Educational programming on digital video platforms such as YouTube wrestle with gender disparities in viewership. When men engage with science and technology content on digital platforms more than women, gender gaps in the understanding of, engagement with, and interest in STEM may intensify. Therefore, there is a critical need for more research aiming to aid in our understanding of these gender differences. This study provides evidence that the gender gaps may exist not in the use of YouTube itself, but with the engagement with science and technology content on the platform. Furthermore
KQED’s science engagement team is on the front lines of making sure our overall science content, which includes science news and our Deep Look videos, are shared and engaged with on our various social media platforms. One of the platforms we use daily to disseminate our science content is Facebook. To better understand the success of our efforts beyond the usual metrics we track, the science engagement team tested a few Deep Look grant-related research questions using Facebook as a parallel research tool to our grant’s more traditional survey related research.
More specifically, Facebook’s
For an award-winning, public media YouTube science and nature series like KQED’s Deep Look, which delights its audiences by exploring unusual, tiny animals and plants up-close in ultra-high definition, how do you quantify and assess the value of different kinds of behind-the-scenes content when your original short videos are so fantastic at engaging your target audience?
Below is a summary of the key findings of the behind-the-scenes survey. Attached is the full report.
1. The measurable benefits of appending a fully produced behind-the-scenes video to a Deep Look episode appear to
Science writers, science producers, and science engagement specialists from KQED Science Deep Look joined a team of researchers from the University of Connecticut, Missouri State University, and Texas Tech University to focus on women’s preferences and identities as related to their science engagement intentions. Findings from this most recent study of the gender disparity in Deep Look viewership suggests that one key piece of the puzzle is related to women’s preferences for images and another key piece of the puzzle is related to the identities that women report as most important to them.
The KQED science digital media team continue their research on gender disparity of their YouTube series Deep Look.
Can videos with titles that pertained to health/home and sex/mating, on average, attach a higher proportion of female viewers?
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sue Ellen McCannSevda ErisAsheley LandrumSarah MohamadOthello RichardsKristina JanétKelsi OpatSarah MohamadGabriela Quiros
The KQED science digital video team continue their study of gender disparity in viewership for the YouTube series Deep Look.
Below is a summary of the study’s key findings and you can read the complete study attached below.
1. Science curiosity is a key motivator of viewing Deep Look videos; science comprehension is not. You don’t need a Ph.D. in chemistry, just a dash of curiosity to have a look at, and maybe even get hooked on, science videos.
2. Diverging from previous findings — and researchers’ expectations — the gender disparity previously found in Deep Look viewership was not
This brief focuses on a participatory study with the high school program of the Kitty Andersen Youth Science Center (KAYSC) at the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM). Young people are organized into teams of up to 20 youth with an adult practitioner who delivers programming based on a STEM content area. Their activities and project-based learning are based in both STEM and social justice, coined in the KAYSC as “STEM Justice.”
As part of our study, we wanted to understand youth and adult needs that exist in an informal STEM education program that weaves equity into its core. This brief
This brief shares youth development insights from a museum-based, informal science learning program that uses STEM as a tool for social justice. Key to the success of this program were young people and adults feeling at home in a welcoming, diverse, and inclusive space; activities that focused on connecting and relationships; a holistically supportive space that attended to family and personal needs; shared norms for conversation and expectations; and science content grounded in young people’s lives, experiences, and communities as well as work with community members.
These needs were
On October 1, 2015, Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) was awarded a 3‑year grant of 2.7 million dollars from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund the project Hacking Your Mind (award number 1515520). A major public and social media project, Hacking Your Mind (HYM) planned to engage Americans with the new discoveries being made in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences and the remarkable insights these discoveries offer into how individuals make numerous daily decisions and judgments, as well as the broader impact of this highly personal phenomenon on nearly every aspect of
STEMroller events disrupt stereotypes surrounding STEM professionals within a neglected space in science communication; a sports hall. Roller derby inspired STEMroller, both the do-it-yourself culture and creating a space for women and genderqueer people to be themselves. Over 100 female and non-binary STEM professionals volunteered to put this event together for students aged 11–19. STEMroller includes networking with people from over 30 science, technology engineering and mathematics industries, watching roller derby and trying it out — albeit in socks not on wheels. STEMroller uses a pool
This NOVA multiplatform media initiative consisted of a 2-hour nationally broadcast PBS documentary, Polar Extremes; a 10-part original digital series, Antarctic Extremes; an interactive game, Polar Lab; accompanying polar-themed digital shorts, radio stories, text reporting, and social media content; a collection of educational resources on PBS LearningMedia; and community screening events and virtual field trips for science classrooms. Across multiple media platforms the project’s video content had nearly 13 million views.
The research explored the potential for informal STEM learning
Background. STEM identity has emerged as an important research topic and a predictor of how youth engage with STEM inside and outside of school. Although there is a growing body of literature in this area, less work has been done specific to engineering, especially in out-of-school learning contexts.
Methods. To address this need, we conducted a qualitative investigation of five adolescent youth participating in a four-month afterschool engineering program. The study focused on how participants negotiated engineering-related identities through ongoing interactions with activities, peers