Science Museum of Minnesota will create three live theater productions highlighting current laboratory and field research studies of science issues with strong topical relevance to families with school-age children, school groups, and adult lifelong learners. Shows will align with the appropriate grade levels of the Minnesota Science Education Standards in three age levels: early elementary (grades 1–3), upper elementary and middle school (grades 4–8), and high school students and adult learners. The shows will be performed in daily rotation at the museum to entertain, inform, and challenge visitors to reflect on current science issues. Theater staff will disseminate the shows through various national conferences, websites, and professional associations, enabling colleagues nationwide to download the scripts free of charge and present topical science issues at their own museums.
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry is implementing a Pathways project that will test and refine a model to promote an appreciation that science is everywhere and personally relevant by engaging transit riders in Portland, OR with location-relevant STEM content through unfacilitated, interactive science exhibits in everyday places. The study will employ a "design-based research" approach that both iteratively tests exhibit effectiveness and develops and refines an underlyting theoretical model that can contribute knowledge to the field. The "Science on the Move" model will be developed and tested using an exhibit prototype that includes 1) an easily transportable prototype core with a familiar touch-screen interface, 2) multiple sets of interactive digital content, and 3) a variety of accompanying outer skins designed to attract the public. The exhibit prototype will be placed at bus transit nodes to reach adults, specifically targeting those without college degrees who are underrepresented in science centers. A range of possible STEM content domains will be selected and tested based on topics of interest to the public. If successful, given the several challenges involved, the feasibility study will be applied more fully around Portland and be a model for other cities to consider.
The Balboa Park Cultural Partnership, in collaboration with several informal science education and other cultural and business organizations in San Diego, Chicago, and Worcester, MA are implementing a research and development project that investigates a range of possible approaches for stimulating the development of 21st Century creativity skills and innovative processes at the interface between informal STEM learning and methods for creative thinking. The goal of the research is to advance understanding of the potential impacts of creative thinking methods on the public's understanding of and engagement with STEM, with a focus on 21st Century workforce skills of teens and adults. The goal of the project's development activities is to experiment with a variety of "innovation incubator" models in cities around the country. Modeled on business "incubators" or "accelerators" that are designed to foster and accelerate innovation and creativity, these STEM incubators generate collaborations of different professionals and the public around STEM education and other STEM-related topics of local interest that can be explored with the help of creative learning methodologies such as innovative methods to generate creative ideas, ideas for transforming one STEM idea to others, drawing on visual and graphical ideas, improvisation, narrative writing, and the process of using innovative visual displays of information for creating visual roadmaps. Hosting the project's incubators are the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership (San Diego), the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago) and the EcoTarium (Worcester, MA). National partners are the Association of Science-Technology Centers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Americans for the Arts. Activities will include: the formation and collaborative processes of three incubator sites, a research study, the development of a creative thinking curriculum infused into science education, professional development based on the curriculum, public engagement events and exhibits, a project website and tools for social networking, and project evaluation. A national advisory council includes professionals in education, science, creativity, and business.
Water for Life (WfL) is a full scale development youth and community based program; centered on freshwater literacy, water conservation and rainwater harvesting led by the Pacific Resources for Education Learning (PREL) in Hawaii. The goals of the project are to: (a) promote an understanding of water conservation and stewardship in areas lacking adequate quality water supplies and (b) build local capacity among rural communities to develop and employ site specific freshwater harvesting strategies proven to improve water quality. Rural communities within four Pacific Island entities in the U.S. affiliated Freely Associated States (FAS) will participate in WfL activities. PREL is collaborating with a host of organizations (such as the Federated States of Micronesia National Department of Education, Marshall Islands Conservation Society, and the Micronesian Conservation Trust, etc.) to develop and implement all phases of the initiative. This work is already improving the quality of life for hundreds of people in the FAS through water conversation education and improved water quality in local areas. Working closely with site-embedded PREL staff, Core Teams at each site - consisting of 4-6 local leaders from environmental agencies, water/sanitation systems, and education institutions - participated in a 5-day professional learning immersion in May, 2013, to buld capacities to develop and facilitate water conservation and catchment activities at the four target sites in the FAS. The Core Team members at each site now are recruiting and collaborating with local community members to implement site-specific projects that both educate and provide enhanced access to high quality drinking water. Both adults and youth are now engaging in a spectrum of proejcts that address loca needs and priorities through site-specific service learning activities. The site-specific focus in each locale, determined by the local Core Team, is distinct. In Palau, the Core Team has built broader community awareness of water conservation issues, raised the issue of water security in national conversations, engaged remote communities in improving natural rainwater drainage collection systems, and produced youth-oriented educational materials focused on local sites. In Yap, the Core Team members have collaborated with public utilities to install first-flush diverters into community rainwater catchment systems on Yap proper, and now are installing these devices in rainwater catchment systems on Yap's neighbor islands. In Chuuk, groundwater springs in remote communities are being upgraded for improved storage capacity, protection against contamination, and better public access. In Majuro (RMI), public school rainwater catchment systems are being repaired, repainted, cleaned, and upgraded so that schools can and will provide adequate drinking water to students (and to broader segments of the community during droughts). Broad segments of communities, including school classes and clubs, church and civic groups, etc. are becoming increasingly involved in building better water security and resilience for their communities, in preparation for a predicted drought, predicted to hit in the winter of 2014-2015, brought on by an El Nino event now edevelopig in the eastern Pacific. Water for Life has produced a range of locally relevant educational materials, including books, pamphlets, flyers, etc., some in English and others in local languages. Posters and billboards are being produced to enhance and maintain public awareness. Infrastructure projects are enabling better collection of more, higher quality water for drinking. A full-scale water handbook is under development, and this will serve as a basis for a self-contained water 'course' that will be offered through local community colleges. The experiences of project participants are being captured, analyzed, and reported in front-end, formative, and sumative evaluations conducted by David Heil & Associates. Thousands of individuals, comprising large segments of the participating countries' populations, will be directly impacted by the project. The results will be applicable to other remote and rural communities outside of the Pacific distressed by poor water quality and ineffective freshwater harvesting systems.
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
In 2010 EarthSky Communications Inc. was awarded a broad implementation grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) entitled Proyecto de Implementacion Amplia EarthSky en Español (EarthSky in Spanish Broad Implementation Project). In partnership with the Spanish media company Univision Communications Inc. and a national Advisory Committee of Hispanic scientists, educators, and media experts, EarthSky proposed to present science information and scientist interviews to Spanish-preferring U.S. Hispanics via short video programs distributed on television and the Internet. Under the Broad
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Knight Williams Inc.Valerie Knight-WilliamsDeborah ByrdRachel TeelDivan WilliamsRoxana HernandezEric AndersonGabriel SimmonsSauleh Rahbari
What would it be like to increase the number of youth-serving volunteers who can competently lead science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) activities? This question guided the Inquiry in the Community project, launched in 2008. Along with Girl Scout staff colleagues and volunteers, the project created a system for embedding inquiry-based science into a youth development organization.
President Obama announced in April 2013 that the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) would launch a STEM AmeriCorps initiative to build student interest in STEM. A RFA is currently being prepared to be released in the late fall of 2013. This project will engage in quick response research to identify an evaluation and research agenda that can begin to inform the program launch. Thus, the timeframe for informing the initial stages of STEM AmeriCorps is relatively short, and the creation of an evaluation and research agenda is very timely. The products from the RAPID proposal are: (1) a review of the evaluation and research literature on the use of volunteers and/or mentors to build students' interest in STEM; (2) to convene a workshop to identify evaluation and research priorities to guide the initiative; and (3) a summary evaluation agenda that identifies promising directions along with the strength of evidence around key issues.
This report summarizes the evaluation results from the NSF funded Eight-Legged Encounters family event that uses arachnids as a hook to draw public interests towards science. The event involves informative and hands-on activities that bridge the gap between academia and the public, extending knowledge about arachnids to children and their parents. The Bureau of Sociological Research (BOSR) at UNL was contracted to evaluate Eight-Legged Encounters. The data collection for this report involves five events and three audiences: adults, children, and the volunteers of the event. Two events were
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University of Nebraska LincolnEileen Hebets
This report provides background information about the Flathead Watershed, the people responsible for funding the project and an depth description of Phase I, the Delphi Survey. The report includes participant information, methodology, data acquisition and findings.
This multiplatform media and science center project is designed to engage audiences in humanity's deepest questions like the nature of love, reality, time and death in both scientific and humanistic terms. Project deliverables include 5 hour-long radio programs for broadcast on NPR stations, public events/museum exhibits at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, kiosks in venues throughout the city, and a social media engagement campaign. The audience of the project is large and diverse using mass media and the internet. But the project will specifically target young, online, and minority audiences using various strategies. The project is designed to help a diverse audience understand the impact of new scientific developments as well as the basic science, technology, engineering and math needed to be responsible, informed citizens. Innovative elements of the project include the unique format of the radio programs that explore complex topics in an engaging and compelling way, the visitor engagement strategy at the Exploratorium, and the social media strategy that reaches niche audiences who might never listen to the radio broadcasts, but find the podcasts and blogs engaging. The Exploratorium will be opening a new building in 2013 and will include exhibits and programs that are testing grounds for this project. This is a new model that aligns the radio content with exhibitions, social media, and in person events at the Exploratorium, providing a unique holistic approach. The project is designed to inspire people to think and talk about science and want to find out more. The evaluation will measure the impacts on the targeted audiences reached by each of the key delivery methods. Data will be collected using focus groups; intercept interviews with people in public places, and longitudinal panels. The focus will be on 5 targeted audiences (young adults, families with children, non-NPR listeners, underrepresented minorities, and adults without college experience). This comprehensive evaluation will likely contribute important knowledge to the field based on this multiple-platform collaborative model.
This project is intended to develop a model for STEM education through local libraries. There are several unique features in this endeavor. The model is being aimed at rural libraries and adult residents that are geographically remote from typical venues such as museums, zoos, and science centers. According to the 2000 census, there are 50 million individuals in this designation and the size of the group is increasing and becoming more diverse. Efforts to impact diverse audiences who are economically disadvantaged will be part of the plan. In many rural locations there are few community venues, but libraries are often present. The American Library Association and the Association Rural and Small Libraries have begun the reinvention of these libraries so they can become more attuned to the communities in which they are apart. Thus, this project is an effort to find new ways of communicating STEM concepts to a reasonably large underserved group. The design is to derive a "unit of knowledge enhancement" (some portion of Climate Change, for example) through a hybrid combination of book-club and scientific cafe further augmented with videos and web materials. Another part of the design is to enhance the base STEM knowledge of library staff and to associate the knowledge unit with an individual who has the specific STEM topic knowledge for a specific unit. Considerable effort shall be expended in developing the models for staff knowledge enhancement with a progressive number of librarians in training from 8 to 20 to 135. To build the content library model, five units of knowledge will be devised and circulated to participating libraries. Evaluation of the project includes front end, formative and summative by the Goodman Research Group. In addition to the "units of knowledge enhancement," the major results will be the model on how best to relate and educate citizens in rural environments and how to educate the library staff.