AlegreMENTE: Celebrando Conexiones Tempranas / Happy Brain: Celebrating Early Connections (hereafter referred to as AlegreMENTE) is a traveling exhibition designed for caregivers of children ages 0 to 5, seeking to convey research-based information that caregivers’ playful, loving interactions supports children’s brain development and has lifelong benefits. The bilingual, 1,500 square foot exhibition was developed by the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry (OMSI). For summative evaluation, the exhibition was installed and tested in two locations OMSI (a science center) and San Jose Children’s
This project provides opportunities for Indigenous youth to transform and be transformed by opportunities for STEAM innovation and knowledge building. This project will create opportunities outside of the classroom to invest in youths’ engagement, and interest, and self-efficacy in STEAM by supporting explorations in community settings that value multiple languages and ways of knowing. Through this project, youth can engage in pressing community needs—such as climate change impacts, food and water security, chronic health crises, and out-migration— with community experts, elders, and knowledge holders. The project will expand the picture of what Informal STEAM learning and meaningful engagement in STEAM looks like in Pacific Island contexts. It will employ a collaborative research framework to investigate how Informal STEAM learning activities that foster intergenerational learning—particularly the exploration of traditional stories and the creation of prototypes, storytelling packages, and hands-on models that illustrate Indigenous STEAM practices—impact youths’ engagement and interest in STEAM and self-efficacy over time. By building the capacity of participants—particularly Pacific Islander youth—to become co-researchers, -evaluators and -designers, the project will cultivate spaces for participants to advocate for their interests, perspectives, and needs. This research within the Pacific region is important for fostering science literacy and broadening participation in STEAM fields since early interest in science is a potential indicator of future STEAM interest and career choices.
The goal of the project is to investigate how youth’s inductive exploration of local technologies featured in Indigenous stories impact their engagement and interest in STEAM, Informal STEAM learning, and future decision making that affect youth participation in STEAM pathways. The project will be implemented in Guam, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia (comprising the four states of Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap) and will address the core research question: To what extent does youths’ participation in STEAM-based storytelling and story exploration lead to increases in youths’ engagement and interest in STEAM and self-efficacy over time? The project approaches story exploration as a cultural and metalinguistic process to investigate a story not solely as an artifact or a process, but as a doorway to investigations of history, Indigenous STEAM, and local innovation. Two cohorts of youth participants will engage in summer and spring out-of-school programs led by elders, partner organizations, and project staff through which youth investigate storytelling, design, research practice, and service learning. Each cohort will also create digital storytelling packages and/or model kits to share with audiences through participant-designed community-level and cross-region sharing events. The project is expected to reach 140 youth and 30 elders. To measure learning outcomes, the project builds upon extant tools to gauge Informal STEAM learning engagement. Lessons about the application of these tools will contribute to the Informal STEAM learning knowledge base—especially regarding underrepresented communities in STEAM. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is the overarching theoretical and methodological framework for the project and will engage participants as co-researchers through multiple methods of observation, data gathering, and analysis. The project will also create community-driven research opportunities that advances the generation of knowledge on topics that are often left unexplored because: (1) Micronesians as underrepresented minorities are not usually at the table during research design; (2) non-Micronesian/Indigenous epistemologies are usually privileged throughout the research; and (3) there is a lack of trust when any outsider asks to look in, especially when racialized colonial histories still leave daily impacts. This project encourages all participants to consider and develop answers to this question: Stewards of whose knowledge? Research findings and educational materials and resources will be disseminated to researchers, program developers, informal science institutions, partner organizations, formal and informal educators, and communities.
This assessment serves as the summative assessment of the IMLS-funded project at KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum: Natural History Mystery: Immersing families in a problem-solving game using museum collections. The assessment employs a mixed methods approach, in which both quantitative and qualitative data are collected. More specifically, quantitative data are generated from surveys that are administered to participants at the beginning and end of the game and analyzed by using descriptive statistics (i.e., mean, standard deviation, and histogram) and paired sample t-test
The University of Kansas Natural History Museum, in collaboration with the University of California Museum of Paleontology, will develop, test, and deploy an immersive educational game on the topic of evolution and common ancestry. The museum will frame the game with a narrative that involves tracing the origin of a zoonotic disease (infectious disease that is transmitted between species from animals to humans or from humans to animals). Played on the museum floor, the escape room-inspired game will explore innovative formats for museum learning and engagement. It is being designed for families with children ages 7 to 12, and by visiting groups of schoolchildren in grades 3 to 5.
The Maryland Science Center (MSC), in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), and Morgan State University (MSU), has sought the support of the National Institutes of Health SEPA (Science Education Partnership Award) Program to develop "Cellular Universe: The Promise of Stem Cells," a unique exhibition and update center with related programs that highlight the most current science in cell biology and stem cell research. Visitor surveys have shown that science museum visitors are very interested in learning about stem cell research, but know little about the science of stem cells or cell biology, which form the basis of stem cell research. The goal of this project is to help visitors learn about advances in cell biology and stem cells so that they will make informed health-related decisions, explore new career options, and better understand the role of basic and clinical research in health advances that affect people's lives. Topics to be covered include the basic biology of cells, the role of stem cells in human development, current stem cell research and the clinical research process. This exhibition will also address the controversies in stem cell research. Our varied advisory panel, including cell biologists, physiologists, adult and embryonic stem cell researchers and bioethicists, will ensure the objectivity of all content. "Cellular Universe: The Promise of Stem Cells" will be a 3,500 square-foot exhibition to be planned, designed and prototyped in Fall 2006-Winter 2009, and installed in MSC's second-floor human body exhibition hall in Spring 2009. This exhibition will build on the successful model of "BodyLink," our innovative health science update center funded by a 2000 SEPA grant (R25RR015602) and supported by partnerships with JHU and UMB.
This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting.
This project's research questions include:
How and to what extent do Brains On!’s coronavirus-based episodes help children and their families understand and talk about science-related pandemic topics? What kind of conversations are sparked by these episodes?
What kinds of worries and questions do Brains On! listeners have about coronavirus and related aspects of the pandemic? How do children’s worries and questions change over the course of the pandemic?
What resources do caregivers need to answer children’s questions
The goal of this NSF-funded RAPID research project was to advance understanding of how children’s science podcasts can provide families with information to help ease children’s worries during a pandemic by increasing children’s understanding of pandemic-related science concepts and supporting pandemic-related family conversations. Our research was guided by the following questions:
1. How and to what extent do Brains On!’s coronavirus-based episodes help children and their families understand and talk about science-related pandemic topics?
2. What kinds of conversations are
This RAPID project will study connections between children's hygiene habits and learning about science, such as the science of disease transmission. It builds upon findings from the investigator's prior research of parent-child interactions observed in children's museums and will extend this research to home settings. This research will focus on understanding how goal-setting, whether it is parent-directed, child-directed, or jointly-directed, affects children's engagement with a handwashing activity and their subsequent learning about handwashing behavior and preventing the spread of disease. More specifically, the intent is to examine how goal-setting during an interactive demonstration between parents and children relates to children's recollection of the activity and their handwashing behavior afterwards. 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.
During a pandemic, it is vital that children establish good hygiene habits and understand the importance of handwashing for the prevention of disease transmission. What is most important is that young children wash their hands frequently and follow good hygiene habits, such as using soap, when doing so. This study examines the role parents might play in engaging children to wash their hands. The project team has developed a short 10 minute intervention that parents and children can participate in while using everyday household items. Utilizing remote technology, parents and children will be guided through this intervention while video recording their behavior. Families will be presented with a structured activity for parents and children to participate in together. This activity will be focused on how handwashing, and particularly the use of soap during handwashing, helps prevent the spread of germs. Parent-child interactions will be coded using schemes for goal setting that the investigator developed in prior work. Directly after their participation and one week later, children will be asked to reflect on the activity to understand what they remember about it, and to understand whether they have encoded the importance of handwashing for preventing the transmission of disease. Parents will also be asked to track their children's handwashing to see whether aspects of these reflections, as well as individual differences in how parents and children interact during the activity, promote better engagement with handwashing. The data generated will allow researchers to develop best practices for interventions centered on children's handwashing and the prevention of disease transmission. Knowing such practices is critical for reintegrating children into social settings such as schools and children's museums.
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.
With the world in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, children are often having or expressing worries and fears. Their caregivers -- parents and those who are providing direct care for children -- are seeking trusted sources of information to help them explain this disease and help ease children’s worries. This resource guide reflects some of the work of our current NSF-funded research study (NSF#2029209) about the communication needs of children and families during the pandemic, seeking to understand how they are supported in having conversations about the coronavirus and pandemic-related
With the world in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, families are seeking trusted and engaging sources of scientific information to help their children understand prevention, transmission, treatment, and many other topics related to COVID-19 in an effort to ease children’s fears. The goal of our NSF-funded RAPID research study is to understand how children’s science podcasts, as well as other educational products, can provide families with information to help ease children’s worries during a pandemic by increasing children’s understanding of pandemic-related science concepts, empowering
With the world in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, families are seeking trusted and engaging sources of scientific information to help their children understand prevention, transmission, treatment, and many other topics related to COVID-19 in an effort to ease children’s fears. The goal of our NSF-funded RAPID research study is to understand how children’s science podcasts, as well as other educational products, can provide families with information to help ease children’s worries during a pandemic by increasing children’s understanding of pandemic-related science concepts, empowering