This one-year Collaborative Planning project seeks to bring together an interdisciplinary planning team of informal and formal STEM educators, researchers, scientists, community, and policy experts to identify the elements, activities, and community relationships necessary to cultivate and sustain a thriving regional early childhood (ages 3-6) STEM ecosystem. Based in Southeast San Diego, planning and research will focus on understanding the needs and interests of young Latino dual language learners from low income homes, as well as identify regional assets (e.g., museums, afterschool programs, universities, schools) that could coalesce efforts to systematically increase access to developmentally appropriate informal STEM activities and resources, particularly those focused on engineering and computational thinking. This project has the potential to enhance the infrastructure of early STEM education by providing a model for the planning and development of early childhood focused coalitions around the topic of STEM learning and engagement. In addition, identifying how to bridge STEM learning experiences between home, pre-k learning environments, and formal school addresses a longstanding challenge of sustaining STEM skills as young children transition between environments. The planning process will use an iterative mixed-methods approach to develop both qualitative and quantitative and data. Specific planning strategies include the use of group facilitation techniques such as World Café, graphic recording, and live polling. Planning outcomes include: 1) a literature review on STEM ecosystems; 2) an Early Childhood STEM Community Asset Map of southeast San Diego; 3) a set of proposed design principles for identifying and creating early childhood STEM ecosystems in low income communities; and 4) a theory of action that could guide future design and research. This project is funded by 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 report presents findings from a formative evaluation of Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities-Informal Science Education (SENCER-ISE), a National Science Foundation and Noyce Foundation funded initiative to support partnerships between informal science and higher education institutions. This evaluation looked primarily at the collaborative infrastructure of SENCER-ISE, which included the web site, SENCER Summer Institute, and communications with project staff and/or the advisory board. This evaluation is the third evaluation that Randi Korn & Associates, Inc
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RK&A, Inc.
resourceevaluationProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The National Center for Science and Civic Engagement (NCSCE) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to conduct a summative evaluation of its SENCER-ISE project partnerships. SENCER-ISE is an initiative that brings partners from higher education (HE) together with partners from informal science education (ISE) to create projects that engage audiences in science using the lens of civic engagement. SENCER funded 10 partnerships over three years—six through the National Science Foundation (DRL #1001795) and four through the Noyce Foundation. Previously, RK&A conducted a formative
Video has become a key tool for scientific communication because it increases the outreach and impact of projects, furthers scientific research within and across fields of study, and offers an accessible medium to engage the public in the understanding of science. This project supports the expansion of an interactive, online STEM Videohall where hundreds of NSF-funded researchers share their work through brief video narratives and interactive discussion. While the Videohall is accessible year-round, periodic annual Showcase events are used to drive visitors to the site where they can engage with one another, the project investigators and trained facilitators. The Videohall is a multiplier of NSF's investments in individual projects because it allows STEM education researchers to become aware of, and learn from, related work that is funded across NSF programs and directorates, and other federal agencies. In 3-minute video narratives, investigators share ideas, resources, data, evidence of impact, strategies and challenges. The Videohall platform supports open access and is designed to foster communication in ways that scale beyond traditional formats such as academic conferences. Moreover, because the online STEM Videohall is open to the public, it allows STEM investigators to share their work with multiple stakeholder communities including K-12 educators and school leaders, informal educators and community organizations, the STEM industry, education policy makers and families. Finally, because each video narrative is accompanied by a facilitated online discussion thread, investigators have a unique and valuable mechanism for receiving feedback from these various stakeholder communities. The STEM Videohall project is funded by the Discovery Research K-12 program (DRK-12), which seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.
This project brings together seven NSF-funded resource centers who work with their respective communities to encourage Principal Investigators to share video narratives of their work through annual NSF STEM Showcase events. Each annual Showcase event presents videos created by 150-230 projects; many of the projects are affiliated with one of the seven resource centers, but others are from projects across NSF directorates and beyond. During a one-week period, Principal Investigators, their project staff, as well as the public at large, are invited to engage in interactive discourse, providing queries, comments, and feedback. Participants also vote for favorite presentations through "Presenters' Choice," "Public Choice," and "Facilitators' Choice," processes. This participant voting system serves to increase engagement and enhances outreach of the event through social media. After the one-week Showcase event concludes, all of the videos along with the related discourse remain available to the public online, who continue to access the Showcase throughout the year. Based on prior pilot work, it is estimated that over the course of a year, over 30,000 visitors, from over 150 countries, will engage with each annual Showcase. Videos from annual showcase events will be shared, reused, and repurposed to create new products with new constituencies. The project includes technical development efforts to iteratively improve its interactive platform, outreach efforts before each annual Showcase event, facilitation of the week-long event, and intensive dissemination efforts. A research component examines the extent of participation on various constituencies, the benefit of participation to projects, and the success of the events in terms of dissemination nationally and internationally.
Increasingly, the prosperity, innovation and security of individuals and communities depend on a big data literate society. Yet conspicuously absent from the big data revolution is the field of teaching and learning. The revolution in big data must match a complementary revolution in a new kind of literacy, through a significant infusion of STEM education with the kinds of skills that the revolution in 21st century data-driven science demands. This project represents a concerted effort to determine what it means to be a big data literate citizen, information worker, researcher, or policymaker; to identify the quality of learning resources and programs to improve big data literacy; and to chart a path forward that will bridge big data practice with big data learning, education and career readiness.
Through a process of inquiry research and capacity-building, New York Hall of Science will bring together experts from member institutions of the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub to galvanize big data communities of practice around education, identify and articulate the nature and quality of extant big data education resources and draft a set of big data literacy principles. The results of this planning process will be a planning document for a Big Data Literacy Spoke that will form an initiative to develop frameworks, strategies and scope and sequence to advance lifelong big data literacy for grades P-20 and across learning settings; and devise, implement, and evaluate programs, curricula and interventions to improve big data literacy for all. The planning document will articulate the findings of the inquiry research and evaluation to provide a practical tool to inform and cultivate other initiatives in data literacy both within the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub and beyond.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Climate Change Education Partnership Alliance (CCEPA) is a consortium made up of the six Phase II Climate Change Education Partnership (CCEP-II) program awardees funded in FY 2012. Collectively, the CCEPA is establishing a coordinated network devoted to increasing the adoption of effective, high quality educational programs and resources related to the science of climate change and its potential impacts. The establishment of a CCEPA Coordination Office addresses the need for a coordinating body that leverages and builds upon the CCEPA projects' individual initiatives. The CCEPA Coordination Office facilitates interactions to leverage a successful network of CCEP-II projects and individuals engaged in increasing climate science literacy. The efforts of the Coordination Office advance knowledge and understanding of how to effectively network related, but different, projects into a cohesive enterprise. The goal is to coordinate a functional network, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
The CCEPA Coordination Office at the University of Rhode Island is helping to move the CCEPA network forward on a number of key initiatives that strengthen it, reduce duplication, and enhance its overall impact. An important role of the Coordination Office is the facilitation of the transfer of best practices between projects. An effective network forges collaborations and establishes communities of practice through network working groups, building intellectual capital network-wide. The CCEPA Coordination Office has a key role in assisting the CCEPA project PIs and staff to disseminate the results of their work. Partnerships with other relevant societies and organizations assist the Coordination Office in identifying opportunities and synergies for sharing, disseminating, and leveraging network products as well as best practices that emerge as Earth system science education models and tools are evaluated. This endeavor broadens the collective impact of the individual projects across the country.
Produced by the Climate Change Education Partnership (CCEP) Alliance, the "Climate Change Education: Effective Practices for Working with Educators, Scientists, Decision Makers and the Public" guide provides recommendations for effective education and communication practices when working with different types of audiences. While effective education has been traditionally defined as the acquisition of knowledge, Alliance programs maintain a broader definition of “effective” to include the acquisition and use of climate change knowledge to inform decision-making.
The CCEP Alliance is supported
Keystone Connect Network is a proposed regional broadband network whose purpose is to increase educational opportunities and generate business growth. The backbone of this plan is the Pennsylvania Research and Education Network's (PennREN), a next generation high-speed internet network, managed by KINBER, which educational institutions can use to train their students and create new learning opportunities; and business can create new products and connect with their customers.
The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES) intiative supports models, networks, partnerships and research to ensure the broadening participation in STEM of women, members of racial and ethnic groups that have been historically underrepresented, persons of low socio-economic status, and people with disabilities.
The University of Cincinnati, lead for a tri-state (OH, KY, IN) project, will convene a three-day conference to convene national and local experts to explore the best practices that support the development of a backbone organization in the context of using a social innovation model for broadening participation in STEM. The intent is to strengthen the network among participants and leverage learning from the Cincinnati Strive experience with collective impact across the Midwest and beyond.
Results from the NextLivesHere: Social Change Innovation Summit, will be disseminated in the tri-state region through the Greater Cincinnati STEM Collaborative (GCSC and the Ohio STEM Learning Network (OSLN). National dissemination will occur through informal and formal STEM professional organizations and publications as well as through participation in the NSF-developed national backbone organization.
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Kathie MaynardRoss MeyerShiloh TurnerGeoffrey ZimmermanGisela Escoe
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
SRI International and the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching will jointly lead a workshop with the dual goals of supporting INCLUDES (Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners that have been Underrepresented for Diversity in Engineering and Science) Launch Pilots during their first year and contributing to plans for a National Backbone. The workshop will strengthen and deepen the potential for rapid, continuous improvement cycles within and across INCLUDES networks. To do so, they will combine the expertise of SRI and Carnegie in improvement science, rapid analytics, and fostering networks of researchers and practitioners to engage participants in conducting a complete improvement cycle within and across INCLUDES Launch Pilots.
The workshop will have three phases. A first phase, conducted online, will share expertise related to each of the four parts of a complete improvement cycle: (1) problem definition, (2) data collection, (3) formative evaluation, and (4) effective communication. This first phase will combine an initial presentation with facilitated, online opportunities to interactively engage in the topics. A second phase, conducted face-to-face, will work intensively with teams from INCLUDES networks to improve their operational and long-term plans. The third phase will reflect and report on the workshop and contribute plans to build capacities for the National Backbone organization. Through the combination of these three phases, they will support the first-year work of INCLUDES teams and also refine understanding of how a national network could combine online and face-to-face elements to advance INCLUDES efforts. The workshop team will create and disseminate resources that are immediately useful to INCLUDES and related projects, and the workshop will openly coordinate with other workshops to achieve synergies. The online offerings will be open, broadly advertised, and permanently available. The lessons learned regarding plans for a national backbone will be disseminated broadly. In addition to participants from INCLUDES networks, additional stakeholders will be invited to both phases so as to shape the future plans to achieve broader impacts aligned with overall INCLUDES goals.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Timothy Podkul
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Jobs are growing most rapidly in areas that require STEM knowledge, causing business leaders to seek skilled American workers now and in the near future. Increase in the number of students pursuing engineering degrees is taking place but the percentages of underrepresented students in the engineering pipeline remains low. To address the challenge of increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in engineering, the National Society of Black Engineers, the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, and the Society of Women Engineers have formed the 50K Coalition, a collaborative of over 40 organizations committed to increasing the number of bachelors degrees awarded to women and minorities from 30,000 annually to 50,000 by 2025, a 66% increase. The 50K Coalition is using the Collective Impact framework to develop an evidence-based approach that drives management decision-making, improvements, sharing of information, and collective action to achieve success. The first convening of the 50K Coalition in April, 2016, brought together 83 leaders of the engineering community representing 13 professional societies with over 700,000 members, deans of engineering, minority engineering and women in engineering administrators from 11 leading colleges of engineering, and corporate partners representing six global industries. Consensus was reached on the following Common Agenda items: 1.) Undergraduate support and retention; 2.) Public awareness and marketing; 3.) K-12 support; 4.) Community College linkages; 5.) Culture and climate. The Coalition will encourage member organizations to develop new programs and scale existing programs to reach the goal.
The Coalition will use shared metrics to track progress: AP® Calculus completion and high school graduation rates; undergraduate freshmen retention rates; community college transfer rates and number of engineering degrees awarded. The 50K Coalition will develop the other elements of the Collective Impact framework: Infrastructure and effective decision-making processes that will become the backbone organization with a focus on data management, communications and dissemination; a system of continuous communication including Basecamp, website, the annual Engineering Scorecard, WebEx hosted meetings and convenings; and mutually reinforcing activities such as programs, courses, seminars, webinars, workshops, promotional campaigns, policy initiatives, and institutional capacity building efforts. The National Academy of Sciences study, Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America's Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads recommended that professional associations make recruitment and retention of underrepresented groups an organizational goal and implement programs designed to reach that goal by working with their membership, academic institutions and funding agencies on new initiatives. While these types of organizations work together now in a variety of ways, the relationships are one-on-one. The 50K Coalition brings together, for the first time professional societies, engineering schools, and industry to consider what mutually reinforcing activities can most effectively encourage students from underrepresented groups to complete calculus and graduate from 4-year engineering programs.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karl ReidBarry CorderoSarah EcohawkKaren Horting
"Strengthening Networks, Sparking Change: Museums and Libraries as Community Catalysts" combines findings from a literature scan and input from the library, museum and community revitalization fields with case studies about the experiences and vision of museums and libraries working to spur change in their communities. It describes the complementary conceptual frameworks of social wellbeing and collective impact and explains how libraries and museums can use these concepts to partner with community-based organizations, government agencies and other cultural or educational organizations. It