This project is designed to support collaboration between informal STEM learning (ISL) researchers, designers, and educators with sound researchers and acoustic ecologists to jointly explore the role of auditory experiences—soundscapes—on learning. In informal STEM learning spaces, where conversation advances STEM learning and is a vital part of the experience of exploring STEM phenomena with family and friends, attention to the impacts of soundscapes can have an important bearing on learning. Understanding how soundscapes may facilitate, spark, distract from, or even overwhelm thinking and conversation will provide ISL educators and designers evidence to inform their practice. The project is structured to reflect the complexity of ISL audiences and experiences; thus, partners include the North Park Village Nature Center located in in a diverse immigrant neighborhood in Chicago; Wild Indigo, a Great Lakes Audubon program primarily serving African American visitors in Midwest cities; an after-school/summer camp provider, STEAMing Ahead New Mexico, serving families in the rural southwest corner of New Mexico, and four sites in Ohio, MetroParks, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, and the Center of Science and Industry.
Investigators will conduct large-scale exploratory research to answer an understudied research question: How do environmental sounds impact STEM learning in informal learning spaces? Researchers and practitioners will characterize and describe the soundscapes throughout the different outdoor and indoor exhibit/learning spaces. Researchers will observe 800 visitors, tracking attraction, attention, dwell time, and shared learning. In addition to observations, researchers will join another 150 visitors for think-aloud interviews, where researchers will walk alongside visitors and capture pertinent notes while visitors describe their experience in real time. Correlational and cluster analyses using machine learning algorithms will be used to identify patterns across different sounds, soundscapes, responses, and reflections of research participants. In particular, the analyses will identify characteristics of sounds that correlate with increased attention and shared learning. Throughout the project, a team of evaluators will monitor progress and support continuous improvement, including guidance for developing culturally responsive research metrics co-defined with project partners. Evaluators will also document the extent to which the project impacts capacity building, and influences planning and design considerations for project partners. This exploratory study is the initial in a larger research agenda, laying the groundwork for future experimental study designs that test causal claims about the relationships between specific soundscapes and visitor learning. Results of this study will be disseminated widely to informal learning researchers and practitioners through workshops, presentations, journal articles, facilitated conversations, and a short film that aligns with the focus and findings of the research.
DATE:
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Martha MersonJustin MeyerDaniel Shanahan
The Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) will collaborate with four community organizations serving Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) audiences to research and develop a novel outdoor makerspace that engages families in STEM learning. A makerspace is a place where people work together on creative, interest driven projects. In working with BIPOC families, the project addresses three forms of historical (and present day) exclusion of community participants, including participation in the design of informal learning experiences, participation in such activities, and overall engagement in STEM. The project aims to develop activities that foster STEM learning using natural materials in an outdoor makerspace, informed through robust collaboration with local communities. This project will result in an outdoor makerspace at SMM that will include 3-4 settings (approximately 2500 square feet total) that house and support multiple making activities in an outdoor context. The proposed work will contribute to advancing knowledge through exploring how BIPOC families define learning in makerspaces and how younger children can be fully engaged in family learning. The project will share the inclusive design and community collaboration practices developed through this work with other museums, maker educators, and other community organizations that can develop or expand their own outdoor makerspaces in ways that will respect and reflect BIPOC families’ perspectives.
BIPOC families will join museum staff as contributors in the development and iteration of an outdoor makerspace and collaborators in the development of generalized design principles and dissemination of the research. Visitor-captured video of engagement in the outdoor makerspace, surveys, and memos from design meetings with community partners serve as the foundation for the process of aligning design and development of outdoor informal science education spaces with community needs and values. All research activities will be guided by a culturally responsive research framework and use strategies to ensure the multicultural validity such as video meaning-making with family research participants and member-checking instruments, data analyses, and findings with Design Partners. Project research will address three questions: (1) What are the characteristics of family learning in an outdoor nature-situated makerspace, including how BIPOC families identify and describe STEM learning and how outdoor spaces can be built to support BIPOC families’ perspectives? (2) How can the space be built to support multi-age families to engaged in making, including a focus on what design elements support preschool learner’s engagement and sustained participation by other family members? and (3) How do the design principles for making with widely available materials translate from indoor to outdoor spaces and materials? Research findings, design principles and community engagement guides will be widely disseminated to researchers, designers, program developers, informal science institutions and community organizations.
Creative Discovery Museum will create an indoor/outdoor, natural science gallery designed for children ages 2 to 12. Named “Unearthed,” the gallery will include exhibits on fossil layers, dinosaurs and paleontology, volcanos and volcanology, erosion and weathering, entomology, and insects. It will offer hands-on, exploratory experiences in natural science for children and their families. The new science gallery will align with state educational standards, provide more interactive learning experiences, and introduce children to real elements including dirt, water, and sand in an outdoor exhibit that reinforces the concepts presented inside the museum.
The McCormick Bridgehouse & Chicago River Museum will create a mobile cart with hands-on, immersive experiences and educational materials to expand programming to the open-air plaza in front of the museum. To educate visitors about the Chicago River ecosystem, the museum will develop and deliver three live science experiences utilizing the mobile outdoor cart, which will include a 3-D model of a watershed. Additionally, the museum will contract with photographers and a graphic designer to generate content for educational displays and curriculum. By creating a mobile cart with hands-on, immersive experiences and educational materials, the Bridgehouse Museum will reach more diverse audiences on the plaza, which extends onto the Chicago Riverwalk.
The Palo Alto Junior Museum & Zoo will create the California Dinosaur Garden exhibition, an inclusive environment for children ages 3 to 11 that promotes science learning. The museum will employ sensory-rich storytelling and interactive experiences to engage children and their caregivers. Project activities will include the completion of initial concept designs and evaluation to inform exhibit development; design development, prototyping, and formative evaluation; and engaging external contractors to fabricate and install the exhibit. The exhibition will include prehistoric plants within a seasonal marsh landscape, interactive interpretive exhibits, a fossil dig, and life-size dinosaur sculptures. The project will also address the need for science learning experiences for children with disabilities by applying universal design principals such as wheelchair access to the garden experience, braille labels, and tactile, sensory-rich elements.
This project investigates long-term human-robot interaction outside of controlled laboratory settings to better understand how the introduction of robots and the development of socially-aware behaviors work to transform the spaces of everyday life, including how spaces are planned and managed, used, and experienced. Focusing on tour-guiding robots in two museums, the research will produce nuanced insights into the challenges and opportunities that arise as social robots are integrated into new spaces to better inform future design, planning, and decision-making. It brings together researchers from human geography, robotics, and art to think beyond disciplinary boundaries about the possible futures of human-robot co-existence, sociality, and collaboration. Broader impacts of the project will include increased accessibility and engagement at two partner museums, interdisciplinary research opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students, a short video series about the current state of robotic technology to be offered as a free educational resource, and public art exhibitions reflecting on human-robot interactions. This project will be of interest to scholars of Science and Technology Studies, Human Robotics Interaction (HRI), and human geography as well as museum administrators, educators and the general public.
This interdisciplinary project brings together Science and Technology Studies, Human Robotics Interaction (HRI), and human geography to explore the production of social space through emerging forms of HRI. The project broadly asks: How does the deployment of social robots influence the production of social space—including the functions, meanings, practices, and experiences of particular spaces? The project is based on long-term ethnographic observation of the development and deployment of tour-guiding robots in an art museum and an earth science museum. A social roboticist will develop a socially-aware navigation system to add nuance to the robots’ socio-spatial behavior. A digital artist will produce digital representations of the interactions that take place in the museum, using the robot’s own sensor data and other forms of motion capture. A human geographer will conduct interviews with museum visitors and staff as well as ethnographic observation of the tour-guiding robots and of the roboticists as they develop the navigation system. They will produce an ethnographic analysis of the robots’ roles in the organization of the museums, everyday practices of museum staff and visitors, and the differential experiences of the museum space. The intellectual merits of the project consist of contributions at the intersections of STS, robotics, and human geography examining the value of ethnographic research for HRI, the development of socially-aware navigation systems, the value of a socio-spatial analytic for understanding emerging forms of robotics, and the role of robots within evolving digital geographies.
This project is jointly funded by the Science and Technology Studies program in SBE and Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) Program in EHR.
Co-led by the University of Washington and Science Gallery Dublin, this project aims to drive and transform the next generation of broadening participation efforts targeting teen-aged youth from communities historically underrepresented in STEM fields. This project investigates how out-of-school time (OST) programs that integrate epistemic practices of the arts, sciences, computer science, and other disciplines, in the context of consequential activities (such as creating radio segments, designing museum exhibitions, or building online games), can more broadly appeal to and engage youth who do not already identify as STEM learners. STEM-related skills and capacities (such as computational thinking, design, data visualizations, and digital storytelling) are key to productive and creative participation in many future civic and workplace activities, and are driving the 30 fastest-growing occupations in the US. But many new jobs will entail a hybrid blend of skills, such as programming and design skills that many students who have disengaged with academic STEM pathways may already have and would be eager to develop further. There is not currently a strong foundation of research-based evidence to guide the design, implementation, and evaluation transdisciplinary programs - in which STEM skills are embedded as tools for meaningful participation - or how such approaches relate to long-term outcomes. Hypothesizing that OST programs which effectively engage youth during their high-leverage teenage years can significantly impact youths' longer-term STEM learning trajectories, this project will involve: 1) Five 3-year studies documenting learning in different technology-rich contexts: Making Afterschool, Media Production, Museum Exhibition Design, Digital Arts Programs, and Pop-Up/Street Science Programs; 2) A 4-year longitudinal study, involving 100 youth from the above programs; 3) The creation of a number of practical measurement tools that can be used to monitor how programs are leveraging the intersections of the arts and sciences to support student engagement and learning; and 4) A Professional Development program conducted at informal science education conferences in the EU and US to engage the informal STEM field with emerging findings. This project is funded through Science Learning+, which is an international partnership between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Wellcome Trust with the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The goal of this joint funding effort is to make transformational steps toward improving the knowledge base and practices of informal STEM experiences to better understand, strengthen, and coordinate STEM engagement and learning. Within NSF, Science Learning+ is part of the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program that seeks to enhance learning in informal environments.
Transdisciplinary, equity-oriented OST programs can provide supportive social contexts in which STEM concepts and practices are taken up as the means for meaningful participation in valued activities, building students' STEM skills in ways that can propel their future academic, career, and lifelong learning choices. This project will build the knowledge base about these emerging 21st century transdisciplinary approaches to broadening participation investigating: 1) The epistemic intersections across a range of disciplines (art, science, computation, design) that operate to broaden appeal and meaningful participation for underrepresented youth; 2) How transdisciplinary activities undertaken in the context of consequential learning (e.g., producing a radio segment, designing an exhibition for the general public) can illuminate the relevance of STEM to young people's lives, concerns, and futures; and 3) How participation in such programs can propel students' longer-term life choices and STEM learning trajectories. The project is a collaboration of the University of Washington, Science Gallery Dublin, Indiana University, Youth Radio in Oakland California, Guerilla Science in New York and London, and the London School of Economics.