The Rochester Museum and Science Center and partners will plan, design, fabricate, and evaluate its new Water Worlds exhibition using a hybrid exhibition model that integrates hands-on science and interactive technology with authentic collections objects in immersive environments. Reimagining the gallery in this way will allow the museum’s professional staff to work with outside experts in the sciences—including environmental science, sustainability, water resources, and climate—to create a unified watershed-themed narrative for the gallery. Hands-on, inquiry-focused exhibits will inspire visitors to explore the Lake Ontario watershed and analyze critical local issues including water pollution, flooding, invasive species, and the impact of a changing climate on local waterways, as well as innovative solutions to these challenges.
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.
This project's goals are to:
Enable participants to contribute to any or all stages of the scientific process and enhance their learning using an online citizen science platform and live bird cams.
Generate new scientific knowledge about wildlife.
Advance the understanding of effective project design for co-created online citizen-science projects at a national scale.
This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting.
The Polar Literacy (PL) project explores the development and implementation of Out of School Time (OST) learning opportunities focused on polar literacy concepts and authentic data with middle school aged youth. This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting.
This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting.
This research draws from scholarship on bonds between people and places to help understand the growing knowledge, community, and personal outcomes linked to place-based citizen science experiences.
Following an analysis of the place attachment (PAT) (an emotional bond between a person and a place) of participants in the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST) citizen science program, an adapted three-dimensional model of PAT is proposed as a framework from which place-based citizen science experiences and
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Benjamin HaywoodJulia ParrishSarah InmanJackie Lindsey
The Ice Worlds media project will inspire millions of children and adults to gain new knowledge about polar environments, the planet’s climate, and humanity’s place within Earth’s complex systems—supporting an informed, STEM literate citizenry. Featuring the NSF-funded THOR expedition to Thwaites glacier, along with contributions of many NSF-supported researchers worldwide, Ice Worlds will share the importance of investments in STEM with audiences in giant screen theaters, on television, online, and in other informal settings. Primary project deliverables include a giant screen film, a filmmaking workshop for Native American middle school students that will result in a documentary, a climate storytelling professional development program for informal educators, and a knowledge-building summative evaluation. The project’s largest target audience is middle school learners (ages 11-14); specific activities are designed for Native American youth and informal science practitioners. Innovative outreach will engage youth underserved in science inspiring a new generation of scientists and investigative thinkers. The project’s professional development programs will build the capacity of informal educators to engage communities and communicate science. The Ice Worlds project is a collaboration among media producers Giant Screen Films, Natural History New Zealand, PBS, and Academy Award nominated film directors (Yes/No Productions). Additional collaborators include Northwestern University, The American Indian Science and Engineering Society, the Native American Journalism Association, a group of museum and science center partners, and a team of advisors including scientific and Indigenous experts associated with the NSF-funded Study of Environmental Arctic Change initiative.
The goals of the project are: 1) to increase public understanding of the processes and consequences of environmental change in polar ecosystems, 2) to explore the effectiveness of the giant screen format to impart knowledge, inspire motivation and caring for nature, 3) to improve middle schoolers’ interest, confidence and engagement in STEM topics and pursuits—broadly and through a specific program for Native American youth, and 4) to build informal educators’ capacity to share stories of climate change in their communities. The main evaluation questions are 1) to what extent does the Ice World film affect learning, engagement, and motivation around STEM pursuits and environmental problem solving 2) what is the added value of companion media for youth’s giant screen learning over short and longer term, and 3) what are the impacts of the culturally based Native American youth workshops.
The evaluation work will involve a Native American youth advisory panel and a panel of science center practitioners in the giant screen film’s development and evaluation process. Formative evaluation of the film will involve recruiting youth from diverse backgrounds, including representation of Native youth, to see the film in the giant screen theater of a partner site. Post viewing surveys and group discussions will explore their experience of the film with respect to engagement, learning, evoking spatial presence, and motivational impact. A summative evaluation of the completed film will assess its immediate and longer term impacts. Statistical analyses will be conducted on all quantitative data generated from the evaluation, including a comparison of pre and post knowledge scores. An evaluation of the Tribal Youth Media program will include a significant period of formative evaluation and community engagement to align activities to the needs and interests of participating students. Culturally appropriate measures, qualitative methods and frameworks will be used to assess the learning impacts. Data will be analyzed to determine learning impacts of the workshop on youth participants as well as mentors and other stakeholder participants. Evaluation of the community climate storytelling professional development component will include lessons learned and recommendations for implementation.
Milwaukee has established itself as a leader in water management and technology, hosting a widely recognized cluster of industrial, governmental, nonprofit, and academic activity focused on freshwater. At the same time, Milwaukee faces a wide range of challenges with freshwater, some unique to the region and others common to cities throughout the country. These challenges include vulnerability to flooding and combined sewer overflows after heavy rainfall, biological and pharmaceutical contamination in surface water, lead in drinking water infrastructure, and inequity in access to beaches and other recreational water amenities. Like other cities, Milwaukee grapples with the challenges global climate change imposes on urban water systems, including changing patterns of precipitation and drought.
These problems are further complicated by Milwaukee's acute racial and economic residential segregation. With a population of approximately 595,000, embedded within a metropolitan area of over 1.5 million, Milwaukee remains one of the country's most segregated cities. There is increasing urgency to engage the public--and especially those who are most vulnerable to environmental impacts--more deeply in the stewardship of urban water and in the task of creating sustainable urban futures. The primary goal of this four-year project is to foster community-engaged learning and environmental stewardship by developing a framework that integrates art with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) experiences along with geography, water management, and social science. Synergies between STEM learning and the arts suggest that collaborations among artists, scientists, and communities can open ways to bring informal learning about the science of sustainability to communities.
WaterMarks provides an artist generated conceptual framework developed by Mary Miss / City as Living Laboratory (CALL) to help people better understand their relationship to the water systems and infrastructure that support their lives. Project activities include artist/scientist/community member-led Walks, which are designed to engage intergenerational participants both from the neighborhoods and from across the city, in considering the conditions, characteristics, histories, and ecosystems of neighborhoods. Walks are expanded upon in Workshops with residents, local scientists/experts, and other stakeholders, and include exploring current water-related environmental challenges and proposing solutions. The Workshops draw on diverse perspectives, including lived experience, scientific knowledge, and policy expertise. Art projects created by local artists amplify community engagement with the topics, including programming for teens and young adults. Free Wi-Fi will be integrated into various Marker sites around the city providing access to online, self-guided learning opportunities exploring the water systems and issues facing surrounding neighborhoods. Current programming focuses primarily on Milwaukee's predominantly African American near North Side and the predominantly Latinx/Hispanic near South Side. Many neighborhoods in these sections are vulnerable to such problems as frequent flooding, lead contamination in drinking water, inequities in safety and maintenance of green space, and less access to Lake Michigan, the city's primary natural resource and recreational amenity.
The WaterMarks project advances informal STEM learning in at least two ways. First, while the WaterMarks project is designed to fit Milwaukee, the project includes the development of an Adaptable Model Guide. The Guide is designed so that other cities can modify and employ its inclusive structure, programming, and process of collaboration among artists, scientists, partner organizations, and residents to promote citywide civic engagement in urban sustainability through the combination of informal STEM learning and public art. The Guide will be developed by a Community-University Working Group (CULab) hosted by UW-Milwaukee's Center for Community-Based Learning, Leadership, and Research and made up of diverse community and campus-wide stakeholders. In addition to overseeing the Guide’s creation, CULab will conceptualize onboarding and mentorship strategies for new participants as well as a framework for the program’s expansion and sustainability.
Second, through evaluation and research, the project will build a theoretical model for the relationships among science learning, engagement with the arts, and the distinctive contexts of different neighborhoods within an urban social-ecological system. The evaluation team, COSI’s Center for Research and Evaluation, and led by Co-PI Donnelly Hayde, aims to conduct formative, summative, and process evaluation of the Watermarks project, with the additional goal of producing evaluative research findings that can contribute to the broader field of informal learning. Evaluation foci include: How does the implementation of WaterMarks support positive outcomes for the project’s communities and the development of an adaptable model for city-scale informal science learning about urban environments? 2. To what extent do the type and degree of outcome-related change experienced by participating community residents vary across and/or between project sites? What factors, if any, appear to be linked to these changes? 3. To what extent and in what ways do the activities of the WaterMarks projects appear to have in situ effects related to the experience of place at project sites?
The project’s research team led by PI Ryan Holifield and Co-PI Woonsup Choi, will investigate how visual artistic activities introduced by the programming team as part of the Walks (and potentially other engagement activities) interact with personal, sociocultural, and physical contexts to produce distinctive experiences and outcomes of informal science learning about urban water systems. The aim of the research will be to synthesize the results from the different WaterMarks sites into an analysis generalizable beyond specific neighborhoods and applicable to other cities. The project's research questions include: 1. How does participation in Walks focused on visual artistic activities affect outcomes and experiences of informal STEM learning about urban water systems? 2. How do outcomes and experiences of informal STEM learning vary across different urban water topics, participants from different demographic groups, and contrasting sociocultural and biophysical contexts?
This Innovations in Development project is led by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), in collaboration with City as Living Laboratory (CALL) and the COSI Center for Research and Evaluation.
Among scientists, science communication is an increasingly important area of practice, scholarship, and research, especially with early career scientists. The growing interest in combating widespread disinformation and inaccurate public perception of science has increased demand for training in science communication; however, there is a significant gap in both research and training for scientists from diverse racial and ethnic cultural backgrounds. The project will address this knowledge and research gap by applying intercultural communication theory to the design, development, and testing of a new curriculum that will provide evidence-based methods to make science communication trainings inclusive and intersectional. The curriculum will be designed and evaluated to build capacity among science communication trainers and practitioners. Sixty pre-tenure environmental science faculty of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds will be trained in strategic science communication skills using cultural perspectives and academic goals in science communication. The project will gather research data in collaboration with the national SciComm Trainers Network. In addition to advancing science communication research, training, and practice, the project will implement a novel, peer-reviewed podcast for broader impact. The project Fellows will be prepared to engage in a wide range of science communication activities throughout their careers and lead related efforts at their home institutions. Following a final workshop to develop culturally responsive guidance for science communication trainers, the project team will share findings to the field to inform future practice and societal impacts from advancing culturally relevant science communication in training programs. This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
The project will address two significant gaps in science communication and intercultural communication research. First, despite the recognition that more research about race and ethnicity is needed in science communication, few studies have been conducted. Second, while findings on intercultural communication research are consistent across fields, such as health communication and business communication, the research has yet to examine how well-established theories in this area of study apply to the unique norms and processes of science. Investigators will test a novel theoretical framework grounded in two intercultural communication theories: identity negotiation theory and communication accommodation theory. The project will test the extent to which the professional norms and processes of STEM and academia relate to cultural norms and communication styles of underrepresented racial and ethnic minority scientists, and how these factors influence their science communication efforts. The project will use a mixed methods approach including in-depth interviews and surveys. The results of the study will be used to develop and adapt culturally tailored science communication training for 60 pre-tenure environmental science faculty from underrepresented groups. The results of the project will provide evidence to make science communication training and practice more inclusive and effective. The collaboration with the national SciComm Trainers Network will ensure broad dissemination and professional application of project findings. The project will increase representation of racial and ethnic minority scientists as science communicators, including in environmental news coverage; provide a new peer-reviewed podcast series for public audiences that will introduce listeners to environmental research through a culturally responsive lens; provide tested methods for designing inclusive and effective science communication training curricula; and will inform faculty efforts to incorporate science communication activities as part of career advancement.
This is a poster created for the 2019 annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Below is the accepted abstract of the poster:
The Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) network spans 28 sites across North America and beyond. Here we share work from two LTER sites in the northeastern US—the Harvard Forest, MA and the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, NH—where boundary organizations have been developing a framework for embedding effective public engagement and knowledge co-production into these long-term studies. Here we share this framework and how it has been developed and applied in
Despite Mexico has coasts in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, people's connection towards the sea and marine environments is quite poor. Our commentary focuses on Mexico's coral reefs, relevant tropical ecosystems to human and oceanic welfare, and it emerges from the experience of the production of an itinerant coral reefs exhibit in Mexico, committed to the conservation and awareness of this threatened habitat. The UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development starts in 2021 and represents an opportunity to increase initiatives for public communication of science on marine and