In Spring 2006, the Missouri Botanical Garden received a National Science Foundation grant to fund the LIONS program. LIONS trained educators from the St. Louis region, through professional development about place-based education, to deliver after school and summer programming to students grades 5 through 8. Since its inception, the LIONS program has included evaluation of program implementation and outcomes. There were dramatic changes in the scope of the program, which expanded beyond the originally targeted University City school district by adding additional schools recruited by LIONS
The EcoTeens Program is a hands-on, science based enrichment program offered by the Franklin Park Zoo. The program is open to youth in Boston Public Schools grades 9 - 11, and is designed to teach students about natural history and conservation issues, and to provide them with opportunities to develop leadership skills. Youth participate in the out-of-school time program during weekly after-school sessions, as well as every other Saturday sessions. In the 2008 program, they could choose to participate in one session (January through March, or April through early June) or in both sessions
The University of Minnesota Extension (UME) contracted Garibay Group to conduct a summative evaluation of the Driven to Discover program (often referred to as D2D by youth participants and adult leaders) to assess how adult leaders in Informal Science Education (ISE) settings used the curriculum and citizen science projects as conduits to engage youth in scientific inquiry.
This is the final evaluation report on the Laurel Clark Earth Camp Experience, a multi-component program to incorporate NASA satellite data into summer field programs for teens, environmental and water education for teachers, environmental after-school clubs and Earth Science exhibits at the Arizona- Sonora Desert Museum.
Beginning in autumn 2011, Education Development Center’s Center for Children and Technology (EDC|CCT) worked closely with Iridescent to evaluate the impact of its Family Science after-school program on its participants and partners.1 Between September 2011 and April 2015, Iridescent held six series of five-week programs in New York and Los Angeles at nine different school and museum sites. The program activities centered on “design challenges” that introduced families to the engineering design process and supported the development of curiosity, creativity, and persistence. These five-week
The Center for Children and Technology (CCT) at Education Development Center, Inc., an international nonprofit research and development organization (cct.edc.org), conducted the formative evaluation of the fourth year of the Be A Scientist! (BAS) project. This project, managed by Iridescent—a nonprofit afterschool science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) program (www.iridescentlearning.org), has the goal of providing high-quality afterschool science and engineering courses to underserved families in New York City and Los Angeles. The project aims to enable participants to
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
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Rockman et al | Youth RadioKristin BassJulia Hazer
EDC’s Center for Children and Technology (CCT), a nonprofit research and development organization (cct.edc.org), conducted the formative evaluation of the BAS project for the last three years. Iridescent has assisted CCT researchers in the successful implementation of the evaluation (e.g., organizing site visits and meetings with partners, administering surveys, collecting consent forms). As discussed in more details below, Iridescent has always taken seriously the evaluation findings and recommendations, and has acted upon them to make program improvements. This research partnership has led
The data collection for this project involved three audiences: (1) a post-event survey completed by participants at the 'Eight-Legged Encounters' event, (2) a club experience survey completed by middle school students in an after-school club, and (3) focus groups, observations, and end-of-course evaluations conducted with students in the BIOS 497/897 'Communicating Science through Outreach' seminar class at the University of Lincoln, Nebraska. Year two data collection was completed from September 2013 - March 2014. Appendix includes survey.
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University of Nebraska-LincolnEileen Hebets
Youth Radio, an after-school media production program, consists of a main campus in Oakland, CA, and regional bureaus in Atlanta, GA, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, CA. Youth Radio’s model is to engage underserved young people in broadcast journalism, radio and web production, engineering, and media literacy through media projects that are relevant to the students’ lives and communities. In doing so, Youth Radio prepares young people for college programs and careers in media. The organization also supports young people in their transition from school to career through an externship program
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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Norman LedermanYoung People's Project, Inc.
The National Partnerships for Afterschool Science (NPASS) Project was led by The Center for Science Education (CSE) at Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) in Newton, MA in partnership with the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) in Berkeley, CA, with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NPASS project approach relied on a professional development training and mentorship model to build the capacity of community-based organizations (CBOs) to lead high-quality, hands-on science and engineering activities in their afterschool programming. An overarching project research question