The NSF-funded project titled An Informal Learning Model of Genetic and Genomic Education for Adult Bilingual Learners, was led by Joanne Sandberg, PhD. The project included three phases:
Phase I: Investigation of knowledge and beliefs about transmission of traits, genetic and genomic concepts, gene-environment interactions, and environmental exposures in Latinx adults born in Mexico or Central America and who have limited literacy.
Phase II: Development of two educational interventions in Spanish that address:
Information about environmental exposures that can be detrimental to
Milwaukee has established itself as a leader in water management and technology, hosting a widely recognized cluster of industrial, governmental, nonprofit, and academic activity focused on freshwater. At the same time, Milwaukee faces a wide range of challenges with freshwater, some unique to the region and others common to cities throughout the country. These challenges include vulnerability to flooding and combined sewer overflows after heavy rainfall, biological and pharmaceutical contamination in surface water, lead in drinking water infrastructure, and inequity in access to beaches and other recreational water amenities. Like other cities, Milwaukee grapples with the challenges global climate change imposes on urban water systems, including changing patterns of precipitation and drought.
These problems are further complicated by Milwaukee's acute racial and economic residential segregation. With a population of approximately 595,000, embedded within a metropolitan area of over 1.5 million, Milwaukee remains one of the country's most segregated cities. There is increasing urgency to engage the public--and especially those who are most vulnerable to environmental impacts--more deeply in the stewardship of urban water and in the task of creating sustainable urban futures. The primary goal of this four-year project is to foster community-engaged learning and environmental stewardship by developing a framework that integrates art with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) experiences along with geography, water management, and social science. Synergies between STEM learning and the arts suggest that collaborations among artists, scientists, and communities can open ways to bring informal learning about the science of sustainability to communities.
WaterMarks provides an artist generated conceptual framework developed by Mary Miss / City as Living Laboratory (CALL) to help people better understand their relationship to the water systems and infrastructure that support their lives. Project activities include artist/scientist/community member-led Walks, which are designed to engage intergenerational participants both from the neighborhoods and from across the city, in considering the conditions, characteristics, histories, and ecosystems of neighborhoods. Walks are expanded upon in Workshops with residents, local scientists/experts, and other stakeholders, and include exploring current water-related environmental challenges and proposing solutions. The Workshops draw on diverse perspectives, including lived experience, scientific knowledge, and policy expertise. Art projects created by local artists amplify community engagement with the topics, including programming for teens and young adults. Free Wi-Fi will be integrated into various Marker sites around the city providing access to online, self-guided learning opportunities exploring the water systems and issues facing surrounding neighborhoods. Current programming focuses primarily on Milwaukee's predominantly African American near North Side and the predominantly Latinx/Hispanic near South Side. Many neighborhoods in these sections are vulnerable to such problems as frequent flooding, lead contamination in drinking water, inequities in safety and maintenance of green space, and less access to Lake Michigan, the city's primary natural resource and recreational amenity.
The WaterMarks project advances informal STEM learning in at least two ways. First, while the WaterMarks project is designed to fit Milwaukee, the project includes the development of an Adaptable Model Guide. The Guide is designed so that other cities can modify and employ its inclusive structure, programming, and process of collaboration among artists, scientists, partner organizations, and residents to promote citywide civic engagement in urban sustainability through the combination of informal STEM learning and public art. The Guide will be developed by a Community-University Working Group (CULab) hosted by UW-Milwaukee's Center for Community-Based Learning, Leadership, and Research and made up of diverse community and campus-wide stakeholders. In addition to overseeing the Guide’s creation, CULab will conceptualize onboarding and mentorship strategies for new participants as well as a framework for the program’s expansion and sustainability.
Second, through evaluation and research, the project will build a theoretical model for the relationships among science learning, engagement with the arts, and the distinctive contexts of different neighborhoods within an urban social-ecological system. The evaluation team, COSI’s Center for Research and Evaluation, and led by Co-PI Donnelly Hayde, aims to conduct formative, summative, and process evaluation of the Watermarks project, with the additional goal of producing evaluative research findings that can contribute to the broader field of informal learning. Evaluation foci include: How does the implementation of WaterMarks support positive outcomes for the project’s communities and the development of an adaptable model for city-scale informal science learning about urban environments? 2. To what extent do the type and degree of outcome-related change experienced by participating community residents vary across and/or between project sites? What factors, if any, appear to be linked to these changes? 3. To what extent and in what ways do the activities of the WaterMarks projects appear to have in situ effects related to the experience of place at project sites?
The project’s research team led by PI Ryan Holifield and Co-PI Woonsup Choi, will investigate how visual artistic activities introduced by the programming team as part of the Walks (and potentially other engagement activities) interact with personal, sociocultural, and physical contexts to produce distinctive experiences and outcomes of informal science learning about urban water systems. The aim of the research will be to synthesize the results from the different WaterMarks sites into an analysis generalizable beyond specific neighborhoods and applicable to other cities. The project's research questions include: 1. How does participation in Walks focused on visual artistic activities affect outcomes and experiences of informal STEM learning about urban water systems? 2. How do outcomes and experiences of informal STEM learning vary across different urban water topics, participants from different demographic groups, and contrasting sociocultural and biophysical contexts?
This Innovations in Development project is led by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), in collaboration with City as Living Laboratory (CALL) and the COSI Center for Research and Evaluation.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting. It describes the radio and stage storytelling programs undertaken by the Center for Chemical Evolution, a CCI jointly funded by NSF and NASA.
Informal science educators play a key role in promoting science literacy, safety, and health by teaching pesticide toxicology to the large, at-risk Latino farmworker population in the United States (US). To understand the experiences of informal science educators and the nature of farmworker education, we must have knowledge of farmworker educators' beliefs, yet little is known about these beliefs and how beliefs about teaching, pesticide risk, and self-efficacy might influence teaching environments and practices and potentially inform the field of informal science education. In this
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Catherine LePrevostMargaret BlanchardW. Gregory Cope
The goal of the Science Minders project is to increase the interest and self-esteem of girls relative to science. Since many early adolescents seek economic independency by "baby-sitting," the Science Minders project will develop materials designed to permit early adolescents to teach science to small groups of young children. The materials will make the early adolescents' child-caring providing more successful and significantly enhance their attitudes and comfort with science. These materials will include a book containing informal science activities and activity resources, a child-development guide, first-aid and emergency procedures and child-care tips; and two training videos, one to demonstrate how to use the materials effectively with young children, and one to train adults to train adolescents as child-care providers. These materials will be nationally promoted and disseminated by a commercial publisher and through the national network of 400 YWCAs in 4,000 locations throughout the United States.
The Educational Broadcasting Corporation (WNET in New York) is developing and producing a new public television project exploring cutting-edge technology. The project consists of an eight-part hourly broadcast component; six 60-second "mini-programs;" a World Wide Web component; and extensive educational outreach targeted to adults aged 25-39 and older. The topics for the eight programs in season one are: Replacements - prosthetic devices and biologically electronic artificial body parts In Search of Eve - the race to decode the human genome Light of the 21st Century - Fiber Optics Nanotechnology - molecular manipulation of materials Technospy - technologies used to gain information Sports Technology - the pursuit of better equipment and training regimes Artificial Intelligence - efforts to create computers the mimic human intelligence Appropriate Technologies - technologies that use local, inexpensive material Beth Hoppe, WNET's Director of Science Programs will serve as Executive Producer for the series. Each of the programs would be produced by an independent producer selected by WNET. Content advisors include: Angela Christiano, Departments of Dermatology, Genetics and Development, Columbia University; Sheila Sen Jasanoff, Harvard University JFK School of Government; Horace Freeland Judson, Center for History of Recent Science, George Washington University; Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist, CUNY and host, Explorations radio series; Wilfred Pinfold, Microprocessor Research Labs, Intel Corp.; and Barbara Wilson, chief technologist, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Beth HoppeTamara RobinsonWilliam GrantBarbara Flagg
Understanding a community's concerns and informational needs is crucial to conducting and improving environmental health research and literacy initiatives. We hypothesized that analysis of community inquiries over time at a legacy mining site would be an effective method for assessing environmental health literacy efforts and determining whether community concerns were thoroughly addressed. Through a qualitative analysis, we determined community concerns at the time of being listed as a Superfund site. We analyzed how community concerns changed from this starting point over the subsequent
A research project that is only expert-driven may ignore the role of local knowledge in research, often gives low priority to the development of a comprehensive communication strategy to engage the community, and may not deliver the results of the study to the community in an effective way. Objective: To demonstrate how a research program can respond to a community research need, establish a community-academic partnership, and build a co-created citizen science program. Methods: A place-based, community-driven project was designed where academics and community members maintained a reciprocal
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Univeristy of Wisconsin- StoutMonica Ramirez-AndreottaMark BrusseauJanick ArtiolaRaina MaierA Jay Gandolfi