The Explora Science Center and Children’s Museum will carry out the “Planting Seeds of STEM” project to address the under-representation of people of color in STEM courses and careers. Through informal science education programming that focuses on the STEM concepts inherent in the agricultural traditions of New Mexico, the project will engage students from communities of color in STEM. The project also aims to increase exposure to STEM role models, especially farmers from communities of color, and spark interest in STEM content and careers. The museum will partner with multiple local organizations and the New Mexico State University Master Gardener Program to implement the project activities.
The Adler Planetarium will expand access to STEM programs for African American and Latinx Chicago teens through a progressive series of entry-point, introductory, intermediate, and advanced level programs. Students in grades 7–12 will be invited to join teams of scientists, engineers, and educators to undertake authentic scientific research and solve real engineering challenges. In collaboration with schools and community-based organizations, Adler will develop and implement new participant recruitment and retention strategies to reach teens in specific neighborhoods. The initiative will help address the underrepresentation of Latinx and African Americans in engineering.
The Montana Natural History Center, in collaboration with the University of Montana, will develop an exhibit to showcase a selection of the university's extensive fossil collection. This new exhibit will help create inclusive, inquiry-based, educational opportunities for preschoolers through adults. University faculty will guide specimen interpretation and story development. The exhibit will explore modern research into evolution in a time of climate change, sharing ongoing university research and highlighting STEM careers and citizen science work. The project is based on interests identified through surveys, museum visitor recommendations, and a member focus group.
This is an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, under the program Broadening Participation of Groups Under-represented in Biology. The fellow, Robert Habig, is conducting research and receiving training that is increasing the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. The fellow is being mentored by David Lahti at Queens College, City University of New York. The goal of the fellow's project is to perform a comparative evolutionary analysis of nest construction in the weaverbirds (Ploceus spp.). The evolutionary history of behavior can be nearly intractable and resistant to quantitative analysis. One strategy for illuminating our understanding of behavioral evolution is to conduct comparative studies of animal architectures, such as nests. Unlike behaviors themselves, nests persist through time, and have structures that can be disassociated into several quantitative features, which permits easy and comparable measurements and allows scientists to address questions about evolutionary history and functional relevance. The fellow's research addresses two major questions: (1) How do patterns of nest construction vary within and between species? (2) How do interrelated evolutionary processes shape variation in nest structure? This project is important for advancing foundational scientific knowledge, and will be the first study of weavers incorporating both molecular data and nest morphology to better understand the evolutionary underpinnings of a complex behavioral process. The fellow is also broadening participation in science by mentoring students underrepresented in biology.
The Fellow will reconstruct the evolution of nest construction in Ploceus weaverbirds incorporating advanced phylogenetic and morphological techniques including bioinformatics, computer modeling, X-ray computed tomography, and image processing. The Fellow will also conduct fieldwork in two hotspots of weaverbird diversity, the Awash Valley in Ethiopia and the Limpopo Province of South Africa, and collect behavioral data (e.g. rates of predation and brood parasitism; mating and parental behavior) and morphological data (e.g. nest structure) to test hypotheses of how distinct types of evolutionary selection shape the evolution of nest construction. The proposed comparative study can thus address questions such as how rapidly certain nest structural features evolve, which features are ancestral versus derived, which tend to exhibit phylogenetic signal, and which evolve in response to environmental features. The Fellow is receiving training in three-dimensional morphological analyses, phylogenetic tree construction, bioinformatics, computer modeling, and mentoring skills. The plan to broaden participation includes (1) recruitment, training, and mentoring of Queens College students from underrepresented groups in biology; (2) designing an evolutionary biology curriculum that ties in the research of the fellowship; (3) teaching an evolutionary biology class to underrepresented middle and high school students at the American Museum of Natural History; and (4) facilitating a research team for middle school and high school students.
Wireless radio communications, such as Wi-Fi, transmit public and private data from one device to another, including cell phones, computers, medical equipment, satellites, space rockets, and air traffic control. Despite their critical role and prevalence, many people are unfamiliar with radio waves, how they are generated and interact with their surroundings, and why they are the basis of modern communication and navigation. This topic is not only increasingly relevant to the technological lives of today’s youth and public, it is critical to the National Science Foundation’s Industries of the Future activities, particularly in advancing wireless education and workforce development. In this project, STEM professionals from academia, industry and informal education will join forces to design, evaluate, and launch digital apps, a craft-based toolkit, activity guides, and mobile online professional learning, all of which will be easily accessed and flexibly adapted by informal educators to engage youth and the public about radio frequency communications. Experiences will include embodied activities, such as physically linking arms to create and explore longitudinal and transverse waves; mobile experiences, such as augmented reality explorations of Wi-Fi signals or collaborative signal jamming simulations; and technological exploration, such as sending and receiving encrypted messages.
BSCS Science Learning, Georgia Tech, and the Children’s Creativity Museum (CCM) with National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Net) museum partners will create pedagogical activity designs, digital apps, and a mobile online professional learning platform. The project features a rigorous and multipronged research and development approach that builds on prior learning sciences studies to advance a learning design framework for nimble, mobile informal education, while incorporating the best aspects of hands-on learning. This project is testing two related hypotheses: 1) a mobile strategy can be effective for supporting just-in-time informal education of a highly technical, scientific topic, and 2) a mobile suite of resources, including professional learning, can be used to teach informal educators, youth, and the general public about radio frequency communications. Data sources include pre- and post- surveys, interviews, and focus groups with a wide array of educators and learners.
A front-end study will identify gaps in public understanding and perceptions specific to radio frequency communications, and serve as a baseline for components of the summative research. Iterative formative evaluation will incorporate participatory co-design processes with youth and informal educators. These processes will support materials that are age-appropriate and culturally responsive to not only youth, with an emphasis on Latinx youth, but also informal educators and the broader public. Summative evaluation will examine the impact of the mobile suite of resources on informal educators’ learning, facilitation confidence and intentions to continue to incorporate the project resources into their practice. The preparation of educators in supporting public understanding of highly technological STEM topics can be an effective way for supporting just-in-time public engagement and interests in related careers. Data from youth and museum visitors will examine changes to interest, science self-efficacy, content knowledge, and STEM-related career interest. If successful, this design approach may influence how mobile resources are designed and organized effectively to impact future informal education on similarly important technology-rich topics. All materials will be released under Creative Commons licenses allowing for widespread sharing and remixing; research and design findings will be published in academic, industry, and practitioner journals.
This project is co-funded by two NSF programs: The Advancing Informal STEM Learning 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 Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers.
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.
Computing fields are foundational to most STEM disciplines and the only STEM discipline to show a consistent decline in women's representation since 1990, making it an important field for STEM educators to study. The explanation for the underrepresentation of women and girls in computing is twofold: a sense that they do not fit within the stereotypes associated with computing and a lack of access to computer games and technologies beginning at an early age (Richard, 2016).
Informal coding education programs are uniquely situated to counter these hurdles because they can offer additional
This NOVA multiplatform media initiative consisted of a 2-hour nationally broadcast PBS documentary, Polar Extremes; a 10-part original digital series, Antarctic Extremes; an interactive game, Polar Lab; accompanying polar-themed digital shorts, radio stories, text reporting, and social media content; a collection of educational resources on PBS LearningMedia; and community screening events and virtual field trips for science classrooms. Across multiple media platforms the project’s video content had nearly 13 million views.
The research explored the potential for informal STEM learning
The University of South Carolina will develop and research an educational program in the Southeastern United States designed to recognize and foreground the scientific contributions of the descendants of West Africans and West Indians. Though these contributions have been vital to many scientific enterprises, including land stewardship and aquaponics, they have remained largely underappreciated in educational programs. To address this issue, this project will develop an informal science education program for youth from Gullah/Geechee communities whose ancestors were formerly enslaved West African and West Indian peoples. Across centuries, Gullah/Geechee people have developed historical and contemporary scientific, engineering, and technological practices that enabled the mastery of fishing and the cultivation of numerous crops across barrier islands and coastal cities from North Carolina to Florida. Guided by Gullah/Geechee scholars and community members, pre-service and in-service teachers will co-design culturally sustaining summer programs, which provide Gullah/Geechee youth with opportunities to engage in culturally-embedded scientific and engineering practices as they learn about numerous STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) career pathways related to these practices. The University of South Carolina will host these summer programs in partnership with the historic Penn Center, an African American historical and cultural institution, and in partnership with the Belle W. Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences, a research organization dedicated to improving the management of marine and coastal resources. Researchers will study how the in-service and pre-service teachers enact pedagogies that sustain Gullah/Geechee cultural practices. They will also study how the Gullah/Geechee youth share their understandings of culturally-embedded scientific content through creating iMovies and through giving community presentations hosted by the Penn Center, Baruch Institute, and other community partners. This project will advance knowledge on broadening participation in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) career pathways in informal settings through culturally sustaining pedagogies. This project will also advance partnerships through illuminating how different institutions and stakeholders?such as community leaders, cultural centers, university educator programs, and scientific research organizations can work together to support culturally-embedded learning across informal settings.
The University of South Carolina will conduct a mixed-method study grounded in principles of design-based research and community-based participatory research. Pre-service and in-service teachers from underrepresented groups will participate in an immersive two-year professional development experience during which they co-design and teach culturally sustaining summer programs with Gullah/Geechee scholars and leaders. In these programs, fifth- and sixth-grade Gullah/Geechee youth will engage in project-based learning by applying historical and contemporary scientific practices grounded in Gullah/Geechee cultures. Guided by cultural mentors, youth will engage in STEM practices similar to those of STEM professionals in the community. Researchers will study how the educators understand and apply culturally sustaining pedagogies by using constant comparative analytic methods to analyze transcripts from observations and interviews, as well as the educators' work materials (e.g., lesson plans). They will also study how the youth convey their understandings of culturally-embedded scientific content and practices by using constant comparative and multimodal analysis to analyze transcripts from interviews and observations, as well as youth-generated artifacts such as the iMovie. Additionally, pre- and post-tests will enable the research team to determine changes to the youths' understandings of scientific content and perceptions regarding participation in STEM enterprises and careers. Deliverables, such as youth-generated products, will be shared with local media and with relevant cultural centers, while empirical results will be widely disseminated through local and national conferences. This project is funded by the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts, and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers. This project is also co-funded by the Advanced Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program. As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the AISL program 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.
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.
An ecosystems model of learning suggests there are critical partners within and across a community that support learning across the lifespan. These school-community partnerships, developed with shared accountability and goals, are essential to rural students given the lack of economic and geographic access to such services. Youth in rural areas may have limited opportunities to engage with professionals. The team proposes to overcome this gap by capitalizing on the wide-spread interest in archaeology to teach critical thinking using STEM concepts and testing components of a partnership program. This project will advance knowledge on multidisciplinary STEM education by iteratively developing and researching an after-school program in which youth engage in multidisciplinary inquiry in the context of archeology. Mentored by archaeologists, rural youth and citizen scientists will use concepts and tools drawn from biology, ecology, geospatial science, mathematics, physics, and data science to identify and answer questions related to the history of their local region. An outcome of this project will be a road map for moving from a feasibility project to a larger implementation project locally and an understanding of community partnerships engaging more broadly.
Researchers at SUNY Binghamton will conduct a mixed-methods research study that examines the ways in which participation in a multidisciplinary after-school archaeology program supports the development of STEM identities among rural youth in sixth through eighth grades. The research team will use content analysis to analyze field notes from observations, as well as transcripts from focus groups and interviews with the youth. They will use inferential statistics to explore changes in the youths' STEM identity using an identity survey, which will be administered to the youth before and after participation in the program. Additionally, the research team will conduct qualitative research that explores shifts in the afterschool program providers' perceptions about supporting middle school youth as STEM learners. The program providers are comprised of graduate and undergraduate archaeology students, citizen scientists, and professional archaeologists. The course modules developed for the after-school program will be disseminated through professional networks and organizations dedicated to archaeologists and informal educators, and empirical findings will be shared widely via peer-reviewed publications. This project is funded by the Advanced Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program. As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the AISL program 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.
This Pilots and Feasability Studies 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.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program 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.
This pilot and feasibility project addresses the needs of youth (ages 10-19) who are deaf or hard of hearing and use either English or American Sign Language as their preferred method of communication. The project will develop and study video stories from members of the STEM workforce who are deaf or hard of hearing. Youth will view these videos on the web at home or at an afterschool program. These stories will help the youth become aware of the range of STEM careers that are available and their potential to pursue and succeed in these occupations. One of the biggest challenges young persons who are deaf or hard of hearing face is not having role models who are members of the STEM workforce. Without these role models they are not aware of the possibility that they could work in these fields. Several studies indicate that seeing other people with disabilities having success in STEM boosts self-confidence. Exposure to deaf role models allows deaf student to identify with successful deaf people and consequently believe they themselves could accomplish goals they previously thought out of their reach. Project collaborators include Gallaudet University Regional Center, Northeast Deaf & Hard of Hearing Service, Boys & Girls Club of Lynn, MA, and Bridge Multimedia.
The project will advance knowledge in the field of deaf education in informal settings. The research questions are: 1) How do adolescents who are deaf or hard of hearing integrate and use digital versions of firsthand stories from members of the STEM workforce? 2) How do parents and club leaders make use of the stories? 3) What kind of outcomes are made possible by using the stories such as interest in STEM careers 4) What modifications and additional would improve the stories to make them more useful and effective? 5) What dissemination strategies would maximize story use? The project will do a formative evaluation of the pilot videos using a sample of 30 family groups and 10 boys? and girls? participants. Families will meet with researchers at one of the collaborating institutions (Gallaudet University Regional Center East, Northeast Deaf & Hard of Hearing Service or TERC) depending on where they live. The researcher will work with one family or adolescent at a time. They will view the videos on a computer while the researchers observe and record data. After viewing the videos, researchers will ask them questions about what they learned, what might be added, changed, or improved. They will be asked to look at the videos later on their home computers and do things such as select a STEM career for further research. Additional data collection will involve completing a post-use online survey for adolescents and their parents.
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.
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 Innovations in Development project addresses the need to broaden girls' participation in STEM studies and career pathways. While women make up 47% of the U.S. workforce, they hold only 28.3% of STEM jobs and only 1 in 10 employed engineers and scientists are minority women. Girls of low socioeconomic status start losing interest and confidence in STEM during middle school, and this decline often continues as girls get older. Multiple sociocultural barriers contribute to girl's loss of confidence including gender and ethnic stereotypes; lack of culturally responsive programming; limited exposure to women role models; and few or no hands-on STEM experiences. This project builds upon the success of SciGirls, the PBS television show and national outreach program, which provides professional development on research-based gender equitable and culturally responsive teaching strategies designed to engage girls in STEM. It is a collaboration between Twin Cities Public Television, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the National Park Service. The project's goal is to create media-rich citizen science experiences for girls, particularly girls of color and/or from rural areas, which broaden their STEM participation, build positive STEM identities and increase girls' understanding of scientific concepts, while leveraging citizen science engagement at national parks. Project deliverables include 1) creating five new PBS SciGirls episodes that feature real girls working with women mentors in 16 National Parks, 2) producing five new role model videos of women National Park Service STEM professionals, nationally disseminated on multiple PBS platforms, 3) providing professional development for educators and role models. This project will increase access to STEM education for girls of color and/or from rural areas, inspiring and preparing them for future STEM workforce participation. It will build the capacity of educators and National Park Service women role models to create educational and professional programs that are welcoming to girls of varying racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic backgrounds. SciGirls' massive reach to diverse audiences via PBS broadcast and multiple PBS digital platforms will amplify public scientific literacy, particularly for 21st- century audiences that connect, learn and live online.
The research study conducted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology will address these questions: 1) To what extent does the use of culturally responsive and gender equitable multimedia in citizen science programming affect girls' learning outcomes, and contribute to the development of positive STEM identity' 2) how will their experiencing citizen science in the parks influence girls' connection to nature? At the beginning of the project all participating girls (n=160) will complete a survey on their interest in science, efficacy for doing science, and knowledge of citizen science and project-specific subject matter. Researchers will use the suite of DEVISE instruments most of which have been validated for youth to measure these constructs. To measure connection to nature, researchers will use the Connection to Nature Index, a scale developed for children. Interviews with the girls will be used to obtain qualitative data to supplement the survey data. Pre-post data will be analyzed to determine the influence of the culturally responsive media and experiences on girls' STEM identities. Researchers will share findings with the project evaluator to triangulate data between educators' implementation of the strategies and girls' learning outcome providing a more holistic picture of the overall program.
This Innovations in Development 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.
This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by engaging in hands-on field experience, laboratory/project-based entrepreneurship tasks and mentorship experiences. This ITEST project aims to research the STEM career interests of late elementary and middle-school students and, based on the results of that research, build an informal education program to involve families and community partners to enhance their science knowledge, attitudes, experiences, and resources. There is an emphasis on underrepresented and low income students and their families.
The project will research and test a new model to promote the development of positive attitudes toward STEM and to increase interest in STEM careers. Phase 1 of the project will include exploratory research examining science capital and habitus for a representative sample of youth at three age ranges: 8-9, 9-10 and 11-12 years. The project will measure the access that youth have to adults who engage in STEM careers and STEM leisure activities. In phase II the project will test a model with a control group and a treatment group to enhance science capital and habitus for youth.