The New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) will develop, test, market, and disseminate an interactive graphic novel iBook that will use the interests of young people (ages 10–14) in animals and comics to engage them in learning about health and clinical research. Provisionally called “Transmission: Astonishing Tales of Human-Animal Diseases,” the project represents a new approach to engaging young people in biomedical science learning.
Graphic novels are one of the fastest growing categories in publishing and bookselling, and today, they are significantly more sophisticated than the comics that came before them. They are also enormously popular among young people. The proposed graphic novel iBook will focus on the diseases that humans and animals share and pass between them (sometimes to devastating consequences), from Ebola, bird flu, and West Nile disease to influenza, measles, and pneumonia. Moreover, like many other contemporary graphic novels, it will address a pressing issue of the day—amely, the growth of zoonotic and anthropozoonotic diseases.
The iBook will be developed in a digital, interactive format (a growing trend within the genre) and, like many graphic novel titles, will take a mystery and forensic crime approach to exploring its content. Ultimately, Transmission will become a national model for conveying biomedical understanding through the use of up-to-the-minute interactive iBook technologies and an engaging graphic novel format.
For public health to improve, all sectors of society much have access to the highest quality health science news and information possible. How that information is translated, packaged and disseminated is important: the stories matter. Our journalism and mentoring program will grow the health science literacy of the nation by building the next generation of science communicators, ensuring that cadre of youth from historically disadvantaged groups have the discipline, creativity and critical thinking skills needed to be successful health science-literate citizens and advocates within their own communities.
Using a combination of youth-generated videos, broadcast reporting and online curriculum resources, PBS NewsHour will engineer successful educational experiences to engage students from all backgrounds, and particularly underserved populations, to explore clinical, biomedical, and behavioral research. The PBS NewsHour’s Student Reporting Labs program, currently in 41 states, will create 10 health science reporting labs to produce unique news stories that view health and science topics from a youth perspective. We will incorporate these videos into lesson plans and learning tools disseminated to the general public, educators and youth media organizations. Students will be supported along the way with curricula and mentorship on both fundamental research and the critical thinking skills necessary for responsible journalism. This process will ensure the next generation includes citizens who are effective science communicators and self-motivated learners with a deep connection to science beyond the textbook and classroom.
PBS NewsHour will develop a STEM-reporting curriculum to teach students important research skills. The program will include activities that expose students to careers in research, highlight a diverse assortment of pioneering scientists as role models and promote internship opportunities. The resources will be posted on the PBS NewsHour Extra site which has 170,000 views per month and our partner sites on PBS Learning Media and Share My Lesson—the two biggest free education resource sites on the web—thus greatly expanding the potential scope of our outreach and impact.
NewsHour broadcast topics will be finalized through our advisory panel and the researchers interviewed for the stories will be selected for their expertise and skills as effective science communicators, as well as their diversity and ability to connect with youth. Finally, we will launch an outreach and community awareness campaign through strategic partnerships and coordinated cross promotion of stories through social media platforms.
Citizen science is a form of Public Participation in Scientific Research (PPSR) in which the participants are engaged in the scientific process to support research that results in scientifically valid data. Opportunities for participation in real and authentic scientific research have never been larger or broader than they are today. The growing popularity and refinement of PPSR efforts (such as birding and species counting studies orchestrated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology) have created both an opportunity for science engagement and a need for more research to better implement such projects in order to maximize both benefits to and contributions from the public.
Towards this end, Shirk et al. have posted a design framework for PPSR projects that delineates distinct levels of citizen scientist participation; from the least to the highest level of participation, these categories are contract, contribute, collaborate, co-create, and colleagues. The distinctions among these levels are important to practitioners seeking to design effective citizen science programs as each increase in citizen science participation in the scientific process is hypothesized to have both benefits and obstacles. The literature on citizen science models of PPSR calls for more research on the role that this degree of participation plays in the quality of that participation and related learning outcomes (e.g., Shirk et al., 2012; Bonney et al., 2009). With an unprecedented interest in thoughtfully incorporating citizen science into health-based studies, citizen science practitioners and health researchers first need a better understanding of the role of culture in how different communities approach and perceive participation in health-related studies, the true impact of intended educational efforts from participation, and the role participation in general has on the scientific process and the science outcome.
Project goal to address critical barrier in the field: Establish best practices for use of citizen science in the content area of human health-based research, and better inform the design of future projects in PPSR, both in the Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s Genetics of Taste Lab (Lab), and importantly, in various research and educational settings across the field.
Aims
Understand who currently engages in citizen science projects in order to design strategies to overcome the barriers to participation that occur at each level of the PPSR framework, particularly among audiences underrepresented in STEM.
Significantly advance the current knowledge regarding how citizen scientists engage in, and learn from, and participate in the different levels of the PPSR framework.
Determine the impact that each stage of citizen science participation has on the scientific process.
The NIH Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) program of Emory University endeavors to use an over-arching theme of citizen science principles to:
develop an innovative curriculum based on citizen science and experiential learning to evaluate the efficacy of informal science education in after-school settings;
promote biomedical scientific careers in under-represented groups targeting females for Girls for Science summer research experiences;
train teachers in Title I schools to implement this citizen science based curriculum; and
disseminate the citizen science principles through outreach.
This novel, experiential science and engineering program, termed Experiential Citizen Science Training for the Next Generation (ExCiTNG), encompasses community-identified topics reflecting NIH research priorities. The curriculum is mapped to Next Generation Science Standards.
A comprehensive evaluation plan accompanies each program component, composed of short- and/or longer-term outcome measures. We will use our existing outreach program (Students for Science) along with scientific community partnerships (Atlanta Science Festival) to implement key aspects of the program throughout the state of Georgia. These efforts will be overseen by a central Steering Committee composed of leadership of the Community Education Research Program of the Emory/Morehouse/Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta Clinical Translational Science Institute (NIH CTSA), the Principal Investigators, representatives of each program component, and an independent K–12 STEM evaluator from the Georgia Department of Education.
The Community Advisory Board, including educators, parents, and community members, will help guide the program’s implementation and monitor progress. A committee of NIH-funded investigators, representing multiple NIH institutes along with experienced science writers, will lead the effort for dissemination and assure that on-going and new NIH research priorities are integrated into the program’s curriculum over time.
This project specifically addresses the SMRB’s imperative that “NIH’s pre-college STEM activities need a rejuvenated integrated focus on biomedical workforce preparedness with special considerations for under-represented minorities.”
Approximately one-third of CityLab’s participants are under-represented minority (URM) students, but we now have a unique opportunity to build a program that will reach many URM students and position them for undergraduate STEM success. We have partnered with urban squash education organizations in Boston (SquashBusters) and New York (CitySquash and StreetSquash) that recruit URM/low SES students to participate in after-school squash training and academic enrichment programs. We have also partnered with the Squash + Education Alliance (previously named the National Urban Squash and Education Association) to disseminate the new program—first from Boston to New York and later through its national network of affiliated squash education programs.
In order to bring this project to fruition, Boston University is joining forces with Fordham University in New York. Fordham is home to CitySquash so these organizations provide an ideal base for the New York activities. The proposed project will enable us to demonstrate feasibility and replicability within the 5-year scope of this grant. Our shared vision is to develop a national model for informal precollege biomedical science education that can be infused into a myriad of similar athletic/academic enrichment programs.
The squash education movement for urban youth has been highly successful in enrolling program graduates in college. Since the academic offerings of the squash education programs focus on English Language Arts and Mathematics, their students struggle with science and rarely recognize the tremendous opportunities for long- term employment in STEM fields.
This project will bring CityLab’s resources to local squash programs in a coordinated and sustained engagement to introduce students to STEM, specifically the biomedical sciences. Together with the urban squash centers, we will build upon the hands-on life science experiences developed and widely disseminated by CityLab to create engaging laboratory-based experiences involving athletics and physiology.
The specific aims of the proposed project are:
To develop, implement, and evaluate a new partnership model for recruiting URM/low SES students and inspiring them to pursue careers in STEM; and
To examine changes in the science learner identities (SLI) of the students who participate in this program and establish this metric as a marker for continued engagement in STEM.
With the involvement of the two urban research universities, three local squash education programs, and SEA, we see this new SEPA initiative as a unique way to pilot, refine, and disseminate an after-school/informal science education program that can have a significant impact on the nation’s production of talented STEM graduates from URM/low SES backgrounds.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Carl FranzblauDonald DeRosaCarla Romney
By engaging diverse publics in immersive and deliberative learning forums, this three-year project will use NOAA data and expertise to strengthen community resilience and decision-making around a variety of climate and weather-related hazards across the United States. Led by Arizona State University’s Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes and the Museum of Science Boston, the project will develop citizen forums hosted by regional science centers to create a new, replicable model for learning and engagement. These forums, to be hosted initially in Boston and Phoenix and then expanded to an additional six sites around the U.S., will facilitate public deliberation on real-world issues of concern to local communities, including rising sea levels, extreme precipitation, heat waves, and drought. The forums will identify and clarify citizen values and perspectives while creating stakeholder networks in support of local resilience measures. The forum materials developed in collaboration with NOAA will foster better understanding of environmental changes and best practices for improving community resiliency, and will create a suite of materials and case studies adaptable for use by science centers, teachers, and students. With regional science centers bringing together the public, scientific experts, and local officials, the project will create resilience-centered partnerships and a framework for learning and engagement that can be replicated nationwide.
Today’s science centers are becoming more aware of changes in their local contexts and are concerned about playing a role in building and contributing to society. The Mechelen Declaration, resulting from the Science Centre World Summit 2014 held in Mechelen, Belgium, clearly expresses this commitment with two of its goals (SCWS, 2014):
1. “We will investigate how to engage even more effectively with local communities and increasingly diverse audiences.”
2. “We will take the lead in developing the best methods for engaging learners and optimizing their education in both formal and
Pacific Science Center (PSC) proposes Out of the Lab and Into the Spotlight (OLIS) a five-year project to bring current and fascinating information about health science research to Pacific Northwest audiences. Through a series of showcases that change content every six months the Research Focus Gallery will highlight cutting-edge local research. The Gallery a combined exhibit and program space will feature multimedia displays research artifacts hands-on exhibits and a presentation area where local researchers will communicate their work to visitors. An annual three-day research festival and monthly Science Cafes in three locations will complement the programs presented in the Gallery and will provide multiple venues for a variety of audiences to meet face-to-face with local researchers and learn about health science and related careers. Out of the Lab and Into the Spotlight will further the goals of the Science Education Partnership Award by 1) connecting the community to NIH-funded research and 2) increasing the awareness of young people in the Puget Sound region about careers in scientific research. An in-depth evaluation conducted by the external evaluator Center for Research Evaluation and Assessment will measure the effectiveness of the project in reaching the following outcomes: * The extent to which the program informs PSC visitors about the wide variety of NIH-funded research being performed in the region; specifically whether PSC visitors have an increased understanding of the various research areas presented. * The impact of the program on over 100 scientist participants; specifically scientists’ ability to communicate research ideas to the public and their interest in future participation. * The ability of PSC program developers to develop a future-ready space; specifically if the developed showcases and templates are adaptable to future content areas. The proposed project will draw upon our established relationships with local research organizations that together receive close to one billion dollars annually from NIH. The project leverages and deepens relationships that already exist between each of these institutions and PSC to enhance science learning in our community in novel ways. The primary audience for OLIS will be families and school groups ages eight and older drawn from over 800000 annual visitors. As a standalone element within the new Wellness exhibit due to open in 2011 we anticipate the Gallery will reach three to four million visitors during the grant period and up to five million additional visitors in the subsequent five years. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE (provided by applicant): Individuals need to obtain process and understand basic health information to make appropriate health decisions (Healthy People 2010). The proposed project Out of the Lab and Into the Spotlight will provide opportunities for the general public to increase their understanding of current health information and increase their awareness of cutting-edge research taking place in their own backyard. By engaging with research scientists in several venues the public will be exposed to NIH funded research and health science careers.
The Studio is a small change-ready exhibit space embedded within the Wellbody Academy, a 7,000 ft2 permanent exhibit on health and wellness. The Studio showcases up-to-date research on topics like genetics, epidemiology, and allergies and features the labs and work of scientists in the Seattle area.
The purpose of the cohort study was to provide objective feedback to exhibit developers as they experimented with finding the best balance of information and interactives for the space considering the time and budget available. This poster explains a bit about The Studio exhibits that were
Differences in viewpoints between science and society, like in for example the HPV-vaccination debate, should be considered from a socio-technical system perspective, and not solely from a boundary perspective between the lay public, medical doctors and scientists. Recent developments in the HPV-vaccination case show how the debate concerning uncertainty amongst scientists and the lay audience is mostly focussed on the improvement of understanding of lay people about why vaccination is important. This boundary thinking leads to the idea that once the boundary is crossed, the problem is solved
In this article, we present three challenges to the emerging Open Science (OS) movement: the challenge of communication, collaboration and cultivation of scientific research. We argue that to address these challenges OS needs to include other forms of data than what can be captured in a text and extend into a fully-fledged Open Media movement engaging with new media and non-traditional formats of science communication. We discuss two cases where experiments with open media have driven new collaborations between scientists and documentarists. We use the cases to illustrate different advantages
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Kristian Moltke MartinyDavid Budtz PedersenAlfred Birkegaard
The phenomenon of lay readers of neuroscience being positively biased by the mere presence of brain images (fMRI), has been hotly debated, with recent failures to replicate the phenomenon, and suggestions that context is important. We experimentally investigated the potentially biasing effect of neuroimagery on participants' beliefs and explored an important facet of context within a neuroscience article: whether the article was supportive or critical of fMRI use in detecting states of mind. Results supported recent arguments that a “neurorealism” effect may in part be an artifact of
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Maria PopescuR. Bruce ThompsonWilliam GaytonVincent Markowski