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
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
The National Academy of Sciences’ LabX program came into existence in 2017 with a directive to develop programming meant to engage with a young-adult (18-37 years old) target audience who are active decision-makers and whose actions impact current and future policies. While conducting preliminary research, the LabX staff and advisory board discovered that available research on young adults’ relationship with science was sadly lacking in detail, beyond obvious conclusions about high levels of interest in technology and social experiences.
To fill these knowledge gaps, gain a deeper
In 2017, PBS NewsHour produced one of their most complex transmedia series to date. #AmericaAddicted, which focused on the opioid crisis facing communities around the U.S., included 14 broadcast reports, 10 articles on the NewsHour site, four livestreams, three Twitter chats, and more than 200 associated videos and posts on over half a dozen platforms. The different reports take a wide range of perspectives and focus on different aspects of this crisis. Each report is embedded in dense networks of content, with a variety of entry points for audience members, that tell a single overarching
In October 2017, the PBS NewsHour team produced a week and a half of opioid-related content, including several online explainers, which presented the opportunity for a natural experiment for the Experiments in Transmedia project.
Knology (formerly New Knowledge Organization Ltd.) conducted a two-wave research study to advance understanding of the youth audience’s knowledge and news consumption on the topic.
The first wave of the study, conducted in September 2017, provides a baseline. The content aired in October 2017, and the second wave of the study, conducted in November 2017, asked a
Familiarity with statistical and data literacy is important in many areas of modern life, but there is little research on how adults continue to build mathematical literacy beyond formal schooling. Mass media science news stories contain much data, assuming that adults will understand the content.This 4-year project will first map the landscape of adult statistical literacy in the US, particularly as it relates to news consumption. The second phase will build on results from the first phase through a longitudinal study. In the third phase, the project will develop a range of experiments to manipulate mathematical explainers embedded in STEM news stories and test techniques with adult audiences, with the goal of identifying the attributes and affordances that best improve confidence and competence in the underlying math principles and their meaning to news stories. in addition to the research, project components include 12 broadcast video and social media pieces each year that will form the basis for testing with audiences, a one-day symposium for professional science journalists, and a written best practice guide that summarizes key findings and implications for practitioners.
Critical research questions are: How do mathematical competence and confidence differ among different segments of the adult population? How can STEM journalists improve adult mathematical competence and confidence through their reporting techniques? Phase 1 of the research will be a landscape review of mathematical content in the news including a baseline study of adult statistical literacy. Phase 2 will be a longitudinal study with news audiences recruited to participate in a panel study. Phase 3 will be iterative testing of the digital content based on the findings from Phases 1 and 2 and will use both focus groups and online testing. External evaluation will be conducted by TERC including an evaluation of the symposium for professional journalists.
The broader impacts of this project are twofold: the science videos created will be broadcast and made available free to a national audience including those in rural areas; and the training of science journalists has the potential for multiple, long term impact by increasing their ability to communicate statistics meaningfully to their readers/viewers.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
Ruff Family Science is an exploratory project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that aims to foster joint media engagement and hands-on science exploration among diverse, low-income parents and their 4- to 8-year-old children. Building on the success of the PBS series FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman, the project leverages FETCH’s funny and charismatic animated host, along with its proven approach to teaching science, to inspire educationally disadvantaged families to explore science together. More specifically, the project is undertaking a research and design process to create prototype
Explore the Science of Spring: A Live Media Event is an Innovations in Development project produced by the signature PBS series Nature. The new primetime series Spring LIVE (working title) will break the frame of a traditional documentary, letting viewers themselves explore the dramatic seasonal changes of spring through the immediacy of live television. On-camera hosts, scientists and naturalists in locations across the U.S., and scores of citizen scientists will use observation and scientific inquiry to explore the workings of nature during this season of rebirth. The unfolding stories of seasonal change will illuminate larger scientific insights--into the biodiversity of species in habitats, the interconnectedness of plants and animals in diverse ecosystems, the global phenomenon of species migration, and how spring "green-up" can be affected by environmental change--while inspiring appreciation for species conservation and habitat preservation. Spring LIVE is conceived as an ongoing series, with this inaugural season composed of three one-hour programs broadcast live on three consecutive nights, along with real-time interactions via Facebook. Reaching long-standing Nature viewers (2.5 million per episode), Spring LIVE will seek to turn mature adults and diverse families into citizen science doers, and leverage younger Nature online audiences through social media and community engagement in partnership with citizen science projects.
Spring LIVE will build public knowledge of and engagement in phenology and citizen science. The project will also conduct knowledge-building research on the effectiveness of Facebook as a science learning tool. It will experiment with eliciting audience participation via Facebook within the live shows to generate synchronous, second-screen thought and discussion. An exploratory study by Multimedia Research will look at the impact of this feature, addressing the question: To what extent and how does Facebook interactivity within live science shows impact adult engagement, learning and motivation? Spring LIVE will also engage multiple partners to expand reach and impact and build capacity in their fields. National partners include the National Park Service and Next Avenue; citizen science partners include Celebrate Urban Birds, National Phenology Network, Monarch Blitz, and SciStarter, among others. PBS stations will work with these organizations to involve diverse, intergenerational audiences in observation of nature and seasonal change. Project evaluation, implemented by Knight Williams Research Communications, will focus on the impact of live television on science learning, and the success of the integration of citizen science projects on air, online, and in communities. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
The Crowd & The Cloud, a three-year project, developed by Passport To Knowledge and funded by the National Science Foundation, uses multimedia to engage different audiences around citizen science and crowdsourcing. The project team created four episodes of a broadcast television series, which appeared on PBS stations and via PBS.org, an interactive website, and a robust social media presence in an attempt to reach three target audiences: the general public, scientists, and citizen scientists. Rockman et al (REA), an independent educational research and evaluation firm, conducted an external
Beginning in September 2015, with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) initiated the three-year project Latina SciGirls: Promoting Middle School-Age Hispanic Girls' Positive STEM Identity Development. The cornerstone of the project is a fourth season of the Emmy Award-winning television and transmedia project SciGirls, to premiere in 2017, in this case involving six half-hour SciGirls episodes filmed in Spanish showing groups of Hispanic girls and their Hispanic STEM mentors investigating science and engineering problems. The television
Amid calls from scientific leaders for their colleagues to become more effective public communicators, this study examines the objectives that scientists’ report drive their public engagement behaviors. We explore how scientists evaluate five specific communication objectives, which include informing the public about science, exciting the public about science, strengthening the public’s trust in science, tailoring messages about science, and defending science from misinformation. We use insights from extant research, the theory of planned behavior, and procedural justice theory to identify