This summary brief captures highlights from the second year of the NSF-funded WaterMarks project. The technical evaluation report for this same project period can be found on the main project page. The purpose of this document is to communicate key updates (as observed by the evaluation team) in a less technical way with the many different audiences who have an interest in keeping up with WaterMarks.
This is the evaluation report for the second year of the NSF-funded WaterMarks project. It reflects a current summary of available evidence about the intended outcomes of program activities to date, as well as commentary on how the project is using (or could use) this information moving forward.
This summary brief captures highlights from the evaluation report for the first year of the NSF-funded WaterMarks project (also available on this page). The purpose of this document is to communicate key updates from evaluation in a less technical way with the many different audiences who have an interest in keeping up with WaterMarks.
This is the evaluation report for the first year of the NSF-funded WaterMarks project. It reflects an initial summary of available evidence about the intended outcomes of program activities to date, as well as commentary on how the project is using (or could use) this information moving forward. This report contains descriptions of embedded measures (i.e. anonymized drawings and reflections captured on a thematic postcard) included in community walks and analyses of secondary data (i.e., interviews conducted by other members of hte project team), as well as reflections emerging from the
The Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan's Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways will organize a four-day educational symposium to build a better understanding of Native American culture and history. The project will begin with a forum to foster dialogue on the 200th anniversary of the Treaty of Saginaw. The forum will discuss the treaty's impact on sovereignty and relationships between natives and non-natives and the loss of continuity of language, culture, and the practice of traditional art forms. The forum will include representatives from the 25 tribes whose children attended the Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School. The representatives will share cultural stories and traditional methods through birch bark, black ash, elm and sweet grass basket making. The symposium will conclude on Michigan Indian Day with science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) activities for area students.
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.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program 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 two-year Pilots and Feasibility project seeks to build knowledge and strategic impact in the informal STEM learning field by studying how and why science-education-art collaborations yield impactful informal STEM learning experiences. By design and implementing interactive and participatory experiences for adult audiences, this project will build knowledge about how to help communities learn about environmental science and apply scientific knowledge to environmental decision-making in their lives.
The project's two overarching research questions are: (1) What are the essential elements of collaboration among scientists, educators, and artists that support learning about adaptation in a changing environment? (2) In what ways do designed, participatory, informal science learning experiences support participant learning? This pilot project will: a) develop methods for facilitating and assessing collaboration among scientists, educators, and artists; b) pilot and refine approaches for engaging scientists, educators, and artists with community members for high quality participatory experiences focus on learning about adaptation to environmental change in informal learning settings; c) pilot and refine methods to measure the outcomes for community participants on knowledge about environmental change and its application to problems in their everyday lives. This project is innovative in bridging a diverse body of scholarship in order to study the process of collaboration and the specific ways interdisciplinary collaborations foster learning. Because informal STEM learning settings often combine the work of multiple disciplines, examining the process and outcomes of collaborative, participatory STEM learning has the potential to deliver widely applicable guidance for achieving more impactful educational outcomes.
The proposed project will broaden participation by engaging adult members of environmentally vulnerable communities in participatory STEM activities and will improving individual and community well-being by delivering tools for future decision-making. The collaborative project will build valuable partnerships and capacity between disparate sectors of society, allowing co-learning and co-production of knowledge. Results will be published in scholarly journals as well as shared with community 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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Amy LesenSameer HonwadAma RoganCalvin Mackie
Summative evaluation of one of four pieces of the Marcellus Matters: EASE project. Formative evaluation of one of four pieces of the Marcellus Matters: EASE project. This study examined how effective a series of "Community Conversations" theater and dialogue/discussion events was at a) communicating natural gas development-related science content and community issues, and b) promoting audience members' openness to dialogue about natural gas development-related issues.
This innovative research project promotes the progress of science, enhances the national STEM workforce, and benefits society by helping to overcome the challenge of broadening participation of those who are underrepresented in STEM fields. Although many programs designed to broaden participation exist, few individuals in "STEM-disenfranchised" populations -- individuals who feel alienated, marginalized, or incapable of participating in STEM -- choose to make use of these opportunities, due mainly to their own self-identities. This project's focus is on three STEM-disenfranchised groups: 1) adults who have been recently released from incarceration; 2) youth who have been released from juvenile custody; and 3) refugee youth, and builds on existing science education programs. The research team will establish the "Alliance to Strengthen the STEM Tapestry (ASSiST)" -- with members from academia, workforce agencies, NGOs, and government agencies -- to explore how individuals who have an identity prematurely tied to failure in science might benefit from novel interventions that promote a shift of self-identity to becoming science learners, which will then lead them to explore STEM education and job training resources that already exist. Three novel interventions will involve drama activities, story- telling, and ecological restoration projects. This bold approach is designed to help these populations interweave their diverse ways of knowing with STEM workforce, higher education, and to become science-aware citizens, which will enhance U.S. leadership in STEM. ASSisT will create a strategic plan that can be interwoven with those of other NSF INCLUDES Alliances, and identify pathways to distribute outcomes to a national level. This work will provide pathways to bring other groups that are disenfranchised and who -- if motivated and directed -- could strengthen the STEM workforce and education tapestry.
Investments to broaden participation in science in the USA have supported abundant programs and resources, but few individual in "STEM-disenfranchised" populations -- individuals who feel alienated, marginalized, or incapable of participating in STEM -- choose to make use of these opportunities, due most significantly to their own self-identities. The proposed "Alliance to Strengthen the STEM Tapestry (ASSisT)" will carry out research on novel interventions that are designed to lead these individuals to avail themselves of the science education and training resources that already exist. The initial focus is on: 1) adults who have been recently released from incarceration; 2) youth who have been released from juvenile custody; and 3) refugee youth. Using a collective impact approach, ASSisT will carry out early-exploratory research to investigate how the project's novel interventions -- 1) ecological restoration, 2) story-telling/autoethnography, and 3) devised theater -- might shift participants towards self-identification and subsequent involvement with the STEM community. The Intellectual Merit of our approach is grounded in social science research, specifically, identity theory, social cognitive theory, and resilience theory. Using a one-group pretest-posttest design, qualitative research techniques will identify which elements are most critical to foster change, e.g., perceived competence in STEM subjects, congruence of self-perception with those in STEM, mastery of STEM workforce skills, and/or the importance of being a STEM-aware citizen. Broader impacts relate directly to NSF's call for greater STEM participation of women and underrepresented ethnic and socioeconomic minorities with impacts on the initial 30 cohort members for this pilot project. ASSisT will: create a common agenda; recruit cohorts of each STEM-disenfranchised group; design and implement research to test novel interventions; populate a STEM opportunities map; evaluate and analyze outcomes; articulate a strategic plan that can be interwoven with those of other NSF INCLUDES Alliances; and identify pathways to disseminate outcomes and benchmarks to a national level.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Nalini NadkarniJordan GertonDiane PatakiSydney Cheek-O'DonnellRussell Isabella
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. Earth Partnership: Indigenous Arts and Sciences (IAS) refines a model for integrating Indigenous and Western STEM education utilizing a 10-step framework for ecological restoration, project-based learning, and professional development. Through community dialogues and a collaborative design process with Native Nations of Wisconsin, Earth Partnership is developing an Indigenous Arts and Sciences approach that has allowed Native participants to voice their insights
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