MarshAccess is an informal science education program based at the Meadowlands Environment Center (MEC) in Lyndhurst, NJ, and funded by the National Science Foundation. MarshAccess seeks to engage largely underserved populations of young and older adults with disabilities, as well as older adults with age-related limitations, in outdoor experiential STEM activities centered on the New Jersey Meadowlands marsh ecosystem. Program modules are designed to increase interest in science, increase scientific literacy, develop a sustained relationship between the MEC and the target audience and audience
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Hilarie B. DavisBradford T. DaveyRamapo College of New Jersey
Evaluators sought to determine impact on math attitude and content knowledge of students (3rd - 6th grade), and math literacy workers (high school and college students), based on pre-post testing and observation of YPP after school programs, in which college and high school students teach math games to elementary and middle school students in marginalized and vulnerable communities. The study focused on the Chicago YPP site, 1 of 7 in the YPP national network. Increases in math attitude scores were not statistically significant, however in some instances evaluators found significant increases
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Norman LedermanYoung People's Project, Inc.
The 2010 Cyberchase Summer Challenge Outreach initiative was designed to allow local public television stations to develop community-appropriate outreach plans as part of a unique summer launch of a new season of shows for a PBS children's television program. The Cyberchase Summer Challenge was a national initiative; eight stations were selected for a pilot study of best practices related to summer programming. Grantee stations were provided modest funding and material support. RMC's evaluation focused on understanding how public television stations and their outreach partners can build
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Alice ApleyWendy GrahamElizabeth GoldmanThirteen/WNET New York
In an effort to prepare female high school students for a college curriculum and achieve gender parity in the engineering industry, WGBH has developed an initiative entitled, Engineer Your Life (EYL). The initiative is targeted toward female high school students, career counselors/educators, and professional engineers. It is designed to: 1) increase these target audiences' understanding of engineering, 2) inspire young women to explore engineering as a career option and 3) help adults encourage young women to investigate engineering opportunities. One component of this initiative involves
In 2009, Insight Evaluation Services conducted a summative evaluation of Junior Zoo Crew (JZC), a summer service program at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore (MZB) for teens ages 14 through 17. The goal of the evaluation was to assess the long-term impact of the JZC Program on its past participants in four main areas: 1. How and why participants are attracted to the Program and what support they get from their parents. 2. The extent to which the Program meets participants' expectations, as well as offers a satisfactory volunteer experience that also increases their appreciation for the value of
The Nurture Nature Foundation’s Flood Forum project, funded by a two-year National Science Foundation (NSF) planning grant effective August 1, 2009, explored innovative means to promote science learning by and for local communities. The NSF planning grant allowed Nurture Nature Foundation (NNF) to develop a model of outreach for science centers that engages rural and underserved audiences in public dialogue on the science underlying an issue of high public concern—frequent flooding in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. Building on a public forum model used by other science centers such as the
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Alice ApleyNurture Nature Foundation
This report presents a summary of findings from our evaluation and conclusions that may carry broader implications. The audience for this report includes The National Science Foundation (NSF) and other funders (particularly science research funders), the leadership and staff of Nanotechnology: the Convergence of Science and Society project partners, and the informal science education field. The main body of the report is organized into two sections. The first section discusses the project's logic model, or theory of action and frames what the project set out to do and how. The project's
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Mark St. JohnPamela CastoriOregon Public BroadcastingJudy Hirabayashi
The following three case studies are descriptive and evaluative in nature, and are designed to describe, explain, and portray in some detail three examples of COSIA partnerships. These cases are context bound; the place-based aspect of these cases is critical to the phenomenon being explored. Consistent with the goal for employing a case study approach for COSIA (Communicating Ocean Sciences to Informal Audiences) is the approach if investigating a phenomenon within the context of the places and partners involved. While each of these COSIA partnership sites are involved in other important and
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mark St. JohnUniversity of California, Berkeley
Knight Williams Research Communications (Knight Williams, Inc), an independent evaluation firm specializing in the development and evaluation of science education media, conducted the summative evaluation for Ice Stories. The evaluation focused on the extent to which the project achieved the goals described in the Exploratorium's grant to the National Science Foundation (NSF) Arctic Research and Education, Antarctic Coordination and Information program within the Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL). The NSF DRL program provided funding for both the project
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Valerie Knight-WilliamsExploratoriumDivan WilliamsChristina MeyersOra GrinbergTal SraboyantsEveen ChanDavid Tower
Design Squad, produced by WGBH-Boston (http://www.wgbh.org), premiered on the Public Broadcasting Service in October 2009. Design Squad is a reality television series that encourages kids ages 9-12 years to “show off their smarts as they design and build working solutions for real-world clients—people who are hungry for clever ideas from a new generation of innovators.” Each season, the series culminates in a final episode when the top two scorers compete for a $10,000 college scholarship from the Intel Foundation. The underlying educational goals of Design Squad are to: (1) Increase students'
In summary, this Planning Grant has demonstrated that the Fusion Science Theater mode successfully uses the dramatic structure of a play to create an investigative, participatory theater event that conveys science information, concepts, and methodology in a way that is engaging to children and attractive to parents and educators. The model can be transferred to others both by teaching others to develop their own shows and by training undergraduates to perform FST shows that have already been created. Finally, significant achievements have occurred in publicizing the model and in recruiting
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Joanne CantorMadison Area Technical College
EVALUATION PURPOSE The purpose of this evaluation was to determine which visitors are attracted to interpreter-staffed Discovery Carts and what behaviors they exhibit that reflect their learning experience. To do this, 348 observations of unique visitor interactions with Discovery Carts were collected from January 21 to February 17, 2010. KEY FINDINGS What age group is most attracted to the Discovery Carts? Children ages 3 to10 comprise the majority of visitors to the Discovery Carts. Who initiates the interaction between visitors and the cart? The visitor initiates the majority of
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kathryn FromsonJessica NewkirkElizabeth RosinoShannon WeissPacific Science Center