The SciGirls in Space: Exploring the Moon, Mars and NASA Careers Implementation Evaluation Report focuses on the STEM outreach component of the project for 15 girl-serving organizations who used research-based gender equitable and culturally responsive instructional strategies,NASA-aligned media and STEM activities with a focus on integrating of NASA women role models.
The NSF-funded project titled An Informal Learning Model of Genetic and Genomic Education for Adult Bilingual Learners, was led by Joanne Sandberg, PhD. The project included three phases:
Phase I: Investigation of knowledge and beliefs about transmission of traits, genetic and genomic concepts, gene-environment interactions, and environmental exposures in Latinx adults born in Mexico or Central America and who have limited literacy.
Phase II: Development of two educational interventions in Spanish that address:
Information about environmental exposures that can be detrimental to
In 2022, Kera Collective partnered with Made By Us to evaluate the impact of its flagship program, Civic Season, in its second year running. Held annually between Juneteenth and July 4th, Civic Season “rolls out the welcome mat” for Young People—the future inheritors of the United States—by connecting them to 150+ museums, historic sites, and historical societies and putting history in their hands as a tool for informed, inspired civic participation.
Our work, and Civic Season’s implementation, came at a time when the gap between Young People (age 18-30) and history organizations was huge
This guidebook will help you plan your action project. The initial brainstorm pages will help you consider where to start, and the Action Project Framework will navigate you through steps to get to your destination: the completion of your project!
This project focuses on environmental health literacy and will explore the extent to which diverse rural and urban youth in an out-of-school STEM enrichment program exhibit gains in environmental health literacy while engaged in learning and teaching others about community resilience in the face of changing climates. Science centers and museums provide unique opportunities for youth to learn about resilience, because they bring community members together to examine the ways that current science influences local decisions. In this project, teams of participating youth will progress through four learning modules that explore the impacts of changing climates on local communities, the local vulnerabilities and risks associated with those changes, possible mitigation and adaptation strategies, and building capacities for communities to become climate resilient. After completion of these modules, participating youth will conduct a resilience-focused action project. Participants will be encouraged to engage peers, families, friends, and other community stakeholders in the design and implementation of their projects, and they will gain experience in accessing local climate and weather data, and in sharing their findings through relevant web portals. Participants will also use various sensors and web-based tools to collect their own data.
This study is guided by three research questions: 1) To what extent do youth develop knowledge, skills, and self- efficacy for developing community resilience (taken together, environmental health literacy in the context of resilience) through participation in museum-led, resilience-focused programming? 2) What program features and settings foster these science learning outcomes? And 3) How does environmental health literacy differ among rural and urban youth, and what do any differences imply for project replication? Over a two- year period, the project will proceed in six stages: a) Materials Development during the first year, b) Recruitment and selection of youth participants, c) Summer institute (six days), d) Workshops and field experiences during the school year following the summer institute, e) Locally relevant action projects, and f) End- of-program summit (one day). In pursuing answers to the research questions, a variety of data sources will be used, including transcripts from youth focus groups and educator interviews, brief researcher reflections of each focus group and interview, and a survey of resilience- related knowledge. Quantitative data sources will include a demographic survey and responses to a self-efficacy instrument for adolescents. The project will directly engage 32 youth, together with one parent or guardian per youth. The study will explore the experiences of rural and urban youth of high school age engaged in interactive, parallel programming to enable the project team to compare and contrast changes in environmental health literacy between rural and urban participants. It is anticipated that this research will advance knowledge of how engagement of diverse youth in informal learning environments influences understanding of resilience and development of environmental health literacy, and it will provide insights into the role of partnerships between research universities and informal science centers in focusing on community resilience.
Through desk-based research and expert interviews, this study set out to investigate how funders and policy makers could drive coordination and improvements in the evaluation of youth engagement with STEM. The study explored the current landscape of evaluating youth engagement with STEM, gaps and challenges and key learnings from the evaluation practice in other sectors and key initiatives. Between February and March 2022, 18 project and programme evaluation reports and papers were reviewed, approximately 40 academic papers were analysed and synthesised, and 14 experts were interviewed.
Overview
In 2021, we worked with the Smithsonian Institution’s American Women’s History Initiative (AWHI) to design and implement a baseline study that would measure the long-term impacts of the Because of Her Story (BOHS) internship program on participants. The program is a cross-Smithsonian initiative that matches interns with museum projects meant to amplify women's stories to tell a more complete American history, reach a diverse audience, and empower and inspire people from all walks of life.
Together, we articulated clear and measurable mid- and long-term outcomes for internship
This document is the final evaluation report for the Teen Science Cafes for Advancing STEM in Rural Places project.
A Teen Science Café is a free, regularly occurring event during the school year in which a local scientist, engineer, or STEM expert discusses their field experiences with the teen attendees. Ideally, a Teen Leader cohort, under the mentorship of an Adult Leader, organizes and implements each Café.
The Teen Science Café Network is a community of practice linking the various youth-serving organizations, institutions, community settings, and individuals that host Teen Science
Artificial Intelligence (AI), the research and development of machines to mimic human thought and behavior, encompasses one of the most complex scientific and engineering challenges in history. AI now permeates essentially all sectors of the economy and society. Young people growing up in the era of big data, algorithms, and AI need to develop new awareness, content knowledge, and skills to understand humans’ relationships with these new technologies and become producers of AI artifacts themselves.
YR Media and MIT’s Understanding AI project researched and developed innovative approaches to
This summary brief captures highlights from the evaluation report for the first year of the NSF-funded WaterMarks project (also available on this page). The purpose of this document is to communicate key updates from evaluation in a less technical way with the many different audiences who have an interest in keeping up with WaterMarks.
This is the evaluation report for the first year of the NSF-funded WaterMarks project. It reflects an initial summary of available evidence about the intended outcomes of program activities to date, as well as commentary on how the project is using (or could use) this information moving forward. This report contains descriptions of embedded measures (i.e. anonymized drawings and reflections captured on a thematic postcard) included in community walks and analyses of secondary data (i.e., interviews conducted by other members of hte project team), as well as reflections emerging from the