The project team is developing a prototype of a mobile platform, Zaption, to support teachers in using video clips to enrich learning. The product’s user-interface will allow teachers to easily add annotations to videos, make short video clips that align to topics, and enhance videos with time-linked elements and assessments that appear at the top of each video. In Phase I pilot research, the team will examine whether the prototype functions as planned, if teachers are able to use the prototype for different purposes, and whether students are engaged by the prototype.
The independent evaluation firm Multimedia Research conducted an evaluation of the television component of SciGirls Season Two, including an experimental study of the impact of the TV series on girls' abilities to take part in science and engineering projects.2 During the same period, the independent evaluation team from Knight Williams Inc. conducted an evaluation of the implementation of the outreach activities among the member institutions of the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) network.
Rockman et al (REA), a San Francisco-based research and evaluation firm, conducted the external evaluation for Youth Radio's DO IT! program, which was funded by the National Science Foundation. Building upon Youth Radio's previous Science and Technology Program, the DO IT! initiative consisted of three primary components that promoted STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) learning by training underserved youth in cutting-edge digital technologies: (1) Brains and Beakers: Young people hosted a line-up of investigators and inventors for demo-dialogues at Youth Radio's studios
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Rockman et al | Youth RadioKristin BassJulia Hazer
The goal of this three-year initiative is to expand the implementation of a currently active and proven climate education method delivered by TV weathercasters around the country. The work is a partnership of George Mason University, Yale University, Climate Central (a non-profit climate science research and media production organization), the American Meteorological Society, and NOAA and NASA. This project will include four activities: (1) recruiting 200 TV more weathercasters nationwide (currently just over 100 are participating); (2) providing participating weathercasters with professional development activities and training on use of Climate Matters materials to help them become confident and competent climate educators; (3) developing and distributing to participating weathercasters timely, localized, broadcast-ready graphics and science information, when possible tied to local weather and climatic events, to make it easy for them to educate their viewers about the local relationships between the climate and the weather; and (4) research and evaluation activities to improve the rate of use and effectiveness of Climate Matters materials by weathercasters over time and to study the effect on learning about climate by the public. Learning outcomes by the public will be evaluated using a quasi-experimental method with nationally representative surveys of the public, conducted twice per year over the course of the project. The guiding hypothesis is that there will be a dose-response relationship between the extent of TV weathercaster use of Climate Matters materials in a community (i.e., a media market) and change over time in viewers' understanding of the climate. The development of Climate Matters is based on theories of informal and experiential learning. The scaling up of the initiative applies methods derived from diffusion of innovation and social marketing theories.
This multiplatform media and science center project is designed to engage audiences in humanity's deepest questions like the nature of love, reality, time and death in both scientific and humanistic terms. Project deliverables include 5 hour-long radio programs for broadcast on NPR stations, public events/museum exhibits at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, kiosks in venues throughout the city, and a social media engagement campaign. The audience of the project is large and diverse using mass media and the internet. But the project will specifically target young, online, and minority audiences using various strategies. The project is designed to help a diverse audience understand the impact of new scientific developments as well as the basic science, technology, engineering and math needed to be responsible, informed citizens. Innovative elements of the project include the unique format of the radio programs that explore complex topics in an engaging and compelling way, the visitor engagement strategy at the Exploratorium, and the social media strategy that reaches niche audiences who might never listen to the radio broadcasts, but find the podcasts and blogs engaging. The Exploratorium will be opening a new building in 2013 and will include exhibits and programs that are testing grounds for this project. This is a new model that aligns the radio content with exhibitions, social media, and in person events at the Exploratorium, providing a unique holistic approach. The project is designed to inspire people to think and talk about science and want to find out more. The evaluation will measure the impacts on the targeted audiences reached by each of the key delivery methods. Data will be collected using focus groups; intercept interviews with people in public places, and longitudinal panels. The focus will be on 5 targeted audiences (young adults, families with children, non-NPR listeners, underrepresented minorities, and adults without college experience). This comprehensive evaluation will likely contribute important knowledge to the field based on this multiple-platform collaborative model.
This media and research project will develop and study the use of new media, broadcast television, and social networks to introduce Citizen Science to a national audience, and motivate their direct involvement and participation. Project deliverables will include: four nationally-distributed public TV programs hosted by Waleed Abdalati, Director of CIREs at the University of Boulder and former NASA Chief Scientist; online videos for training and outreach of citizen science partners; digital engagement via social media; and a custom-designed application ('2nd screen app') that enables users to obtain additional informational content, share information, and connect with other viewers. The evaluation and research study will build new knowledge on how these deliverables can motivate the public to become citizen science participants. The investigators estimate the four television programs will reach approximately 80% of U.S. television households. In addition, videos and other content will be distributed through channels such as iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, and social media. Target audiences will include the general public, citizen science activists, and professional scientists. Underrepresented groups will be reached through special Google Hangouts, and professional societies such as SACNAS and AGU. The research components of the project will provide evidence on how traditional researchers respond to citizen science, and explore the deliverables' use as recruitment tools for citizen science projects and impacts on viewers' attitudes, behaviors, and skills related to citizen science. Data will be collected from multiple sources, including online surveys, in-person focus groups, and analyses of users' online postings. Retrospective surveys will be administered to explore changes in behavior regarding whether respondents have increased their interaction with professional scientists, or participated in citizen science initiatives. A quasi-experimental study will be conducted to assess the value added by the 2nd screen app.
This Michigan State University and University of Texas-Austin project will focus on making science communication more scientific. It will primarily use interview and survey research to improve societal understanding of how those involved in science communication, particularly scientists, think about science communication. The goal is to use this knowledge to help improve science communication training and recruiting with a focus on increasing the likelihood that scientists will adopt evidence-based communication strategies to increase public interest, engagement, and identification with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). A central underlying reason for the study is a mismatch between scientists' motivations and goals when interacting with public audiences and what research suggests would be the most positive and productive with public audiences. This study 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 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 project will be conducted in three phases. The first is interviews with a wide range of science communication experts to assess priority research questions. These interviews will be followed by surveys with U.S.-based members of up to 10 different scientific societies representing a broad range of academic fields as well as a survey of science communication researchers. The survey will focus on three different public engagement modes, including face-to-face engagement, online engagement, and engagement via the news media. Consistent with the Theory of Planned Behavior, the surveys will assess scientists' attitudes about public engagement and specific public engagement goals, as well as perceptions of social norms (both descriptive and injunctive) and efficacy beliefs (both internal and external). These will be used as predictors of general and goal-specific engagement willingness, as well as reported past behavior, using multigroup modeling. Potential communication goals of interest include transferring knowledge, developing interest and excitement, building trust in scientists, demonstrating openness and a willingness to listen, shaping how people think about subjects (i.e. framing), and/or defending science. The final phase of the project will explore the potential to design experiments aimed at testing the impact that mention of specific goals has on communication training recruitment as well as the degree to which online content about various goals is attractive to scientists interested in developing their communication skills. The research is the most targeted and largest attempt to date to understand how scientists' views about the public and communication processes may shape science communication behavior.
This early-stage design and development, integrated media and research project will contribute important new understandings to the informal science learning literature by exploring science engagement on social media when integrated with broadcast television. It will help answer questions including: What does such engagement look like? Who participates? How and why does it happen? and What is the degree or depth of engagement? The project builds on the previous successful work by WGBH nationally distributing the television series NOVA scienceNOW and the research expertise of EDC. WGBH's NOVA scienceNOW program will collaborate with EDC to develop new metrics to understand how and why learners engage with science on social media. Deliverables will include six one-hour episodes of NOVA scienceNOW, short online videos, moderated online discussion events, and an online film festival. A new social Media Initiative will develop six live broadcast microblogging events, six post-broadcast online discussion events, daily social media updates, and an online film festival that will feature user generated videos. A range of STEM content in the videos and online posts will be framed around big science and engineering questions such as animal communication and survival systems, the biology of sleep, climate change, new technologies, energy, genetics, and natural disasters. The continued innovations and expansion of social media channels provides significant new opportunities for providing learner's access to high quality science content, researchers, and opportunities to participate in science. In the first phase of this work to deepen the evidence based understanding of how social media supports informal science engagement, NOVA and EDC will collaborate to develop new measurement instruments: (1) a Network Profile to quantitatively represent the size and activity of NOVA's social media network; (2) an Informal Science Engagement (ISE) index to measure the degree of engagement by coding and analyzing conversations and posts; (3) a Follower Profile to assess the degree of activity and the nature of the engagement; and (4) a Science Social Media Engagement survey instrument. They will then use these measures and data collection protocols to explore whether and how the initiative might influence science engagement. External expert reviewers with content and methodological expertise will review all aspects of the project at critical junctures. This project will contribute important new knowledge and research instruments and methods to better understand how the learning opportunities of social media channels can be realized most effectively. This has significant potential for broad and lasting benefits to society as well as advancing the informal science learning field.
Brewer and Ley surveyed 851 participants in a U.S. city and revealed relationships among demographic characteristics, religious beliefs, political views, and trust in multiple forms of science communication sources.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. This project seeks to improve public engagement in climate communication by broadcast meteorologists, using scientific methods to identify probable causes for their skepticism and/or reticence, and to test the efficacy of proposed solutions.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It describes a media project that created a documentary film about the Pulsar Search Collaboratory, as well as developing programming to be used both in the classroom and in diverse settings throughout the community.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting held in Washington, DC. It discusses the second season of SciGirls, a multimedia project designed to encourage and empower more girls to pursue careers in STEM.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Twin Cities Public TelevisionRita Karl