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
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.
This INSPIRE award is partially funded by the Cyber-Human Systems Program in the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems in the Directorate for Computer Science and Engineering, the Gravitational Physics Program in the Division of Physics in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and the Office of Integrative Activities.
This innovative project will develop a citizen science system to support the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (aLIGO), the most complicated experiment ever undertaken in gravitational physics. Before the end of this decade it will open up the window of gravitational wave observations on the Universe. However, the high detector sensitivity needed for astrophysical discoveries makes aLIGO very susceptible to noncosmic artifacts and noise that must be identified and separated from cosmic signals. Teaching computers to identify and morphologically classify these artifacts in detector data is exceedingly difficult. Human eyesight is a proven tool for classification, but the aLIGO data streams from approximately 30,000 sensors and monitors easily overwhelm a single human. This research will address these problems by coupling human classification with a machine learning model that learns from the citizen scientists and also guides how information is provided to participants. A novel feature of this system will be its reliance on volunteers to discover new glitch classes, not just use existing ones. The project includes research on the human-centered computing aspects of this sociocomputational system, and thus can inspire future citizen science projects that do not merely exploit the labor of volunteers but engage them as partners in scientific discovery. Therefore, the project will have substantial educational benefits for the volunteers, who will gain a good understanding on how science works, and will be a part of the excitement of opening up a new window on the universe.
This is an innovative, interdisciplinary collaboration between the existing LIGO, at the time it is being technically enhanced, and Zooniverse, which has fielded a workable crowdsourcing model, currently involving over a million people on 30 projects. The work will help aLIGO to quickly identify noise and artifacts in the science data stream, separating out legitimate astrophysical events, and allowing those events to be distributed to other observatories for more detailed source identification and study. This project will also build and evaluate an interface between machine learning and human learning that will itself be an advance on current methods. It can be depicted as a loop: (1) By sifting through enormous amounts of aLIGO data, the citizen scientists will produce a robust "gold standard" glitch dataset that can be used to seed and train machine learning algorithms that will aid in the identification task. (2) The machine learning protocols that select and classify glitch events will be developed to maximize the potential of the citizen scientists by organizing and passing the data to them in more effective ways. The project will experiment with the task design and workflow organization (leveraging previous Zooniverse experience) to build a system that takes advantage of the distinctive strengths of the machines (ability to process large amounts of data systematically) and the humans (ability to identify patterns and spot discrepancies), and then using the model to enable high quality aLIGO detector characterization and gravitational wave searches
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Vassiliki KalogeraAggelos KatsaggelosKevin CrowstonLaura TrouilleJoshua SmithShane LarsonLaura Whyte
NASA's Universe of Learning provides resources and experiences that enable diverse audiences to explore fundamental questions in astronomy, experience how science is done, and discover the universe for themselves. Using its direct connection to science and science experts, NASA's Universe of Learning creates and delivers timely and authentic resources and experiences for youth, families, and lifelong learners. The goal is to strengthen science learning and literacy, and to enable learners to discover the universe for themselves in innovative, interactive ways that meet today's 21st century needs. The program includes astronomical data tools, multimedia resources, exhibits and community programs, and professional learning experiences for informal educators. It is developed through a unique partnership between the Space Telescope Science Institute, Caltech/IPAC, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and Sonoma State University.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Denise SmithGordon SquiresKathy LestitionAnya BifernoLynn Cominsky
This exploratory learning research and design project will study how to use emerging technologies to help document practices in maker-based learning experiences. Despite its established potential for consolidating learning and sense-making, project documentation is often overlooked, not prioritized or seen as burdensome and therefore not integrated into the learning experiences. The project team seeks to understand and address with practice partners the barriers to documentation by systematically exploring how to physically embed and incorporate smart tools and documentation practices into learning environments, specifically creative hands-on learning spaces, like makerspaces. The goal is to understand how to scaffold learners to become more aware, reflective and attentive to their progress towards learning outcomes by embedding supportive tools physically in space as the actions unfold. Making and maker-based learning experiences offer tremendous opportunities to more fully engage diverse learners in STEM education and build a workforce prepared for innovation. Documentation of these learning experiences, both as an authentic practice that professionals engage in as well as an assessment practice for instruction, is often not supported. The project will create open source documentation for solutions and develop supporting case studies, web resources and guides to facilitate easy uptake and adoption of promising approaches.
This proposal will make significant research contributions in three ways: (1) develop and iteratively test a suite of embedded "smart" tools designed to scaffold, manage and trace process documentation practices; (2) study the integration of these tools in formal and informal activities and programs settings and characterize their influence on instruction and the assessment of learning outcomes; (3) establish a set of rubrics based on learner data streams to aid instruction and mark learner progress. Improving documentation practices and the assessment of learning outcomes will advance making as a core STEM educational activity. Through a better understanding of why and how to place networked documentation tools sensitive to space, time and context cues, the threshold for enactment and scaffolded usage can be lowered in a broader range of settings. Ultimately, this exploratory project will not only develop an integrated set of situated documentation tools, but also help us develop hypotheses for how documentation as a mediating process productively supports learning.
The Discovery Research K-12 program (DRK-12) 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 (RMTs). 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. The Multimedia Immersion (MI) project is will develop, pilot, and evaluate a nine-week STEM-rich multimedia production course for high school students. MI will make important contributions to the field through its efforts to design and evaluate the promises and challenges of a nine-week multimedia curriculum in multiple urban high schools. The MI course will engage teams of students to develop a personally and socially relevant storyline that guides their use of accessible audio and video technologies to create a five-minute animated video. To develop student STEM experience and provide technical support, the project will provide guidance and learning experiences in engineering (e.g., criteria, constraints, optimization, tradeoffs), science (e.g. sound, light, energy, mechanics) and multimedia technologies (e.g., computer based audio production, video editing and visualizations through animatics (i.e., shooting a succession of storyboards with a soundtrack). animatics).
Because the curriculum situates engineering and science learning in the context of multimedia production, there are natural synergies with several existing high school courses including engineering design, audio/video media production, and multimedia technology. Although these courses are typically electives in high school, developing a 5-minute animated short on a topic of interest may encourage girls and students from underrepresented groups to select this course over other electives. MI will impact 10 teachers and approximately 250 high school students per year. The project will result in the following resources: nine-week curricular unit (multimedia, science, engineering); assessments to monitor student learning of science, engineering and technology (design logs); and research on changes in student knowledge, interest, and a nine-week curricular unit (multimedia, science, engineering). Project resources will be disseminated to teachers, researchers, and curriculum and professional development providers via conference presentations, publications, and online webinars.
The MI project builds on student familiarity and interest in music, video and technology to promote an: (1) understanding of engineering design and physics and an (2) an appreciation of the fundamental role of STEM in popular culture. Project evaluation will be conducted using student surveys and an examination of work products in conjunction with implementation challenges and successes to generate evidence for the feasibility and utility of a high school multimedia course that explicitly addresses science and engineering learning. Project evaluation will use student design logs as a window into student design processes and conceptual understanding. Student design logs are an essential feature of MI curriculum design. With an appropriate structure, these design logs can inform teaching, afford an opportunity for students to reflect on their own work, and provide evidence of student thinking and learning for assessment purposes. Using student design logs as a window into students? design process and conceptual understanding is an important contribution to the engineering education community which has few options for measuring student knowledge in ways that are consistent with the hands-on, iterative nature of the design process.
The Space and Earth Informal STEM Education (SEISE) project, led by the Arizona State University with partners Science Museum of Minnesota, Museum of Science, Boston, and the University of California Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science and Space Sciences Laboratory, is raising the capacity of museums and informal science educators to engage the public in Heliophysics, Earth Science, Planetary Science, and Astrophysics, and their social dimensions through the National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Net). SEISE will also partner on a network-to-network basis with other existing coalitions and professional associations dedicated to informal and lifelong STEM learning, including the Afterschool Alliance, National Girls Collaborative Project, NASA Museum Alliance, STAR_Net, and members of the Association of Children’s Museums and Association of Science-Technology Centers. The goals for this project include engaging multiple and diverse public audiences in STEM, improving the knowledge and skills of informal educators, and encouraging local partnerships.
In collaboration with the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD), SEISE is leveraging NASA subject matter experts (SMEs), SMD assets and data, and existing educational products and online portals to create compelling learning experiences that will be widely use to share the story, science, and adventure of NASA’s scientific explorations of planet Earth, our solar system, and the universe beyond. Collaborative goals include enabling STEM education, improving U.S. scientific literacy, advancing national educational goals, and leveraging science activities through partnerships. Efforts will focus on providing opportunities for learners explore and build skills in the core science and engineering content, skills, and processes related to Earth and space sciences. SEISE is creating hands-on activity toolkits (250-350 toolkits per year over four years), small footprint exhibitions (50 identical copies), and professional development opportunities (including online workshops).
Evaluation for the project will include front-end and formative data to inform the development of products and help with project decision gates, as well as summative data that will allow stakeholders to understand the project’s reach and outcomes.
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), in collaboration with New York University's Institute for Education and Social Policy and the University of Southern Maine Center for Evaluation and Policy, will develop and evaluate a new teacher education program model to prepare science teachers through a partnership between a world class science museum and high need schools in metropolitan New York City (NYC). This innovative pilot residency model was approved by the New York State (NYS) Board of Regents as part of the state’s Race To The Top award. The program will prepare a total of 50 candidates in two cohorts (2012 and 2013) to earn a Board of Regents-awarded Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degree with a specialization in Earth Science for grades 7-12. The program focuses on Earth Science both because it is one of the greatest areas of science teacher shortages in urban areas and because AMNH has the ability to leverage the required scientific and educational resources in Earth Science and allied disciplines, including paleontology and astrophysics.
The proposed 15-month, 36-credit residency program is followed by two additional years of mentoring for new teachers. In addition to a full academic year of residency in high-needs public schools, teacher candidates will undertake two AMNH-based clinical summer residencies; a Museum Teaching Residency prior to entering their host schools, and a Museum Science Residency prior to entering the teaching profession. All courses will be taught by teams of doctoral-level educators and scientists.
The project’s research and evaluation components will examine the factors and outcomes of a program offered through a science museum working with the formal teacher preparation system in high need schools. Formative and summative evaluations will document all aspects of the program. In light of the NYS requirement that the pilot program be implemented in high-need, low-performing schools, this project has the potential to engage, motivate and improve the Earth Science achievement and interest in STEM careers of thousands of students from traditionally underrepresented populations including English language learners, special education students, and racial minority groups. In addition, this project will gather meaningful data on the role science museums can play in preparing well-qualified Earth Science teachers. The research component will examine the impact of this new teacher preparation model on student achievement in metropolitan NYC schools. More specifically, this project asks, "How do Earth Science students taught by first year AMNH MAT Earth Science teachers perform academically in comparison with students taught by first year Earth Science teachers not prepared in the AMNH program?.”
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Maritza MacdonaldMeryle WeinsteinRosamond KinzlerMordecai-Mark Mac LowEdmond MathezDavid Silvernail
This study explored the effect of depth of learning (as measured in hours) on creativity, curiosity, persistence and self-efficacy. We engaged ~900 parents and 900 students across 21 sites in Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Alabama, Virginia and the United Arab Emirates, in 5-week (10-hr) Curiosity Machine programs. Iridescent trained partners to implement the programs. Thus, this analysis was also trying to establish a baseline to measure any loss in impact from scaling our programs and moving to a “train-the-trainer” model. We analyzed 769 surveys out of which 126 were paired. On
The Sustainability Teams Empower and Amplify Membership in STEM (S-TEAMS), an NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot project, will tackle the problem of persistent underrepresentation by low-income, minority, and women students in STEM disciplines and careers through transdisciplinary teamwork. As science is increasingly done in teams, collaborations bring diversity to research. Diverse interactions can support critical thinking, problem-solving, and is a priority among STEM disciplines. By exploring a set of individual contributors that can be effect change through collective impact, this project will explore alternative approaches to broadly enhance diversity in STEM, such as sense of community and perceived program benefit. The S-TEAMS project relies on the use of sustainability as the organizing frame for the deployment of learning communities (teams) that engage deeply with active learning. Studies on the issue of underrepresentation often cite a feeling of isolation and lack of academically supportive networks with other students like themselves as major reasons for a disinclination to pursue education and careers in STEM, even as the numbers of underrepresented groups are increasing in colleges and universities across the country. The growth of sustainability science provides an excellent opportunity to include students from underrepresented groups in supportive teams working together on problems that require expertise in multiple disciplines. Participating students will develop professional skills and strengthen STEM- and sustainability-specific skills through real-world experience in problem solving and team science. Ultimately this project is expected to help increase the number of qualified professionals in the field of sustainability and the number of minorities in the STEM professions.
While there is certainly a clear need to improve engagement and retention of underrepresented groups across the entire spectrum of STEM education - from K-12 through graduate education, and on through career choices - the explicit focus here is on the undergraduate piece of this critical issue. This approach to teamwork makes STEM socialization integral to the active learning process. Five-member transdisciplinary teams, from disciplines such as biology, chemistry, computer and information sciences, geography, geology, mathematics, physics, and sustainability science, will work together for ten weeks in summer 2018 on real-world projects with corporations, government organizations, and nongovernment organizations. Sustainability teams with low participation by underrepresented groups will be compared to those with high representation to gather insights regarding individual and collective engagement, productivity, and ongoing interest in STEM. Such insights will be used to scale up the effort through partnership with New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability (NJHEPS).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Amy TuiningaAshwani VasishthPankaj Lai
Physical science and engineering remain the least diverse of all STEM fields---with regard to women, underrepresented minorities, and persons with disabilities---across all levels of STEM education and training. SCI-STEPS is an NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot that will address this persistent challenge by developing a complete end-to-end pipeline (or system of pathways) from the beginning of college to the PhD, and then into the workforce. Many isolated efforts to broaden participation have shown promise, but they have not produced big enough impact. SCI-STEPS represents a concerted set of coordinated interventions---consciously facilitated, systemically linked, and purposefully disseminated. SCI-STEPS represents a broad regional network among major research universities, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, comprehensive universities, community colleges, national labs, and major scientific organizations. The goal of the network is to ensure that underrepresented individuals in the physical sciences and engineering can get from their starting point in STEM higher education---freshmen at 2-year or 4-year college---through the higher education pathways leading to an appropriate terminal degree and employment in the STEM workforce.
Women, underrepresented minorities, and persons with disabilities collectively represent the majority of college-age individuals entering higher education with an expressed interest in physical science and engineering. A growing body of research indicates that academic and social integration may be even more influential than academic abilities for retention of students. Thus, interventions aimed at stemming the losses of these individuals must ultimately be aimed at changing the system---including unwelcoming institutional climates, racial/ethnic/gender stereotyping, a lack of mentors with whom to identify, and evaluation methods that emphasize conformity over individual capabilities---rather than changing the individual. The SCI-STEPS pilot focuses effort on institutional readiness for implementation of best practice interventions at four key junctures: (i) college freshman to sophomore; (ii) undergraduate to graduate; (iii) PhD to postdoc; and (iv) postdoc to workforce.The pilot will proceed in three steps: (1) a planning phase, (2) development of an initial end-to-end pathways model with four Juncture Transition teams, and (3) scale-up of the SCI-STEPS "network of networks" with all initial partners. By addressing these objectives through a collective impact framework and embedded research, this pilot will demonstrate how best-practice interventions at each pathway juncture can be dovetailed and scaled up across a broad range of institutional types and across a large but distinct geographical area. Addressing these objectives will thus also serve to advance Broadening Participation efforts at a national scale, by suggesting the forms of institutional partnerships and best-practices that may inform other alliances in other STEM disciplines and/or different regional areas.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Keivan StassunNicole JosephKelly Holley-BockelmannWilliam RobinsonRoger Chalkley
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 develop and test intergenerational science media resources for parents that are participating in adult education programs and their young children. The materials will build on the research-based and successful children's television program, Fetch with Ruff Ruffman. The target audience includes parents enrolled in adult education programs who lack a high school diploma or are in English as a Second Language classes. These resources will support parents' engagement in science activities with their children both in the adult education settings as well as at home. Adult and family educators will receive professional development resources and training to support their integration of the parent/child activities. Project partners include the National Center for Families Learning, Kentucky Educational Television, and Alabama Public Television,
The goals of the Ruff Family Science project are to: (1) investigate adult education settings that feature an intergenerational learning model, in order to learn about the unique characteristics of adults and families who are enrolled in these programs; (2) examine the institutional circumstances and educator practices that support joint parent/child engagement in science; (3) iteratively develop new prototype resources meet the priorities and needs of families and educators involved in intergenerational education settings; and (4) develop the knowledge needed to create a fuller set of materials in the future that will motivate and support diverse, low-income parents to investigate science with their children. The research strategy is comprised of three main components: Phase 1: Needs Assessment: Determine key motivations and behaviors common to adult education students who are also parents; surface obstacles and assets inherent in these parents' current practices; and examine the needs and available resources for supplementing parents' current engagement in family science learning. Phase 2: Prototype Development: Iteratively develop two prototype Activity Sets, along with related educator supports and training materials, designed to promote joint parent-child engagement with English and Spanish-speaking families around physical science concepts. Phase 3: Prototype Field Test: Test how the two refined prototype Activity Sets work in different educational settings (adult education, parent education, and parent and child together time). Explore factors that support or impede effective implementation. Sources of data for the study include observations of adult and parent education classes using an expert interview protocol, focus groups, adult and family educator interviews, and parent surveys.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches and resources for use in a variety of settings. The subject of physics and all of its sub-disciplines are becoming more prevalent in the public press as the research results appear to be quite interesting and important. While the physics discipline has made a Nation-wide effort to acquaint the public with physics knowledge through informal education learning experiences for years, it has not been as successful as the community desires. Thus, this project is aimed to gather all of the informal and outreach physics education efforts that have been attempted in the hope of finding the best practices for learning physics concepts and practices. A compendium will be published to inform future opportunities on how to educate the public through informal and outreach mechanisms. This project is a collaboration between Michigan State University and the University of Colorado. The physics community has a long history of engaging audiences in informal education activities. Physics institutions that facilitate informal programs include university departments, national laboratories and centers, and professional societies and organizations. There is, however, no systemic understanding of how these programs are facilitated, nor an assessment of the collective impact that these programs have on participants. This project will address numerous research questions in the broad areas of Activity Detail, Structural Aspects, and Assessment. Further, their efforts will determine the "who, what, why, where and how" of informal physics offerings, focusing on their facilitation, impact on participants, and the academic and discipline-specific cultures from which these programs originate. The study has several definite research outcomes that will emerge from this methodology: 1) They will produce a survey of the informal efforts of university physics departments, national physics labs and national physics organizations, 2) They will develop a taxonomy of informal physics programs from which we can characterize the landscape of programs, and 3) by investigating both "successful" as well as "failed" or terminated programs, they will develop an understanding of the culture and resources needed to support outreach from these research findings. In addition, they will produce published works that can be utilized by informal practitioners and administrators in physics to examine current programs and guide the development of new programs. With regards to the research questions and framework, the overarching and driving question for this research project is: "What is the landscape of informal physics learning, specifically, of those programs in the United States facilitated by physicists and physics students at academic institutions, national labs and by national physics organizations?" This study will provide a robust understanding of the state of informal physics programs and outreach by physicists in the United States today. Findings will inform practitioners and administrators as to how best to support and design informal physics programming. The results will also have broad implications for other discipline-specific informal STEM programming. The primary data collection methods will be a nationwide survey and interviews with a large sample of informal practitioners from the physics community. Site visits will be conducted with a subset of these programs in order to observe programs in action and to glean insights from university participants, community partners, public, and K-12 audiences.