Explora will expand its work with local students to increase their awareness of STEM career fields. Working primarily with low-income teens of color and their families, the museum will partner with local organizations to co-create an inquiry-based exhibit that highlights STEM research and practice in Albuquerque that can lead to career paths for jobs in STEM fields. The museum will revise its current exhibition development process to reflect a community engagement strategy that it has used successfully for public programs, incorporating community voice, public knowledge, and local STEM content experts. Additional project activities will include capacity-building for museum staff to improve their ability to engage deeply with community partners and a series of Teen Science Cafes in the new exhibit space that provide opportunities for teens to meet and talk with local STEM professionals and employers.
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.
The Habitot Children's Museum will renovate its Rocketship and Mission Control exhibition to increase functionality, making it more accessible and interactive for parents, caregivers, and children. With input from the community and a professional advisory group of museum professionals, early learning specialists, space scientists and parents, the museum will refurbish, update, and improve exhibition access for children with special needs by completing previously identified universal design requirements; adding interactive components that support young children's need for open-ended, play-based experiences to build strong STEM learning foundations; and addressing adult visitors' needs to have defined roles in exhibition spaces to better engage with their children. A customized, observation-based evaluation tool will be used to measure the identified project outcomes.
Reflecting on the practice of storytelling, this practice insight explores how collaborations between scholars and practitioners can improve storytelling for science communication outcomes with publics. The case studies presented demonstrate the benefits of collaborative storytelling for inspiring publics, promoting understanding of science, and engaging publics more deliberatively in science. The projects show how collaboration between scholars and practitioners [in storytelling] can happen across a continuum of scholarship from evaluation and action research to more critical thinking
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michelle RiedlingerJenni MetcalfeAyelet Baram-TsabariMarta EntradasMarina JoubertLuisa Massarani
NASA@ My Library is made possible through the support of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Science Mission Directorate as part of its Science Activation program. The project is led by the National Center for Interactive Learning (NCIL) at the Space Science Institute (SSI) in partnership with the American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office, Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), and Education Development Center (EDC). From 2016-2020, 78 public libraries (75 partner libraries and 3 pilot libraries), 18 State Library Agencies, 6 Portal to the Public Network sites, and 30 NASA-funded scientists participated in the project. More than 225,000 library patrons were reached through their efforts.
In 2021-2022, public libraries, universities, and state library agencies will participate in the project to increase and enhance STEAM learning opportunities in their communities, with an emphasis on reaching audiences underrepresented in STEM education and professions.
Science and technology have become tools to legitimize messages that affect the world in terms of society, politics and economy. This paper presents part of the results of a study that analyzed the symbolic construction of the future in the scientific-technological discourse at EPCOT theme park in Orlando, Florida. The sociohistorical conditions and narrative strategies are analyzed based on the theoretical and methodological approach by John B. Thompson. The results highlighted that the construction of the notion of progress is strongly influenced by the commercial and political interests of
Meaningful science engagement beyond one-way outreach is needed to encourage science-based decision making. This pilot study aimed to instigate dialogue and deliberation concerning climate change and public health. Feedback from science café participants was used to design a panel-based museum exhibit that asked visitors to make action plans concerning such issues. Using intercept interviews and visitor comment card data, we found that visitors developed general or highly individualistic action plans to address these issues. Results suggest that employing participatory design methods when
The goal of this project is to promote informal STEM education in polar research through a novel interactive learning display that uses virtual and augmented reality technology. A new display system will be developed that combines the successful techniques of touch-enabled tabletop displays with new low-cost, head-mounted display technology to deliver an immersive 3D learning experience for the IceCube Neutrino Detection system located at the South Pole. The system will provide new means for engaging the public in learning about the IceCube Neutrino Dectection system and the challenges of Antarctic research.
The proposal relies on collaboration between three groups on the University of Wisconsin- Madison campus, including the Living Environments Laboratory (LEL), the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC), and the Games Learning Society (GLS). Once developed, the display system will be installed at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery Town Center, a public space that attracts close to 50,000 people per year. This proposal was submitted as an Exploratory Pathways proposal, meaning that it represents a chance to establish the basis for future research, design, and development of innovations or approaches. Outcomes from this project will inform the PIs of how best to extend the system to add more 3D environments for other research locations in Antarctica. The system will be implemented in an extensible fashion so that a user can select from one of several Antarctic research station locations, not just IceCube, from the main menu of the system and suddenly be immersed in a 3D world that seeks to teach users about polar research at that location. Contents of the interactive learning display will be translated into Spanish, and users will be able to choose which language they want to use. Evaluations of the system will also inform designers about how these museum-type systems impact learning outcomes for the general public.
This project was submitted to the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, but will be funded by the Division of Polar Programs. AISL 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.
Feminist technoscience theory offers perspectives for science communication that both question common narratives and suggests new narratives. These perspectives emphasize issues of ethics and care often missing from science communication. They focus on questions of what is marginalized or left out of stories about science — and encourage us to make those absences visible.
This commentary introduces feminist standpoint theory and discusses its potential value in science communication. It offers two ways in which feminist standpoints can help in both research and practice. First, science communicators should aim to understand the perspective from which they understand and share scientific knowledge. Second, practitioners and researchers alike should seek insights from marginalized groups to help inform the ways the dominant view of science reflects hegemonic social and cultural norms.
This handout was prepared for the Climate Change Showcase at the 2019 ASTC Conference in Toronto, Ontario. It highlights resources available on InformalScience.org related to the topic of climate change.