The Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley, will launch the Learning Technology Studio project to improve the ability of its staff to create digital technology tools and experiences that help youth, families, and adults learn about STEM topics. The museum will design and implement a professional learning program for staff from multiple departments to build their understanding of best and innovative practices for using digital technology to support STEM learning. The program will empower a subset of staff will to collaboratively design, test, and revise technology experiences using simulations, digital media, and AR that can elevate visitor engagement and enhance learning. The museum will create an institution-wide Learning Technology Framework that captures the findings and resources developed through the project to guide long-term professional learning and collaboration in digital technology design and integration.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that over 41 million people connect to nature through birding. Learning about birds in their natural environments offers opportunities for informal engagement in STEM by a broad range of individuals and groups. Birders often engage in scientific data gathering and analyses, geolocation and remote sensing, and phenology. They also become aware of ecological changes in bird habitats and migratory patterns due to rising temperatures and climate-related events like sea level rise, droughts, fires, and extreme weather. As such, the birding community is an ideal network to better understand and communicate the impacts of climatological changes on bird populations to the public. With this Innovations in Development project, the National Audubon Society will develop a new avian-focused, conservation and climate science community science curriculum for its Nature Centers, and test the effectiveness of the curriculum in educating the public about avian-focused conservation and climatological changes through guided nature experiences. Birding can serve as a pivotal entrée for young people into STEM fields and careers. Through its programs and partnerships, Audubon will leverage its national network to ensure that through this project a more diverse group of voices, particularly young adults and young adults of color, become involved in asking critical questions and developing solutions to address important environmental issues of the future. If successful, the broader impacts of this project on capacity building and public engagement could be far-reaching and long-lasting.
Over the three-year project duration, Audubon will bring educators from its nationwide network of thirty-four Nature Centers (including urban, suburban, and rural sites), together with over 510 young adults (ages 18-25) from its network of college campus chapters. An evidence-based curriculum and community science activities will be created and tested, relying heavily on a team of experts in ornithology, climate science research, STEM curriculum design, diversity, and informal science education. College students will advise on the design of content and activities to effectively interest and engage young adults. These students will be recruited from the new Audubon Campus Chapters Program, which includes 111 college and university campuses, among them, 19 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). The target population will be surveyed to also understand their current and likely participation in guided nature experiences and knowledge base in climate science. Current best practices in guided nature experiences will be gathered from across the Audubon network. The implementation efforts will result in a national STEM model, with train-the-trainer guides and workshops for informal science educators and public engagement opportunities focused on improving the state and condition of avian habitats and communities through climate science research. An external evaluation will be conducted and will include data collection methods such as retrospective pre and post surveys, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and an embedded assessment to determine impact. The findings will be used to iteratively refine the evidence-based curriculum and measure STEM learning outcomes for the guided nature experience participants. The evaluation will address four areas: (1) fidelity of program implementation to promote accountability; (2) formative evaluation to understand needs and interests of young adults (ages 18-25), and subsequently inform program design; (3) outcomes for Center educators, to inform iterative improvement; and (4) outcomes for program participants, to contribute to the growing knowledge base on effective practices for STEM learning in informal settings.
This Innovations in Development 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 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:
Loren SmithMark ScallionHeather Starck
Over the past two decades the prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has nearly tripled and yet there is much to learn about serving this audience well. After high school exit, most are left to navigate the world without appropriate support or the requisite skills necessary for success. Educators working in informal science institutions (ISI) can better promote both social interaction and engagement in STEM education for individuals with ASD. A learning environment in which the learner chooses content aligned with their personal interests and where learning can be multifaceted (verbal, hands-on, fast or slow, social or solitary, directed or inquiry based, physical, etc.) is consistent with the central tenets of an evidence-based, outcome-driven approach for autism intervention. ISI educators have the desire but may not have sufficient and timely knowledge and skills to engage and support this audience. Currently, many are working at the local level to develop new programs and approaches for patrons with ASD, with little evaluation or research and not building on each other's work. The project will develop a rigorous customized professional learning experience designed to enhance capacity of ISIs broadly in ASD support techniques and strategies. The goal is to enable more inclusive opportunities for people with ASD based on current and emerging promising practices. The project's theory of action is that the ability of people with ASD to participate in traditional, mainstream experiences will improve their motivation to seek other similar opportunities, build interpersonal skills critical to successful interaction in society, formal education, and careers. This, in turn, will help individuals with ASD gain the skills and confidence needed to pursue STEM academically and professionally. The project is a collaboration between the Institute for Learning Innovation, the SciTech Institute, and the Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center (SARRC). This project is funded by the Advanced 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.
The pilot's main research questions are: (1) To what degree does the professional learning program support the learning outcomes in knowledge, awareness, interest, skills, attitude, and behavior change in informal science education providers? and (2) What features of the program do educators consider most effective for improving their ability to serve this audience? Four Arizona ISIs will participate in a research-based design study; their staff will also comprise the founding members of a Community of Practice aimed at sharing promising practices and promoting broader engagement among the informal science education community. The professional development (PD) will be provided by SARRC. New formative evaluation skills will support ongoing innovation and build participant capacity. Leveraging this training, the ISIs will create and test new approaches and programs, apply new skills in formative evaluation, and develop internal workplace programs to create cultures of ASD understanding. A pilot research study will recruit 20 diverse individuals with ASD who will visit each institution prior to and after the PD for staff. The research will measure the degree to which the PD impacts attendee experience as well as assess the science learning that occurred because of their visit. This project will advance collaboration between ASD experts and ISI educators to iteratively develop effective museum learning strategies. Other goals of this work are to provide important insights into (a) the current state of accessibility programs in ISI venues nationally, (b) how PD can be leveraged to help institutions reach true inclusion, and (c) initial evidenced-based approaches for inclusion of individuals on the Autism spectrum in mainstream informal environments. In addition to the research findings, deliverables include an ASD PD model, national inventory of current practices and programs that support ASD learning and participation, and the establishment of a Community of Practice.
This Innovations in Development 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.
We found that the learners seeking out resources to teach themselves to code were generally college educated women who were motived either by the desire to be able to read and understand the code written by hired developers or the desire to become developers themselves. The importance of a female-focused learning setting was mixed; while most women acknowledged a more comfortable atmosphere created by such a setting, very few cited that as a primary reason for joining the group.
All learner participants in this study persisted through the ten weeks of the Women’s Coaching and Learning
In 2016, ETR received a National Science Foundation grant to study, under Principal Investigator Louise Ann (“Lou Ann”) Lyon, PhD, a newly formed, real-world organization dedicated to helping women in the workforce learn to write computer code. This project formed a partnership between a research team with experience in computer science (CS) education and learning sciences research and a newly fashioned practitioner team focused on building a grassroots, informal, volunteer group created to help women help themselves and others learn to write computer code. This research-practitioner
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program 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 Research in Service to Practice project examines how informal place-based collaborative learning can support local communities' planning processes related to current environmental changes. As a part of this study workshops will be conducted in 8 communities that have a range of planning mandates based on recent extreme environmental changes such as drought/wildfires, flooding, invasive species, or loss of native wildlife. Place-based adaptation workshops will be designed to be locally relevant and empower people to learn and act on their newly acquired understandings. Local community collective actions may include a range of decisions (e.g., infrastructure changes such as building defenses against sea level rise in coastal communities or improving the quality of roads to withstand higher temperatures.) Collective action may also lead to community wide behavioral changes such as individuals using less water or farmers planting different crops. The study will focus on the efficacy of the methods used in 8 workshops in communities throughout the country. Research objectives include: 1) identifying experts' belief about the most critical components of successful workshops; 2) Understanding of prior workshop outcomes and 3) test hypothesized effective practices and understand how learning takes place and collective action does or does not take place. The project addresses key AISL solicitation priorities including strategic impact on the field of informal STEM learning, advancing collaboration, and building professional capacity. It engages both public and professional audiences as described in the solicitation. Public audiences include stakeholders in each of the 8 communities such as community environmental groups, NGOs, businesses, landowners, and local government planners. Professional audiences include the workshop scientists and facilitators who will be trained in the experimental workshop approach. The project builds upon and expands the existing AISL portfolio of science communication projects such as science cafes, science festivals, science media, and library based projects. This is a collaborative project of EcoAdapt and Virginia Tech with participants from the National Parks Conservation Association, the Desert Research Institute, and the Wildlife Conservation Society and others. The research will progress through two phases. Phase 1 is designed to identify consensus-based effective practices for promoting learning and action in adaptation workshops. It includes a Delphi study to synthesize beliefs about effective practices held by experienced workshop facilitators across the United States. Phase 2 includes iterative design and research of eight adaptation workshops in various communities with a range of planning mandates and recent extreme weather experience. By iteratively revising the workshop design, the study will elucidate how different workshop components influence participant learning, individual behavioral intentions, and subsequent efforts toward collective action. The overall research design will examine the relationships of pedagogical and collaborative techniques to learner outcomes and collective action. Many of these lessons are likely relevant to other collaborative informal science learning contexts. 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.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches and resources for use in a variety of settings. The project will conduct research designed to deepen our fundamental knowledge about culture, experience, and ecosystems cognition and to develop innovative practices and approaches to support learning about changing ecological systems and environmental decision making. Work on cultural differences in the production of complex systems knowledge is severely lacking. This gap in knowledge may contribute to the continued reproduction of inequities in science education. More broadly findings from this project will have clear implications for theories of cognitive development, especially those pertaining to how knowledge is shaped by culture and experience. Focusing on ecosystems may represent an opportunity to not only increase engagement and achievement in science among non-dominant communities and Native youth specifically, but also advance effective learning for all communities. The primary deliverables for the project are conference presentations and research publications. However, the project will also develop additional resources freely available to researchers, educators, and the general public. These will include summer curricular materials and teaching tools, professional development workshops, practitioner briefs about research findings that can be used in professional development workshops and shared share more broadly, and evaluation reports.
A deeper understanding of cultural influences on conceptions of the natural world can serve to advance the educational needs of children, including children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Project research will include two interrelated series of studies designed to expand knowledge about human cognition of complex ecosystems and the affordances of informal STEM learning environments in developing and supporting the critical 21st century skill of ecological systems level reasoning. The first consists of a series of experiments focused on ecological cognition and the role of humans in nature. The second consists of design-based research interventions in informal settings, summer workshops for youth and the communities, focused on ecological systems level thinking and socio-environmental decision making. The project will recruit and engage both child and adult participants from two broad cultural communities, Native Americans and European Americans living in urban and suburban communities, in part because it affords a sharp test of human-nature relations. Sampling from two different urban communities will avoid simple Native-non-Native comparative binaries and to conduct Native-to-Native comparative analysis. Based on results from this, the project will result in: 1) foundational knowledge about human learning and reasoning and ecosystems and environmental decision making, 2) culturally responsive models of learning and practice about complex ecosystems for indoors and outdoors informal learning environments, and 3) insights about research-practice-community partnerships. One important objective of the research is to broaden participation and close opportunity gaps for under-represented groups in STEM fields broadly and more specifically for Indigenous people. Members of Indigenous communities, who provide strong role models for other aspiring scholars, will be involved as postdoctoral fellows, research assistants and graduate fellows.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program 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 embed public engagement with science (PES) into the cultures and practices of two Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites: the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire and the Harvard Forest in Massachusetts. The goals are 1) to build knowledge about the mutual learning between scientists and adult stakeholders in face-to-face engagement setting and 2) to develop evidence-based practices in the content of place-based ecosystem research. This is a collaborative project of 3 universities (Michigan State University, Harvard, and CUNY) and the two LTERs. Two primary research questions guide this work. First, how willing are participating scientists to take part in PES? What are their attitudes and beliefs about whether engagement can be effective and whether they have the necessary skills? Second, how willing are participating scientists to build relationships with stakeholders using normed tactics? Both qualitative and quantitative methods will be used to collect evidence including semi-structured interviews and surveys. A general set of hypothesis include that there will be positive changes in LTER scientists willingness to participate in PES, attitudes, and efficacy beliefs.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
John BesleySarah GarlickPeter GroffmanPamela TemplerKathleen Lambert