Science Hunters is an outreach project which employs the computer game Minecraft to engage children with scientific learning and research through school visits, events, and extracurricular clubs. We principally target children who may experience barriers to accessing Higher Education, including low socioeconomic status, being the first in their family to attend university, and disability (including Special Educational Needs). The Minecraft platform encourages teamwork and makes science learning accessible and entertaining for children, irrespective of background. We employ a flexible approach
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Laura HobbsCarly StevensJackie HartleyCalum Hartley
This report summarizes the ideas and conversations of the CAISE Broadening Participation Task Force, which was led by the authors, along with James Bell, Principal Investigator and project director of CAISE (see informalscience.org/bp-task-force). The task force was instrumental in identifying key ideas and challenges to the field, providing edits and input into the report, developing and drafting the associated practice briefs, and piloting the materials.
Across the nation, many are undertaking efforts to significantly transform who participates in science, technology, engineering, and
Curiosity is a grant-funding programme from the Wellcome Trust with BBC Children in Need., and it provides funding to help youth organisations develop and deliver inspiring science activities for disadvantaged children and young people. This report looks at the key findings from the 32 projects funded during the first round.
The Round 1 projects were delivered by voluntary and community sector organisations, some of which were in partnership with ISL providers, and offered a variety of science opportunities from surveying local weather to building a green-powered race car. Many projects
Parents are vital players in raising youth’s awareness of the value of STEM and in brokering their participation in activities that build STEM competencies.
STEM Next Opportunity Fund is committed to ensuring that every child – especially girls, youth of color, kids in low-income communities, and youth with disabilities – has access to STEM experiences and the social capital that lead to greater opportunities in academics and careers. We believe family engagement is a game changer and offer this white paper to raise awareness of its importance and amplify promising practices.
Slides from the January 30, 2018 Webinar present information for preparing proposals for the NSF INCLUDES Alliance Solicitation (NSF 18-529). Includes a brief description of NSF INCLUDES, an explanation of Collaborative Change strategies and the NSF INCLUDES 5 elements of collaborative change, proposal recommendations, details on the NSF cooperative agreements and the NSF Merit Review criteria, and provides useful resources.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jolene JessePaige Smith
resourceprojectGames, Simulations, and Interactives
EMERGE in STEM (Education for Minorities to Effectively Raise Graduation and Employment in STEM) is a NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot. This project addresses the broadening participation challenge of increasing participation of women, the at-risk minority population, and the deaf in the STEM workforce. The project incorporates in and out-of-school career awareness activities for grades 4-12 in a high poverty community in Guilford County, North Carolina. EMERGE in STEM brings together a constellation of existing community partners from all three sectors (public, private, government) to leverage and expand mutually reinforcing STEM career awareness and workforce development activities in new ways by using a collective impact approach.
This project builds on a local network to infuse career exposure elements into the existing mutually reinforcing STEM activities and interventions in the community. A STEM education and career exposure software, Learning Blade, will be used to reach approximately 15,000 students. A shared measurement system and assessment process will contribute to the evaluation of the effectiveness of the collective impact strategies, the implementation of mutually reinforcing activities across the partnership and the extent to which project efforts attract students to consider STEM careers.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Gregory MontyMargaret KanipesMalcolm SchugSteven Jiang
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The NSF INCLUDES program supports models, networks, partnerships and research to ensure the broadening participation in STEM of women, members of racial and ethnic groups that have been historically underrepresented, persons of low socio-economic status, and people with disabilities.
The Algebra Project, in partnership with the Young People's Project, will convene a conference on inclusion in science, technology, engineering and mathematics(STEM) higher education in support of the National Science Foundation's Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES) initiative. The conference will examine a critical question: What roles and structures are needed for a mini-backbone organization in order to scale a "bottom up" model of social change into an organized, full scale collective impact model? Additionally, the conference will develop participants' capacity to link action on the various design challenges, and backbone structures, to future actions that meet the needs of a potential Alliance on this Broadening Participation Challenge and others facing similar challenges.
Five pre-conference design teams will focus on key components to improve education of students from underrepresented and disadvantaged populations over a four-month period prior to the convening of the stakeholders in St. Louis, Missouri in 2017.
This is the final report from the external evaluator of the project that created MedLab, an interactive learning experiences for Chicago area middle and high school students. This external evaluator's final report summarizes the outcomes and impacts of the five-year (2012-2017) funding compared to project objectives. The aim of the project was to use in person and online curricula, including a humanoid patient simulator (iStan®), to build interest in and knowledge of health sciences and health careers, with a particular focus on local community health concerns. An additional goal was to
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Christina Shane-SimpsonJohn FraserSusan HannahKin KongPatricia WardRabiah Mayas
Environmental education is about creating healthier communities for all—with ecological integrity, shared prosperity, and social equity as our long-term goals. Environmental educators have been working in, with, and for communities for decades. As communities have evolved, so has the field of environmental education. In creating the Community Engagement: Guidelines for Excellence, NAAEE brings the field’s professional standards to environmental educators’ dynamic work in today’s communities.
Why are these guidelines important? Environmental educators everywhere work in a constantly shifting
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TEAM MEMBERS:
North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE)Michele ArchieSusan ClarkJudy Braus
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and workforce development in the US are critical for global competitiveness and national security. However, the U.S. is facing a decrease in entrants to the STEM workforce which is not shared evenly across demographics. Specifically, women, underrepresented minorities, and people with disabilities obtain STEM degrees and enter the STEM workforce at levels significantly below their demographic representation in the U.S. The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES) program supports models, networks, partnerships and research to ensure the broadening participation in STEM of women, members of racial and ethnic groups that have been historically underrepresented, persons of low socio-economic status, and people with disabilities. This conference focuses on collective impact as a strategy to address the broadening participation challenge. Collective impact is distinguished from collaboration in that the alliances require a backbone organization to succeed. The goal of this project is to organize a conference to inform backbone organizations toward broadening participation in STEM education and the workforce.
The conference takes place at the University of California, San Diego January 20-22, 2017 and brings together Project Investigators from the Design and Development pilots, along with stakeholders in broadening participation in STEM on a local, regional, and national scale. The overarching goal of the conference is to develop the knowledge base of participants in the application of the collective impact model, and the role of backbone organizations to address specific issues and transition points of the STEM pipeline. Conference participants include K-12, community college, and university representatives; leaders in graduate education, policy makers and private sector employers. The conference includes plenary sessions, flash presentations, and interactive workgroups engaged in the development of collective impact approaches to problems in Broadening Participation in STEM. Workgroups share their insights, and audience feedback is electronically curated via Twitter and Storify. To respond in real time to participant questions or insights this conference uses the innovative platform, IdeaWave, to solicit, sort and value ideas from the attendees before, during, and after the conference. Conference results are integrated into a final report to inform the NSF INCLUDES Alliances backbone organizations. The intellectual merit of the project is that it advances knowledge about the barriers to broadening participation in STEM education and the workforce, the collective impact model, and the role of the backbone organization to guide the vision and strategy, and support the activities, evaluation, and communication of the NSF INCLUDES Alliances. The broader impact of this project is that it benefits society by informing backbone organizations, which leads to broadening participation of the STEM workforce and ultimately increases U.S. global competitiveness and national security.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kim Barrett
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The National Science Foundation's (NSF)Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES) program supports models, networks, partnerships and research to ensure the broadening participation in STEM of women, members of racial and ethnic groups that have been historically underrepresented, persons of low socio-economic status, and people with disabilities.
The University of Akron will convene a two-day conference to develop a backbone organization to support the preparation and advancement of underrepresented minorities K-12 through careers in the biosciences, a high growth area for engineering (biomechanics, biometrics and biomaterials). This conference draws on the expertise of a wide range of organizations, professional associations, K-20+, community based organizations, industry and museums. The intent is to strengthen the network among participants and leverage learning on how to engage youth in the biosciences.
The results of this first conference will be a white paper that will be disseminated to several professional societies that outlines a backbone infrastructure for addressing both short-term and longer-term aspects of an NSF INCLUDES alliance centered on bioengineering, biomechanics, biomedical engineering and biomaterials.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Brian DavisCarin HelferRouzbeh Amini
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This award supports a conference entitled "Accelerating Data-Driven Collaboration for Large-Scale Progress" which will support the progress of INCLUDES (Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners that have been Underrepresented for Diversity in Engineering and Science) Launch Pilots toward their broadening participation goals. The issues and challenges affecting the persistence of students of color, students from low-income households, females, and students with disabilities in STEM learning surpass the scope of programs designed to promote awareness of STEM career options. The Launch Pilots will need technical assistance to leverage their strategic plans, become poised for the next level of becoming an Alliance, and ultimately show impact that results in large-scale progress.
The conference will support the Launch Pilots in their broadening participation goals by providing opportunities to (1) develop innovative new ways to gather data and make evidence-based decisions, (2) connect with best practices on the frontiers of data-driven collaboration, and (3) apply new knowledge and innovations to their projects that address societal needs. The overarching design of Data-Driven Collaboration is to facilitate the sharing of ideas, struggles, and promising practices in a collaborative and participatory manner. This will occur by fostering a network improvement community (within and across Launch Pilots), engaging participants in systems thinking and problem-solving through collaborative modeling, and a 2.5-day Public Support and Engagement Lab conference. Launch Pilots who engage support from Data-Driven Collaboration will have a variety of technical assistance services available between November 2016 and April 2017.