and to the health of the community. As an exploratory project, the project tests a curriculum design that bridges formal and informal education and draws upon the resources in the community. Students interact with online learning communities that include their teachers, their families, fellow students, and sustainability organizations. Participating teachers are involved in intensive workshops that focus on developing sustainability principles within inquiry-based science curricula and lessons plans. Service projects provide opportunities for students to invite their families to participate and be supported in family workshops at local museums and in site visits to organizations involved in related initiatives. Data collection includes surveys administered to students and participating family members, observations, interviews, classroom assessments, and other open-ended instruments intended to surface themes and related variables. These will inform the design of the materials and activities as well as the assessments. The project deliverables include fully implemented classroom lessons supported by family projects and online sustainability courses for students and families. The project fosters students and families connecting to their communities, resources and organizations in order to improve the quality of their neighborhoods and to promote individual, family, and public health.
The PBS NewsHour STEM Learning project is a broadcast and online science journalism and informal science education initiative to report breaking science news and cutting-edge STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) research and researchers to a national audience. The multi-platform project goals are to: (1) increase and improve the knowledge of the audience with respect to science and technology; (2) stimulate the active engagement of the audience with science and technology through interactive tools; and (3)position the PBS NewsHour as a regular destination for in-depth and innovative science reporting; (4) deploy new and creative digital tools to extend the impact of NewsHour science reporting, especially for youth. The PBS NewsHour is produced by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions and distributed by PBS to PBS television and radio stations across the country, five nights per week. This project is informed by an expert advisory board and other consultants. Project evaluation will be conducted by City Square Associates. The formative evaluation in year one will employ focus groups of adults from the general audience and teens as well as a quantitative survey online to determine a benchmark of current science knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. The evaluation in year two will test digital components of the project in a usability lab setting to gather information to help improve the quality and effectiveness of these deliverables. The summative evaluation will administer a tracking study with the same population surveyed in the first year. Deliverables include: a minimum of 26 science documentary reports broadcast per year plus additional in-studio interviews and coverage of breaking science news; a revamped website, notably "Science and Tech To Go"; a weekly STEM interview or report online featuring Hari Sreenivasan or other reporters; additional weekly digital STEM reporting; and an expanded and redesigned outreach program for teens and educators including an innovative, cloud-based student editing and content-sharing initiative in collaboration with several science centers. Six new PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs, established in high-need urban schools, will shoot, edit, and post their videos on the web. The PBS NewsHour science reports will be broadcast and featured on the NewsHour iPhone app, as well as disseminated on the NewsHour's YouTube Channel, Disqus and UStream, Hulu.com, with new science material updated daily on the web. The NewsHour is seen by more than 7 million viewers each week, with additional audiences being reached by radio, the Online NewsHour website, podcasts, and other social media. New community-based programs expand the audience farther. The final summative report will outline the impact of the project and identify the strategies and tactic found to be most effective in making use of digital media to support project goals.
The Cryptoclub: Cryptography and Mathematics Afterschool and Online is a five-year project designed to introduce middle school students across the country to cryptography and mathematics. Project partners include the Young Peoples Project (YPP), the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and Eduweb, an award-winning educational software design and development firm. The intended impacts on youth are to improve knowledge and interest in cryptography, increase skills in mathematics, and improve attitudes towards mathematics. The secondary audience is leaders in afterschool programs who will gain an increased awareness of cryptography as a tool for teaching mathematics and adopt the program for use in their afterschool programs. Project deliverables include online activities, online cryptography adventure games, interactive offline games, a leader\'s manual, and training workshops for afterschool leaders. The project materials will be developed in collaboration with YPP staff and pilot tested in Year 3 at local afterschool programs and YPP sites in Chicago in addition to four national sites. Field testing and dissemination occurs in Year 4 at both local sites in Chicago and national locations such as afterschool programs, science centers, and community programs. Six 3-day training workshops will be provided (2 per year in Years 3-5) to train afterschool leaders. It is anticipated that this project will reach up to 11,000 youth, including underserved youth in urban settings, and 275 professional staff. Strategic impact resulting from this project includes increased awareness of cryptography as a STEM topic with connections to mathematics as well a greater understanding of effective strategies for integrating and supporting web-based and offline activities within informal learning settings. The Cryptoclub project has the potential to have a transformative impact on youth and their understanding of cryptography and may serve as a national model for partnerships between afterschool and mentoring programs.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Janet BeissingerSusan GoldmanDaria TsoupikovaBonnine Saunders
The New York Hall of Science, in collaboration with the Tufts Center for Engineering Education, the Learning Games Network, and New York City departments of education and of parks and recreation, is creating and testing two innovative science games to support student learning about frictional force and linear motion. SciGames integrates rigorous, highly motivating, data collection activities conducted in museum and playground settings, with in-depth data analysis and additional scientific investigation in the classroom. The primary goals of the SciGames project are to increase student motivation and interest in science and improve student learning about core physical science concepts. This exploratory project targets underrepresented urban students and their teachers from 20 schools in New York City (NYC) and through its partnership with NYC department of parks and recreation has great potential for scale-up throughout NYC, as well as dissemination to other urban communities. The SciGames model creates experiences for students that build on the positive, fun, free-choice learning characteristics of informal settings; promotes learning through repeated game-like experimentation and play; and supports students' sustained interest and learning in science classrooms where core concepts are formalized. The project is based on four design principles: (1) SciGames turns students' informal experiences into a game, (2) SciGames makes science content an integral part of game play, (3) SciGames generates data for further analysis during game play, and (4) SciGames, through the use of digital apps, supports students inquiring into data back in their classrooms. Researchers are developing the games using rigorous, well constructed, iterative cycles of design, development, testing, evaluation, and revision with different groups of NYC students and teachers. Pre and post data on students\' science learning and affect are being used to inform the design cycles. Over a two-year period, SciGames will produce two science games and associated digital apps, and a portable kit that supports game implementation, data collection and analysis. SciGames is an important experiment, combining the informal, engaging aspects of play with more formal science investigation to encourage and sustain the interest, participation, and learning of underrepresented students in STEM. This project has the potential to transform how we think of and structure science learning for middle school students.
The purpose of this three-year collaborative design research project is to examine the role of culture in the development of knowledge and reasoning about the natural world and the subsequent sense-making of and participation in natural resource management. The PIs propose to examine the ways in which culture impacts observational habits, explanation constructing, uses and forms of evidence, and orientations towards socio-scientific challenges such as natural resource management. Collaborating on this project are researchers from the American Indian Center of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. The audience for this study includes the academic informal science education community and indigenous science educators. This project also offers extensive cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary research opportunities for pre- and post-doctoral research trainees. The project will employ a mixed methods approach and proposes evaluation through an advisory board and community input. A community assessment team is proposed to review activities, obtain feedback from the larger community, and identify challenges to the effective implementation of the program. The project is comprised of two main panels of studies: the first consisting of a series of investigations of learning in everyday activities and the second consisting of two community design experiments that engage two Native American communities and two non-Native communities, one rural and one urban for both communities, in a culturally based citizen science (CBCS) project focused on ecosystem disruption (e.g. invasive species; climate change) and natural resource management. The CBCS project will engage participants in question formation, data collection, data analysis, forming policy recommendations, and citizen action around the findings. This project will develop a citizen science model that effectively engages diverse communities towards productive science learning, helpful scientific data collection, and citizen engagement in community planning and local policy decisions. The researchers believe that fundamental advances in STEM teaching and learning are needed across the broad landscape of learning environments and that the success of such advances may pivot on innovations and discoveries made in informal environments. Insights obtained from prior research on learning in indigenous cultures, especially in biological and environmental sciences, combined with the anticipated results from this study could lead to a deeper understanding of cross-cultural similarities and differences in science learning.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karen WashinawatokMegan BangDouglas MedinUniversity of Washington
In Terrascope Youth Radio, urban teens develop, report, write, produce and host radio programming on environmental topics. Their work is broadcast and distributed nationally and online through partnerships with the Public Radio Exchange and numerous local stations. Terrascope Youth Radio leverages the success of the rapidly growing youth radio movement, empowering teen participants while reaching thousands of their peers with relevant, interesting and scientifically accurate information. The project has major impacts on three primary audiences: Urban youth, a notoriously difficult audience for messages having to do with science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Who better than their peers to understand what will interest, inspire and excite them? Through Terrascope Youth Radio they hear stories told in voices like their own, by other young people who understand what they care about and want to hear. The program's teen participants, who emerge with greater interest in STEM subjects, greater communication skills and valuable work experience that empowers them to continue their studies. Other youth radio programs nationwide, with whom Terrascope Youth Radio collaborates, helping their participants to acquire greater appreciation and understanding of STEM topics and strengthening their ability to present these subjects to their listeners. Some Terrascope Youth Radio special projects: In collaboration with New Hampshire Public Radio and Generation PRX, created two nationally distributed, hour-long specials about teens and the environment, produced entirely by young people from around the country. Worked with Boston Children's Museum to create an audio tour of green features of the museum's new LEED-certified building. This is now the museum's only official audio tour. Partnered with Hudson River Clearwater to create a series of Clearwater Moments, broadcast weekly on Northeast Public Radio.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ari EpsteinRafael BrasIrene GoodmanMichelle Farnum