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.
Refugee youth are particularly vulnerable to STEM disenfranchisement due to factors including limited or interrupted schooling following displacement; restricted exposure to STEM education; and linguistic, cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic, and racial minority status. Refugee youth may experience a gap in STEM skills and knowledge, and a conflict between the identities necessary for participation in their families and communities, and those expected for success in STEM settings. To conduct research to better understand these challenges, an interrelated set of activities will be developed. First, youth will learn principles of physics and computing by participating in cosmic ray research with physicists using an instructional approach that builds from their home languages and cultures. Then youth periodically share what they are learning in the cosmic ray research with their parents, siblings, and science teachers at family and community science events. Finally, youth conduct reflective research on their own STEM identity development over the course of the project. Research on learning will be conducted within and across these three strands to better understand how refugee youth develop STEM-positive identities. This project will benefit society by improving equity and diversity in STEM through (1) creating opportunities for refugee youth to participate in physics research and to develop computing skills and (2) producing knowledge on STEM identity development that may be applied more broadly to improve STEM education. Deliverables from this project include: (a) research publications on STEM identity and learning; (b) curriculum resources for teaching physics and computing to multilingual youth; (c) an online digital storytelling exhibit offering narratives about belonging in STEM research which can be shared with STEM stakeholders (policy makers, scientists, educators, etc.); and (d) an online database of cosmic ray data which will be available to physicists worldwide for research purposes. This Innovations in Development proposal is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) 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.
This program is designed to provide multiple contexts, relationships, and modes across and within which the identity work of individual students can be studied to look for convergence or divergence. To achieve this goal, the research applies a linguistic anthropological framework embedding discourse analysis in a larger ethnography. Data collected in this study include field notes, audio and video recordings of naturalistic interactions in the cosmic ray research and other program activities, multimodal artifacts (e.g., students' digital stories), student work products, interviews, and surveys. Critically, this methodology combines the analysis of identity formation as it unfolds in moment-to-moment conversations (during STEM learning, and in conversations about STEM and STEM learning) with reflective tasks and the production of personal narratives (e.g., in digital stories and interviews). Documenting convergence and divergence of STEM identities across these sources of data offers both methodological and theoretical contributions to the field. The research will offer thick description of the discursive practices of refugee youth to reveal how they construct identities related to STEM and STEM disciplines across settings (e.g., during cosmic ray research, while creating digital stories), relationships (e.g., peer, parent, teacher), and the languages they speak (e.g., English, Swahili). The findings will be of potential value to instructional designers of informal learning experiences including those working with afterschool, museums, science centers and the like, educators, and scholars of learning and identity.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Tino NyaweloJohn MatthewsJordan GertonSarah Braden
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The Center for Integrated Quantum Materials pursues research and education in quantum science and technology. With our research and industry partners, the Museum of Science, Boston collaborates to produce public engagement resources, museum programs, special events and media. We also provide professional development in professional science communication for the Center's students, post-docs, and interns; and coaching in public engagement. The Museum also sponsors The Quantum Matters(TM) Science Communication Competition (www.mos.org/quantum-matters-competition) and NanoDays with a Quantum Leap. In association with CIQM and IBM Q, the Museum hosted the first U.S. museum exhibit on quantum computing.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Robert WesterveltCarol Lynn AlpertRay AshooriTina Brower-Thomas
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
On behalf of the Interagency Working Group on Workforce, Industry and Infrastructure, under the NSTC Subcommittee on Quantum Information Science (QIS), the National Science Foundation invited 25 researchers and educators to come together to deliberate on defining a core set of key concepts for future QIS learners that could provide a starting point for further curricular and educator development activities. The deliberative group included university and industry researchers, secondary school and college educators, and representatives from educational and professional organizations.
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