Many science communication activities identify children as their main target. There are several reasons for this, even if, quite often, they are not expressed explicitly, as if children were a somehow “natural” public for science. On the contrary, we can observe a high level of complexity in the children agenda to engage with science, and in the science institution agendas for targeting children. But this does not seem to be followed but the same level of complexity in devising science engagement activities for children. The profound transformation of the scope and understanding of science
A partnership between Carthage College and the Appalachian Mountain Club has delivered a successful public education and outreach program that merges natural environment topics and astronomy. Over the four years of activity, over 25,000 people have received programming. The effort has trained nature educators, permanent and seasonal AMC staff, and undergraduate physics and astronomy students to integrate diverse topical material and deliver high quality programming to the lay public. Unique to the program is the holistic nature of the material delivered - an 'atypical' astronomy program. Linking observable characteristics of the natural world with astronomical history and phenomena, and emphasizing the unique sequence of events that have led to human life on Earth, the program has changed attitudes and behaviors among the public participants. Successful interventions have included hands-on observing programs (day and night) that link nature content to the observed objects; table-talk presentations on nature/astronomy topics; dark skies preservation workshops; and hands-on activities developed for younger audiences, including schools, camps, and family groups. An extensive evaluation and assessment effort managed by a leading sociologist has demonstrated the effectiveness of the approach, and contributed to continuous improvement in the program content and methods.
Researchers at the American Association of Variable Star Observers, the Living Laboratory at the Boston Museum of Science, and the Adler Planetarium are studying stereoscopic (three-dimensional or 3D) visualizations so that this emerging viewing technology has an empirical basis upon which educators can build more effective informal learning experiences that promote learning and interest in science by the public. The project's research questions are: How do viewers perceive 3D visualizations compared to 2D visualizations? What do viewers learn about highly spatial scientific concepts embedded in 3D compared to 2D visualizations? How are viewers\' perceptions and learning associated with individual characteristics such as age, gender, and spatial cognition ability? Project personnel are conducting randomized, experimental mixed-methods research studies on 400 children and 1,000 adults in museum settings to compare their cognitive processing and learning after viewing two-dimensional and three-dimensional static and dynamic images of astronomical objects such as colliding galaxies. An independent evaluator is (1) collecting data on museum workers' and visitors' perceived value of 3D viewing technology within museums and planetariums and (2) establishing a preliminary collection of best practices for using 3D viewing technology based on input from museum staff and visitors, and technology creators. Spatial thinking is important for learning many domains of science. The findings produced by the Two Eyes, 3D project will researchers' understanding about the advantages and disadvantages of using stereoscopic technology to promote learning of highly spatial science concepts. The findings will help educators teach science in stereoscopic ways that mitigate problems associated with using traditional 2D materials for teaching spatial concepts and processes in a variety of educational settings and science content areas, including astronomy.
Magnolia Consulting, LLC conducted a formative and summative evaluation to examine public perceptions of the utility and quality of two labs/exhibits within the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences Natural World Investigate Lab, Biofuels and Science of Scent. Appendix includes survey.
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North Carolina State Museum of Natural ScienceMary Styers
The Exploratorium, in collaboration with the Boys and Girls Club Columbia Park (BGC) in the Mission District of San Francisco, is implementing a two-year exploratory project designed to support informal education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) within underserved Latino communities. Building off of and expanding on non-STEM-related efforts in a few major U.S. cities and Europe, the Exploratorium, BGC, and residents of the District will engage in a STEM exhibit and program co-development process that will physically convert metered parking spaces in front of the Club into transformative public places called "parklets." The BGC parklet will feature interactive, bilingual science and technology exhibits, programs and events targeting audiences including youth ages 8 - 17 and intergenerational families and groups primarily in the Mission District and users of the BGC. Parklet exhibits and programs will focus on STEM content related to "Observing the Urban Environment," with a focus on community sustainability. The project explores one approach to working with and engaging the public in their everyday environment with relevant STEM learning experiences. The development and evaluation processes are being positioned as a model for possible expansion throughout the city and to other cities.
This award will engage the public on the issues surrounding the interaction and interdependence of human systems and natural systems. Specifically, it will engage them on human impacts and the health of salmon fisheries in the area of Sitka, Alaska. The public in this area includes the citizens of lower portion of Alaska, K-12 students frequenting the Sitka Sound Science Center on field trips, Alaskan Natives, visiting scientists, and tourists who arrive by cruise ships. The exhibit will be placed at the Sitka Sound Science Center and will include a tank of live salmon fish, a computer game, a 10 minute video, and an artist's rendition of the fishing system and salmon life cycle. The team of scientists from the University of Washington coupled with the exhibit developer, Tenji, Inc., and the outstanding artist, Ray Troll should produce an understandable and marvelously picturesque exhibit for the visitors. This will be augmented by the highly capable staff that has considerable experience in translating science concepts to the public. Media broadcasts will broaden the reach of the exhibit. While the impact of this project is not huge in terms of numbers of people, it is an important endeavor as the people in the Sitka area of Alaska will understand their role in the food system for themselves and for the many other parts of the world. Furthermore, the cruise line visitors will derive an understanding of the fragile environment of the salmon ecosystem.
NOVA Labs (pbs.org/nova/labs) is a free digital platform that engages teens and lifelong learners in activities and games that foster authentic scientific exploration. From building RNA molecules and designing renewable energy systems to tracking cloud movements and learning cybersecurity strategies, NOVA Labs participants can take part in real-world investigations by visualizing, analyzing, and playing with the same data that scientists use. Each Lab focuses on a different area of active research. But all of them illustrate key concepts with engaging and informative videos, and guide participants as they answer scientific questions or design solutions to current problems. Supporting pages on each Lab site explain the purpose and functions of the Lab, help teachers incorporate it into their classrooms, foster collaboration between users, and help users make connections to the broader world of STEM. Users are encouraged to explore potential career paths through “Meet the Scientists” profiles, and to obtain information about local and national STEM resources.
This project takes advantage of the charismatic nature of arachnids to engage the public in scientific inquiry, dialogue, and exploration. The project has two specific programs: (1) The development, implementation, and assessment of an informal museum event entitled 'Eight-Legged Encounters' which now has more than 25 associated activity stations. These activities encompass stations relating to (a) classification and systematics (e.g., 'What is an Arthropod', 'Create a Chelicerate', and 'Assemble an Arachnid'), (b) spider-specific stations focused on silk (e.g., 'Build a Burrow', 'Cribellate vs. Ecribellate Silk', 'Weave a Web', and 'Catch a Moth'), and (c) research related stations (e.g., 'Microscope Madness' and 'Community Experiment'). In addition, there is a stand-alone module entitled the 'Path of Predators' that includes an activity booklet and eleven stations that walk participants through the eleven living arachnid orders. Each stations has original artwork backdrops, clay sculptures, trading cards, and collectible stamps (participants place stamps on a phlylogenetic tree depicting the current hypothesis of evolutionary relationships among the eleven orders). Most stations have live animals and prizes are given to participants that complete their stamp booklet. 'Eight-Legged Encounters' has been hosted at the Nebraska State Museum (Morrill Hall) twice, with record-breaking attendance (>800 people in
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University of Nebraska-LincolnEileen Hebets
The Decapoda - shrimp, lobsters, and crabs - are an economically important, diverse group of animals whose geologic history extends back 400 million years. Living representatives, numbering over 15,000 species, are global in distribution and nearly ubiquitous in oceanic and non-oceanic environments. They exert a major impact on ecosystems; understanding the dynamics of their fossil record will illuminate their historical impact on ecosystems. We will test the hypothesis that decapods are arrayed in a series of discrete evolutionary faunas; remarkably, the vast array of living and fossil decapods in diverse interrelated groups have exploited four basic body plans repeatedly. Other hypotheses to be tested are that the Decapoda have repeatedly adopted a limited number of baupläne, or generalized architectures, throughout their history; that they have experienced explosive evolutionary radiations followed by periods of no determinable change; and that they are generally resistant to mass extinction events. These hypotheses will be tested using a unique dataset compiled and assessed by the Principle Investigators: a compilation of all fossil decapod species, arrayed in a classification scheme including fossil and living taxa, with geologic and geographic ranges of all species, including a phylogeny (i.e. "family tree") for many sub-groups within the Decapoda. The dataset will be expanded to include ecological data for each taxon and will be entered into the Paleobiology Database, an NSF-supported vehicle for analyzing the fossil record. Employing its methodology, patterns of diversity and macroevolution of the decapods will be generated at levels ranging from the entire Order to species level. This will result in a comprehensive analysis of macroevolutionary patterns of this major group for the first time. Available paleoecological data derived from field studies and published records will be used to determine the effects of various environmental factors such as seafloor conditions, reef development, water depth, and temperature on morphology, extinction survivorship, and diversity. Because decapods have a remarkable range of morphological variation preservable in the fossil record, the diversity of the groups of decapods can be assessed in relation to their morphological characteristics. Defining the history of taxa with specialized morphology will permit recognition of body plans that have been exploited by different decapod groups throughout the history of the clade.
Intellectual merit. This study will provide the most comprehensive analysis of macroevolution of the Decapoda yet conducted, all based upon a unique dataset that is internally consistent by virtue of its having been developed entirely by the investigators. It will document the significance of employing a high resolution, species-level database for interpretation of diversity. The hypotheses and conclusions derived here will provide a model and the foundation for future work on Decapoda, Arthropoda, and macroevolution of well-constrained groups. It will provide a test for the efficacy of PBDB data versus a constrained dataset assessed by specialist systematists.
Broader impacts. The work will introduce undergraduate students at Kent State at Stark, an undergraduate campus, and Kent State at Kent, to research that involves paleoecological, paleogeographical, and functional morphological elements which, in turn, will be communicated to other students. Because decapods are known to virtually everyone, they form an excellent group to use to inform the public about ancient patterns of diversity and the relationship between the morphology of organisms, variations in their environmental requirements, and their adaptability to different physical conditions. This will be conveyed in a professionally constructed display which has the potential to be exhibited in museums and universities around the country. Small kits designed for use in elementary and middle schools will be available to allow students to make their own observations about the adaptations of decapods to their environment and its effect on diversity. Published papers and presentations on results of research at meetings will be prepared throughout the course of the research. Because the study of modern biodiversity is a concern of the general public, presentations to broader audiences as well as geology classes will provide a broad historical context for understanding modern patterns of diversity. Data entered into Paleobiology Database and Ohio Data Resource Commons will be openly available to other researchers and the general public. Combined, the databases will assure archival storage and public access, following a proprietary period.
Discovering and understanding the temporal evolution of events hidden in text corpora is a complex yet critical task for knowledge discovery. Although mining event dynamics has been an important research topic leading to many successful algorithms, researchers, research and development managers, intelligence analysts and the general public are still in dire need of effective tools to explore the evolutionary trends and patterns. This exploratory project focuses on developing and validating a novel idea called narrative animation. Narrative animation uses animated visualizations to narrate, explore, and share event dynamics conveyed in temporally evolving text collections. Film art techniques are employed to leverage the animated visualizations in information organization and change detection, with the goals of enhancing analytical power and user engagement. A prototype system called CityStories is being developed to generate narrative animations of events in cities derived from web-based text. If this novel, risky research is successful, it is expected to yield fundamental results in narrative animation that can advance the current paradigm in information visualization and visual analytics by developing novel techniques in using animations for presenting and analyzing dynamic abstract data at a large scale. The pilot system CityStories system is expected provide a novel network platform for education, entertainment, and data analytics. It will engage general users such as students, teachers, journalists, bloggers, and many others in web information visualization and study. Results of this research will be disseminated through publications, the World Wide Web, and collaborations with researchers and analysts. The project web site (http://coitweb.uncc.edu/~jyang13/narrativeanimation/narrativeanimation.htm) will include research outcomes, publications, developed software, videos, and datasets for wide dissemination to public.
The Dynamic Earth: You Have To See it To Believe It is a public exhibition and suite of programming designed to educate and excite K-8 students, teachers, and families about weather and climate science, plate tectonics, erosion, and stream formation. The Dynamic Earth program draws attention to the importance of large-scale earth processes and the human impacts on these processes, utilizing real artifacts, hands-on models, and NASA earth imagery and data. The program includes the exhibition, student workshops, family workshops, annual professional development opportunities for classroom teachers, innovative theater shows, lectures for adults by visiting scientists, and interpretive activities. The Montshire Museum of Science has partnered with Chabot Space and Science Center (CA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (NH) on various components. The project has broadened our internal capacity for providing quality earth science programming by greatly expanding our program titles and allowing us to create hands-on materials for use by our educators and to loan to schools in our Partnership Initiative. Programming developed during the grant period continues to reach thousands of students and teachers each year, both on-site and as part of our rural outreach efforts.
The Michigan Science Center (MiSci) Sunstruck! An Integrated Solar Education Experience project includes an interactive heliostat exhibit, Dassault Systemes Planetarium program for primarily middle school students and the general public emphasizing the sun and its effects on Earth and the solar system, a educational lobby kiosk, and educational materials for classroom use aimed at helping them understand the importance of understanding our nearest star and the ‘space weather’ that it creates. The Michigan Science Center is the lead institution, with the project led by PI Dr. Tonya Matthews, President/CEO and Co-PI Julie Johnson, Director of Education and Outreach, and science advisors representing University of Michigan College of Engineering Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences, and in collaboration with the Ford Amateur Astronomy Club, the Detroit Public Schools Science Department and University Prep Science and Math faculty. The project Sunstruck! An Integrated Solar Education Experience will use the latest research and discoveries from IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) and SOD (Solar Dynamics Observatory ) missions to engage the general public in the dynamics of our star, the Sun. The project will help the audience understand the Sun’s importance, it’s direct impact on our lives and the potential hazards such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections that we refer to as ‘space weather’. This project is scheduled to be completed in 2015 with testing of materials and the planetarium show to begin late 2014.