We present the assets that collaboration across a land grant university brought to the table, and the Winterberry Citizen Science program design elements we have developed to engage our 1080+ volunteer berry citizen scientists ages three through elder across urban and rural, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and formal and informal learning settings.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Katie SpellmanJasmine ShawChristine VillanoChrista MulderElena SparrowDouglas Cost
We used a youth focused wild berry monitoring program that spanned urban and rural Alaska to test this method across diverse age levels and learning settings.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Katie SpellmanDouglas CostChristine Villano
In this study, we examined how two different CCS models, a contributory design and a co-created design, influenced science self-efficacy and science interest among youth CCS participants.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sarah ClementKatie SpellmanLaura OxtobyKelly KealyKarin BodonyElena SparrowChristopher Arp
NASA's Universe of Learning provides resources and experiences that enable diverse audiences to explore fundamental questions in astronomy, experience how science is done, and discover the universe for themselves. Using its direct connection to science and science experts, NASA's Universe of Learning creates and delivers timely and authentic resources and experiences for youth, families, and lifelong learners. The goal is to strengthen science learning and literacy, and to enable learners to discover the universe for themselves in innovative, interactive ways that meet today's 21st century needs. The program includes astronomical data tools, multimedia resources, exhibits and community programs, and professional learning experiences for informal educators. It is developed through a unique partnership between the Space Telescope Science Institute, Caltech/IPAC, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and Sonoma State University.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Denise SmithGordon SquiresKathy LestitionAnya BifernoLynn Cominsky
The Space and Earth Informal STEM Education (SEISE) project, led by the Arizona State University with partners Science Museum of Minnesota, Museum of Science, Boston, and the University of California Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science and Space Sciences Laboratory, is raising the capacity of museums and informal science educators to engage the public in Heliophysics, Earth Science, Planetary Science, and Astrophysics, and their social dimensions through the National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Net). SEISE will also partner on a network-to-network basis with other existing coalitions and professional associations dedicated to informal and lifelong STEM learning, including the Afterschool Alliance, National Girls Collaborative Project, NASA Museum Alliance, STAR_Net, and members of the Association of Children’s Museums and Association of Science-Technology Centers. The goals for this project include engaging multiple and diverse public audiences in STEM, improving the knowledge and skills of informal educators, and encouraging local partnerships.
In collaboration with the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD), SEISE is leveraging NASA subject matter experts (SMEs), SMD assets and data, and existing educational products and online portals to create compelling learning experiences that will be widely use to share the story, science, and adventure of NASA’s scientific explorations of planet Earth, our solar system, and the universe beyond. Collaborative goals include enabling STEM education, improving U.S. scientific literacy, advancing national educational goals, and leveraging science activities through partnerships. Efforts will focus on providing opportunities for learners explore and build skills in the core science and engineering content, skills, and processes related to Earth and space sciences. SEISE is creating hands-on activity toolkits (250-350 toolkits per year over four years), small footprint exhibitions (50 identical copies), and professional development opportunities (including online workshops).
Evaluation for the project will include front-end and formative data to inform the development of products and help with project decision gates, as well as summative data that will allow stakeholders to understand the project’s reach and outcomes.
Great Lakes Science Center (GLSC), home of the NASA Glenn Visitor Center, is dedicated to sharing NASA content to inform, engage, and inspire students, educators, and the public. To further this goal, GLSC will develop a digital experience focused on collaboration and teamwork, emphasizing the benefits of a systems approach to STEM challenges. At the recently, fully renovated NASA Glenn Visitor Center, GLSC visitors will embark on an exciting mission of discovery, working in teams to collect real data from NASA objects and experiences. Mobile devices will become scientific tools as students, teachers, and families take measurements, access interviews with NASA scientists, analyze results from Glenn Research Center (GRC) test facilities, and link to NASA resources to assemble mission-critical information. This initiative will provide experiences that demonstrate how knowledge and practice can be intertwined, a concept at the core of the Next Generation Science Standards. GLSC’s digital missions will engage students and families in STEM topics through the excitement of space exploration. In addition, this project has the potential to inform the design of future networked visitor experiences in science centers, museums and other visitor attractions.
Achieving the Future of Education and Engagement is focused on the 21st Century Teacher Academy. 21CTA is a unique Educator Professional Development (EPD) two-week residential workshop designed to immerse teachers in best practices and methodologies to develop and implement real-world, Project Based Learning (PBL) curricula using NASA missions. Participating teams of STEM teachers from across the Nation are invited to Ames Research Center in order to fully experience the center's world-class facilities and researchers.
The program's intensive structure achieves the following goals: Improve educational opportunities for teachers and students, deepen teacher understanding of implementing 21st century skills using NASA centric PBL, and create an active Professional Learning Community (PLC) through NASA Ames. In order to meet the program goals, participants will: 1) Successfully design and construct PBL based lessons using NASA content, 2) Integrate NASA missions, resources and programs into lesson plans and resource documents, 3) Demonstrate a deep knowledge of NASA aeronautics research by integrating several different topics into their curricula, 4) Actively participate in NASA outreach (media networking), with students to inspire STEM participation, 5) Conduct a NASA Themed PBL using train-the-trainer module to other educators within the first year of participating in 21CTA.
At the conclusion of the workshop each participant team produced: At least one complete NASA themed PBL curricula, including no fewer than 3 NASA themed PBL activities; Supplemental multi-media presentations and tools to accompany, and/or be integrated into, the main PBL curricula, and; Submitted lessons, content, and best practices on the Professional Learning Community (PLC) website.
This evaluation reports on the Mission: Solar System project, a 2-year project funded by NASA. The goal of the Mission: Solar System was to create a collection of resources that integrates digital media with hands-on science and engineering activities to support kids’ exploration in formal and informal education settings. Our goal in creating the resources were: For youth: (1) Provide opportunities to use science, technology, engineering, and math to solve challenges related to exploring our solar system, (2) Build and hone critical thinking, problem-solving, and design process skills, (3)
WGBH received funding to develop and create NOVA Labs, an online environment that provides teen audiences with an online research lab, educational content, and the opportunity to engage with authentic data, tools, and processes to investigate scientific questions. This work has begun with the development of a first pilot lab, called The Sun Lab. NOVA Education created and launched this lab in early summer 2012. Examining the site in its pilot form, the Lifelong Learning Group (LLG) engaged in a formative evaluation to support refinements and improvements in the design of subsequent NOVA Lab
NOVA Labs (www.pbs.org/nova/labs) is a web-based platform designed for use by educators, students, and teens to engage learners with authentic data, processes, and tools of working scientists. The present evaluation study sought to investigate the outcomes achieved by users of the third NOVA Labs platform developed: Cloud Lab. The intended outcomes identified for student users were that they would: • Be able to successfully work with the real data provided in the Cloud Lab; • Demonstrate ability to interpret and use scientific data and tools; • Engage with real scientific data through the
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.
A Fulldome Planetarium Show for Space Science: A Pilot Project was designed to immerse and engage middle school students (grades 5-8) in space exploration, comparative planetology and the importance of sustainability on our own planet. Morehead Planetarium and Science Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill led the project, which involved the development of a 27 minute fulldome digital planetarium show and supporting curricula. The project included advisors from NASA JPL, UNC’s Physics and Astronomy Department and the Wake County North Carolina Public School System. The show draws on discoveries by the Mars Exploration Rovers, Hubble Space Telescope and other NASA missions to compare and contrast geological, atmospheric, and other physical characteristics of the places visited by the show's main characters. The aims of the show are to provide an engaging learning experience that helps students understand the criteria used to classify Solar System bodies and appreciate the environmental conditions needed to support life as we know it. Further, the show aims to communicate why Earth - with a balance of systems and resources found nowhere else - is an "amazing oasis" in our Solar System. The Standards-Based Learning Activities for Middle School support and extend the content of the Solar System Odyssey show by providing clear, detailed ideas for pre- and post- visit lessons. The lessons center on Teaching about Technology Design, Integrating Science and Language Arts, Teaching about Environmental Systems and include science experiments, creative writing and vocabulary exercises, discussion and engineering design challenges. The lessons reference specific NASA missions, and some of the activities are modeled directly after previously produced NASA educational materials. The show and curricular materials have been translated and are available in Spanish.