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.
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 project will research core methods of science documentary film production and impact on audience engagement and understanding. The findings from this study will be used to later produce a film on how the CRISPR genome editing technology will shape agriculture, ecology, and the natural world. The research study and film to be produced will be a collaboration of science communication practitioners and researchers. The intended outcomes are to improve effective science filmmaking and increase impact on audiences. Many people rely on documentary film and videos for science information outside of formal learning environments. Research has shown that video programming can reduce knowledge gaps between those of higher and lower levels of education. But there is little research with findings about what makes a particular style of storytelling effective for engagement and learning outcomes. A recent report of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine identified a significant shortage of social science research with directly applicable lessons for filmmakers. This project addresses this need by providing new frameworks for research and methods to produce science documentaries. Project partners are iBiology, a producer of video resources for learning, and science communication researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This project will examine two key questions: 1) In a science documentary film, how does the diversity of the scientists profiled and the use of a narrator shape audiences? perception of content and scientists? and 2) What are effective methods in science filmmaking to visualize the invisible (i.e. explain scientific phenomena that are not easily visualized)? The project begins by testing a recently produced film, Human Nature, that tells the story of the discovery of CRISPR (genome editing), told by the scientists who led the effort. Phase 1 testing will include screenings, focus groups, and experiments run through Amazon Mechanical Turk to test what features of the film (editorial voice and visualization styles) are most effective for communicating scientific content. In Phase 2 video test clips will be produced using a combination of narration and visualization strategies. An experimental design run through Amazon Turk will randomly assign participants to watch a clip using different combinations. Researchers will use this data to parse out what effect seems to be related to particular narration and visualization choices. This quantitative experimental data will be supplemented by qualitative data from focus groups with participants with a diverse range of science experience and demographic backgrounds. Researchers will design a survey-embedded experiment with a U.S. nationally representative sample to see how well the findings translate and change in a broader population.
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.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Dietram ScheufeleSarah GoodwinElliot Kirschner
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 public must be made aware in a clear, responsible way about the role of science to help bring this pandemic under control and prevent future outbreaks. This project will allow the NewsHour to go beyond their daily reporting of the medical information about the pandemic, to inform the public about the difference scientific research/ research conducted by scientists and medical professionals can make in attacking such a dire threat. The PBS NewsHour has the capability to quickly mobilize its science journalists and national distribution infrastructure to produce at least six broadcast segments and additional digital materials reporting on this on-going scientific work. They will interview scientists, researchers and experts in genomic analysis, computer tracking, vaccine production, and social epidemiology showing what they are doing to test, treat, track and stop the spread of COVID-19, to create vaccines that may prevent further transmission, and to measure the social impact of the disease. These segments will be broadcast nationwide on local PBS stations and distributed on their website, YouTube, and social media channels. Viewership of the NewsHour is extensive reaching 2.5 million people nightly via broadcast and almost 33 million YouTube views per quarter. During a recent quarter, they reached 72.6 million on Facebook and garnered 86.8 million Twitter impressions.
The research team, Knology, will conduct a study to assess 1) where US adults are primarily getting information about COVID-19; 2) their perception of personal and public responsibility; 3) behaviors they have taken and/or plan to take, and when; 4) their social values. Knology will develop a survey instrument with adopted items and modules used in prior collaborations to develop a baseline understanding of the relationship between news consumption and attitudes about COVID-19 risk. The survey will be hosted using Qualtrics. Survey data will be gathered from a representative sample of US adults (N = 1000) recruited using the online software system, Prolific. A recent PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll will be used as a baseline. Once potentially identifying information like demographics are aggregated, these formative data and topline results will be shared openly through the Knology website to support other researchers and journalists.
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.
Genetic Modification (GM) has been a topic of public debates during the 1990s and 2000s. In this paper we explore the relative importance of two hypothesized explanations for these controversies: (i) people's general attitude toward science and technology and (ii) their trust in governance, in GM actors, and in GM regulations, in explaining the Dutch public's Attitude toward GM applications, and in addition to that, the public's GM Information seeking behaviour. This will be conducted through the application of representative survey methodology. The results indicate that Attitudes toward GM
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Lucien HanssenAnne DijkstraSusanne SleenhoffLynn FrewerJan Gutterling
This article examines certain guiding tenets of science journalism in the era of big data by focusing on its engagement with citizen science. Having placed citizen science in historical context, it highlights early interventions intended to help establish the basis for an alternative epistemological ethos recognising the scientist as citizen and the citizen as scientist. Next, the article assesses further implications for science journalism by examining the challenges posed by big data in the realm of citizen science. Pertinent issues include potential risks associated with data quality
This award supports the production of a longitudinal video documentary of the evolution of Advanced LIGO and will chronicle the most critical and exciting period in the history of gravitational wave science in the past 100 years. LIGO resumed the search for gravitational waves in 2015 with a newly upgraded detector and on September 14, 2015 detected gravitational waves for the first time, astounding not only the scientific community but the entire world. Using footage captured at critical periods between August 2015 and March 2016 during the discovery phase as well as new filming taking place over the next two years, the team will produce films which will impact at least hundreds of thousands of people and possibly many more than that. The goal is to educate, inspire, and motivate. Students at the high school and undergraduate levels may be more inspired to pursue STEM careers after watching scientific vignettes focusing on the exciting science and technology of Advanced LIGO. Scientific historians and sociologists will have the opportunity to use the hundreds of hours of available film clips as a video database to investigate in detail the discovery of gravitational waves as a case study of large scale collaborations ("Big Science"). Videos highlighting the cutting edge technological advances brought about by Advanced LIGO and their impacts on other fields of science and technology may prove effective for educating officials and policy makers on the benefits of fundamental science.
During the course of the project, a series of professionally made video shorts will be produced for the LIGO Laboratory and LSC for education and public outreach purposes through distribution on LIGO Laboratory, LSC web sites, and the LIGO YouTube Channel. Through an extensive series of film shoots, XPLR Productions will work with the LIGO Laboratory and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) to capture key moments as LIGO scientists work to achieve Advanced LIGO's design sensitivity and carry out a series of observing runs over the next two years. The team will produce a series of video shorts explaining the important scientific and technological concepts and issues of Advanced LIGO by the scientific experts who create them. In the longer term, footage will used to produce either a feature length documentary film or a twelve-part series on television entitled 'LIGO' chronicling the discovery of gravitational waves and the exploration of exotic high-energy astrophysical phenomena such as colliding black holes. Intended for broad distribution through cinema or television, 'LIGO' will bring science to life for a wide audience.
The scandal of the “biotechnology evangelist” erupted in Korea at the beginning of the new year: a commission from Seoul National University announced that it had proof that Dr Woo Suk Hwang, considered one of the world’s foremost experts on cloning by nucleus transfer, had manipulated the data concerning experiments in human cell cloning and the creation of eleven lines of stem cells from human embryos published in two different articles in the journal Science in 2004 and 2005.
Science, research and emerging technologies often play a key role in many modern action movies. In this contribution we suggest to use genre analysis of folk narratives as an innovative and useful tool for understanding science and technology in action movies. In this contribution we outline our approach using illustrative examples and detail how understanding action movies as modern fairy tales can benefit the study of science, research and technology in popular culture.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Anna Lydia SvalastogJoachim Allgaier
For lay people, mass media are the main source of scientific information; that is why science journalists’ selection and depiction of scientific issues is an important field to study. This paper investigates science journalists’ general issue selection and additionally focuses on science journalists’ depiction of nanoscale science and technology and its related scientific evidence (certainty/uncertainty of research findings). Face-to-face interviews with science journalists (n = 21) from different German media channels were conducted. The results show that the professional role conception
Among the most interesting aspects of the changes in the media ecosystem a leading role is played by the impact of digital and networking technologies on the ways news reports are built. In this Jcom commentary, the issues of the relationship between digital storytelling and professional news production will focus on science journalism. The commentary will deal with theoretical reflections and practical examples of innovative experiences in which different narration methods were exploited for scientific information.
Basing mainly on author's direct involvement in some science communication efforts in India, and other reports, this contribution depicts and analyses the present science communication/ popularization scenario in India. It tries to dispel a myth that rural people don't require or don’t crave for S&T information. It discusses need for science and technology communication, sustaining curiosity and creating role models. Citing cases of some natural, 'unnatural' and organized events, it recounts how S&T popularization efforts have fared during the past decade and a half. It's made possible using