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resource project Public Programs
The Green Bank Observatory organized a community workshop on research experiences for high school students in disciplines supported by NSF’s Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS). The workshop was intended as a forum for sharing, gathering community input, and illuminating best practices in providing research experiences to high school students and organizing such research activities across universities, labs, and observatories. The input gathered from the workshop may be useful to others wanting to support K-12 research activities.

It is often stated that solving the global challenges presented by the 21st century requires a United States workforce with training in STEM fields, and that the STEM workforce may be insufficient to fill that need. Education research literature in STEM suggests that engaging students early and often in authentic research experiences enhances STEM identity, STEM self-efficacy, and STEM career interest: three personal attributes that are linked to entry into and persistence on a STEM career pathway. Much of this literature is focused on college students, however. This workshop convened people and organizations who have designed and implemented research experiences for high school students, and who will examine the role such experiences can play in the development of a student’s interest and STEM identity.

Resources are curated on the workshop website.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Sue Ann Heatherly Karen ONeil James Jackson Tim Spuck
resource project Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) will convene a two-day participatory design conference of to identify research and education opportunities in informal settings for supporting literacy concerning Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially for diverse and underserved youth whose communities are impacted by the bias in some AI processes. AI uses computer systems that simulate human intelligence. AI systems impact nearly every aspect of daily living, performing tasks underlying navigation apps, facial recognition, e-payments, and social media. AI can perpetuate inequities and biased outcomes in the culture at large. The conference will explore how to promote engagement and conceptual learning among youth about how AI works and what skills are needed to critically use and apply AI. The conference will also explore ways to support the interests of diverse and underserved children and youth in shaping AI and joining the growing STEM workforce that will use AI in their professions.

The conference will identify key features and needs with respect to AI literacy and explore the specific roles that informal learning can play in advancing AI literacy for youth in diverse and underserved communities. Participants in the conference will include designers, learning scientists, researchers, informal and formal educators, and science center professionals. Attendees will work in separate teams and as a group to explore and critique existing AI tools and learning frameworks, discuss lessons learned from promising AI literacy programs, and identify design principles and future directions for research. Specific attention will be paid to informal mechanisms of engagement, promising networks, and research-practice partnerships that take advantage of the unique affordances of informal learning and community services to accelerate AI literacy for historically excluded youth. The insights gained from this work will result in a set of research and programmatic priorities for informal institutions to promote AI literacy in culturally responsive ways. The resulting published guide and community events will broadly disseminate priorities and design principles generated by this convening to help informal learning institutions and community learning organizations identify both assets and priorities for addressing diversity, equity, access, and inclusion issues related to AI literacy.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Stephen Uzzo Dorothy Bennett Anthony Negron
resource research Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
In May, 2017, the University of Michigan School of Information hosted an NSF-funded workshop on the promise and pitfalls of using digital micro-credentials, also known as digital badges, in the college admission process. Micro-credentials are digital artifacts that can be used to recognize, display, and transmit information about an individual student’s skills, abilities, and knowledge. Modeled on the physical badges used by organizations such as the Boy/Girl Scouts of America, and websites such as Stack Overflow, micro-credentials offer learners a mechanism for displaying and sharing a wider
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TEAM MEMBERS: Barry Fishman Stephanie Teasley Steven Cederquist
resource project Public Programs
The University of Guam (UOG) NSF INCLUDES Launch Pilot project, GROWING STEM, addresses the grand challenge of increasing Native Pacific Islander representation in the nation's STEM enterprise, particularly in environmental sciences. The project addresses culturally-relevant and place-based research as the framework to attract, engage, and retain Native Pacific Islander students in STEM disciplines. The full science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pathway will be addressed from K-12 to graduate studies with partnerships that include the Guam Department of Education, Humatak Community Foundation, Pacific Post-Secondary Education Council, the Guam Science and Discovery Society, the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) and the University of Alaska-Fairbaanks. As the project progresses, the project anticipates further partnerships with the current NSF INCLUDES Launch Pilot project at the University of the Virgin Islands.

Pilot activities include summer internships for high school students, undergraduate and graduate research opportunities through UOG's Plant Nursery and the Humatak Community Foundation Heritage House. STEM professional development activities will be offered through conference participation and student research presentations in venues such as the Guam Science and Discovery Society's Guam Island-wide Science Fair and SACNAS. Faculty will be recruited to develop a mentoring protocol for the project participants. Community outreach and extension services will expand public understanding in environmental sciences from the GROW STEM project. Project metrics will include monitoring the diversity of partners, increases in community engagement, Native Pacific Islander participation in STEM activities, the number of students who desire to attain terminal STEM degrees and the number of community members reached by pilot STEM extension and outreach activities. Dissemination of the GROWING STEM pilot project results will occur through the NSF INCLUDES National Network, partner annual conferences, and local, regional and national STEM conferences.
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TEAM MEMBERS: John Peterson Cheryl Sangueza Else Demeulenaere Austin Shelton
resource evaluation Public Programs
“The Roads Taken” virtual conference was part of a three-phase research project designed to explore the very long-term impact of STEM youth programs (such as the iconic YouthALIVE program). In this first phase, a virtual conference was held to engage youth program practitioners in the development and testing of a Program Profile prototype, a structured document that helps institutions to characterize their own youth programs in useful ways. Following the webinars and the completion of the Program Profile by each organization, participants were asked to complete a brief survey (included as
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TEAM MEMBERS: Sue Allen
resource research Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The Roads Taken Conference Report provides information and results from the virtual conference held in October and November 2016. Representatives from ten long-standing youth programs, experts in out-of-school time (OST) youth programming, and researchers participated in the Roads Taken virtual conference in October and November 2016, funded by the National Science Foundation (DRL-1644479). Participants collaboratively developed a Program Profile template with dual purposes: a tool for practitioners and a tool for researchers. As the first phase the three-part plan, Program Profiles will
resource project Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Jobs are growing most rapidly in areas that require STEM knowledge, causing business leaders to seek skilled American workers now and in the near future. Increase in the number of students pursuing engineering degrees is taking place but the percentages of underrepresented students in the engineering pipeline remains low. To address the challenge of increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in engineering, the National Society of Black Engineers, the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, and the Society of Women Engineers have formed the 50K Coalition, a collaborative of over 40 organizations committed to increasing the number of bachelors degrees awarded to women and minorities from 30,000 annually to 50,000 by 2025, a 66% increase. The 50K Coalition is using the Collective Impact framework to develop an evidence-based approach that drives management decision-making, improvements, sharing of information, and collective action to achieve success. The first convening of the 50K Coalition in April, 2016, brought together 83 leaders of the engineering community representing 13 professional societies with over 700,000 members, deans of engineering, minority engineering and women in engineering administrators from 11 leading colleges of engineering, and corporate partners representing six global industries. Consensus was reached on the following Common Agenda items: 1.) Undergraduate support and retention; 2.) Public awareness and marketing; 3.) K-12 support; 4.) Community College linkages; 5.) Culture and climate. The Coalition will encourage member organizations to develop new programs and scale existing programs to reach the goal.

The Coalition will use shared metrics to track progress: AP® Calculus completion and high school graduation rates; undergraduate freshmen retention rates; community college transfer rates and number of engineering degrees awarded. The 50K Coalition will develop the other elements of the Collective Impact framework: Infrastructure and effective decision-making processes that will become the backbone organization with a focus on data management, communications and dissemination; a system of continuous communication including Basecamp, website, the annual Engineering Scorecard, WebEx hosted meetings and convenings; and mutually reinforcing activities such as programs, courses, seminars, webinars, workshops, promotional campaigns, policy initiatives, and institutional capacity building efforts. The National Academy of Sciences study, Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America's Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads recommended that professional associations make recruitment and retention of underrepresented groups an organizational goal and implement programs designed to reach that goal by working with their membership, academic institutions and funding agencies on new initiatives. While these types of organizations work together now in a variety of ways, the relationships are one-on-one. The 50K Coalition brings together, for the first time professional societies, engineering schools, and industry to consider what mutually reinforcing activities can most effectively encourage students from underrepresented groups to complete calculus and graduate from 4-year engineering programs.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Karl Reid Barry Cordero Sarah Ecohawk Karen Horting
resource project Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
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. This conference proposal represents the first phase of a larger three-phase participatory research project that will use communities of interest as a vehicle for solving problems of common concern about designing youth-based STEM programs. It will set the stage for research over the next 10-25 years about the long-term impact of a variety of youth programs on STEM learning and career aspirations. Through a virtual format, the Association of Science-Technology Centers will bring together two representatives from ten long-standing youth programs, experts in the field of out-of-school time youth programming, and researchers to collaboratively develop a program profile template for measuring the impact of youth programming. The program profile template will help identify specific characteristics that will capture the influence of youth programs on their participation in out-of-school STEM activities.

The program profile template will be the main outcome from the conference. It will serve as the foundation for designing long-term impact studies that support the needs of program staff interested in improving youth programming in informal environments. It will also allow program staff and researchers to document and share intellectual capital, compare goals and features across programs, and support network efforts among informal agencies worldwide. The program profile template will be shared online through informalscience.org, the Association of Science-Technology Centers' communities of practice networks, and through other out-of-school-time national organizations.
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resource research Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This presentation was part of the "Twist and Shout: Using physical movement in STEM education" session at the 2014 ASTC Conference in Raleigh, NC. The session shared, showcased, and compiled creative new ways to incorporate physicality into the learning process.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Jen Lokey
resource research Public Programs
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It describes a project that creates incubators composed of community members to foster innovative solutions to regional challenges.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Harvey Seifter
resource research Media and Technology
This paper describes the integration of handheld computer technology into an existing web-based educational platform, the Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) and the synergy it produces. This solution facilitated a research program that explores how handheld computers (PDAs, palmtops, etc.) can expand the scope and functionality of inquiry activities in K-12 science and mathematics curriculum. The paper presents the WISE software and curriculum and explains how combining it with handheld technology creates unique educational opportunities. It then goes on to describe the system that
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TEAM MEMBERS: Turadg Aleahmad Jim Slotta
resource research Public Programs
An annual conference gathers young Native Americans from several states and many tribes to celebrate their culture, deal with issues they face in their communities, and get involved in tribal and state political issues.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Sara Hill