RISES (Re-energize and Invigorate Student Engagement through Science) is a coordinated suite of resources including 42 interactive English and Spanish STEM videos produced by Children's Museum Houston in coordination with the science curriculum department at Houston ISD. The videos are aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, and each come with a bilingual Activity Guide and Parent Prompt sheet, which includes guiding questions and other extension activities.
The Westchester Children’s Museum will develop Full STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) Ahead, an integrated, module-based sequence of hands-on STEAM workshops adaptable for both in-person and virtual teaching for high-need 2nd to 6th grade students at Thomas Cornell Academy in Yonkers, NY and Waterside School in Stamford, CT. Project activities include program development, preparation, delivery, and evaluation to create programs that are replicable and sustainable while leveraging the museum’s resources to demonstrate how it can support their communities in need during unprecedented times. Full STEAM Ahead anticipates reaching 300 students from low-income and economically disadvantaged families.
The Harvard Museums of Science and Culture will improve the ability of middle school teachers to use museum-based digital resources to support classroom instruction aligned with state and national science standards. Working with advisory teachers from five collaborating school districts, the museum will co-create classroom activities, based on digital resources from its collections, along with associated teacher professional development programs at three sites across urban and rural Massachusetts. The project will provide schools with access to classroom-ready resources that successfully support student learning. Teachers will learn how to use these materials, integrate them into their teaching, and enhance their skills to teach science content and practice. External evaluators will assess the project's effectiveness by measuring teacher implementation of the digital resources in the classroom, requests for information and assistance, and changes in teachers' confidence and comfort levels.
Hands-on tinkering experiences can help promote more equitable STEM learning opportunities for children from diverse backgrounds (Bevan, 2017; Vossoughi & Bevan, 2014). Latine heritage families naturally engage in and talk about engineering practices during and after tinkering in a children’s museum (Acosta & Haden, in press). We asked how the everyday practice of oral stories and storytelling could be leveraged during an athome tinkering activity to support children’s informal engineering and spatial learning.
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.
This RAPID was submitted in response to the NSF Dear Colleague letter related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This award is made by the AISL program in the Division of Research on Learning, using funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The project will develop and research an integrated package of high-quality, widely accessible media and other outreach materials designed to engage middle school youth, educators, and libraries in learning about viruses in relation to COVID-19. There is an immediate need to provide youth with accurate, engaging, and accessible materials to help them understand the basic biology underlying the COVID-19 pandemic, including the routes of COVID-19 transmission and mechanisms to prevent its spread. This is particularly important for those without science backgrounds or interests so that the rumors, hearsay, and gossip circulating among youth can be replaced with research-based information. Since 2007, the project team and partners have focused on developing and studying new ways of educating youth and the public about biology, virology, and infectious disease. The project will develop a web-accessible package of customizable graphics, illustrated stories, and essays--all of which can be easily incorporated into free-choice and directed on-line learning as well standards-based lesson plans for Grades 6-8. These resources will be disseminated broadly and at no cost to youth and educators of all kinds, including schools, libraries, museums, and other established networks for formal and informal science education. The project web package will be linked to multiple websites that serve as important educational resources on science and virology for youth, the general public, and educators. A prominent university press will publish and promote the illustrated stories and support distribution of 7,000 free copies.
The project will conduct research examining how richly-illustrated science narratives impact youth understanding of and curiosity about science. The research will help develop the foundation for better understanding how to educate youth about COVID-19 (and future pandemics) while generating new knowledge about effective methods for public science outreach during a major unanticipated natural event. For formative evaluation, the project will use an innovative rapid response feedback method. Youth will be invited to provide timely, specific comments on the serialized stories through a curated portal. As new excerpts are related online, different questions will be posed to youth who are selected because of specific characteristics (e.g., low or high initial science interest). These data will guide story development in real time and provide a mechanism to gauge the story appeal, comprehensibility, and initial impacts. The project will address two research questions: (1) How effective are illustrated stories in having positive impacts among participants on COVID-19 knowledge, science identity, attitudes, and interest in science careers?; and (2) How do story lines and characters have differential impacts on virus knowledge, epidemiology, and youth attitudes towards science and science careers? To conduct this research, the project will conduct online surveys using adapted items from prior research conducted by the project team. Additional items will assess COVID-19 knowledge, attitudes, personal experiences with the virus, well-being, and exposure to public health messaging about the virus. Research findings will be shared widely to inform the field about new ways delivering science education content during the advent of rapidly evolving global and educational challenges.
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.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Judy DiamondJulia McQuillanPatricia Wonch HillElizabeth VanWormer
The National Building Museum (NBM) contracted RK&A, Inc. to conduct a summative evaluation of the Why Engineering? distance learning program. The goal of the evaluation was to assess program operations and explore the extent to which the program achieved its intended outcomes for students and teachers.
How did we approach this study?
RK&A used three methodologies for the study: online program observations; student assessments administered immediately after the program; and telephone interviews with teachers. Observations were primarily used to gain a holistic understanding of how the
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.
The intent of this five-year project is to design, deliver, and study professional development for Informal Science Learning (ISL) educators in the arena of equity-focused STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) teaching and learning. While the strategy of integrating art and science to promote interest, identity, and other STEM-related learning has grown in recent years, this domain is still nascent with respect to a guiding set of best practices. Through prior work, the team has developed and implemented a set of design principles that incorporate effective practices for broadening participation of girls in science via science-art integration on the topic of the biology, chemistry and optics of "Colors in Nature." The continued initiative would impact the ISL field by providing a mechanism for ISL educators in museums, libraries and after-school programs to adopt and implement these STEAM design principles into their work. The team will lead long-term (12-18 months) professional development activities for ISL educators, including: 1) in-person workshops that leverage their four previously developed kits; 2) online, asynchronous learning activities featuring interactive instructional videos around their STEAM design principles; 3) synchronous sessions to debrief content and foster communities of practice; and 4) guided design work around the development or redesign of STEAM activities. In the first four years of the project, the team will work with four core institutional partners (Sitka Sound Science Center, Sno-Isle Libraries, the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District after-school program, and the Pima County Public Library system) across three states (Alaska, Washington, and Arizona). In the project's later stages, they will disseminate their learning tools to a broad, national audience. This 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.
The project has three main goals: (1) To support ISL educators in offering meaningful STEAM activities, (2) To create institutional change among the partner organizations, and (3) To advance the ISL field with respect to professional development and designing for STEAM Programming. The research questions associated with the professional development activities address the ways in which change occurs and focus on all three levels: individual, institutional, and the ISL field. The methods are qualitative and quantitative, including videotaped observations, pre and post interviews, surveys and analysis of online and offline artifacts. In addition, the project evaluation will assess the implementation of the project's professional development model for effectiveness. Methods will include observations, interviews, surveys and Website analytics and program data.
The Exploratorium’s livestream of the August 2017 Total Solar Eclipse reached over 63 million people. Live programs in English and Spanish provided an informal learning experience outside the museum. Over 2.75 million people viewed on-demand videos on eclipse science. Sixty major media providers rebroadcast the livestream telescope feed.
Edu, Inc. conducted a summative evaluation of the NASA-funded project. The study reveals that the Exploratorium successfully disseminated eclipse science and STEM content through media channels and a mobile app, delivering a museum experience to online