As new technologies continue to dominate the world, access to and participation in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), and computing has become a critical focus of education research, practice, and policy. This issue is exceptionally relevant for American Indians, who remain underrepresented as only 0.2% of the STEM workforce, even though they make up 2% of the U.S. population. In response to this need, this Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) project takes a community-driven design approach, a collaborative design process in which Indigenous partners maintain sovereignty as designers, to collaboratively create three place-based storytelling experiences, stories told in historical and cultural places through location-based media. The place-based storytelling experiences will be digital installations at three culturally, politically, and historically significant sites in the local community where the public can engage with Indigenous science. The work is being done in partnership with the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation (NWBSN).
The principal investigator and the NWBSN will investigate: (a) what are effective strategies and processes to conduct community-driven design with Indigenous partners?; (b) how does designing place-based storytelling experiences develop tribal members' design, technical, and computational skills?; (c) how does designing these experiences impact tribal members' scientific, technological, and cultural identities? The goals are to establish a process of community-driven design, build infrastructure to support this process, and understand how this methodological approach can result in culturally-appropriate ways to engage with science through technology. The principal investigator will work with the tribe to complete three intergenerational design cycles (a design cycle is made up of multiple design iterations). Each design cycle will result in one place-based storytelling experience. The goal is to include roughly 15 youth (ages 6-18), 10 Elders, and 10 other community members (i.e. members ages 18-50, likely parents) in each design cycle (35 tribal members total). Some designers are likely to participate in multiple design cycles. The tribe currently has 48 youth ages 6-18 and the project aims to engage at least 30 across all three design cycles. Over four years of designing three different experiences, the NWBSN aims to recruit at least 100 tribal members (just under 20% of the tribe) to make contributions (as designers, storytellers, or to provide cultural artifacts or design feedback).
This CAREER award 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. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences.
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.
Co-led by the University of Washington and Science Gallery Dublin, this project aims to drive and transform the next generation of broadening participation efforts targeting teen-aged youth from communities historically underrepresented in STEM fields. This project investigates how out-of-school time (OST) programs that integrate epistemic practices of the arts, sciences, computer science, and other disciplines, in the context of consequential activities (such as creating radio segments, designing museum exhibitions, or building online games), can more broadly appeal to and engage youth who do not already identify as STEM learners. STEM-related skills and capacities (such as computational thinking, design, data visualizations, and digital storytelling) are key to productive and creative participation in many future civic and workplace activities, and are driving the 30 fastest-growing occupations in the US. But many new jobs will entail a hybrid blend of skills, such as programming and design skills that many students who have disengaged with academic STEM pathways may already have and would be eager to develop further. There is not currently a strong foundation of research-based evidence to guide the design, implementation, and evaluation transdisciplinary programs - in which STEM skills are embedded as tools for meaningful participation - or how such approaches relate to long-term outcomes. Hypothesizing that OST programs which effectively engage youth during their high-leverage teenage years can significantly impact youths' longer-term STEM learning trajectories, this project will involve: 1) Five 3-year studies documenting learning in different technology-rich contexts: Making Afterschool, Media Production, Museum Exhibition Design, Digital Arts Programs, and Pop-Up/Street Science Programs; 2) A 4-year longitudinal study, involving 100 youth from the above programs; 3) The creation of a number of practical measurement tools that can be used to monitor how programs are leveraging the intersections of the arts and sciences to support student engagement and learning; and 4) A Professional Development program conducted at informal science education conferences in the EU and US to engage the informal STEM field with emerging findings. This project is funded through Science Learning+, which is an international partnership between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Wellcome Trust with the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The goal of this joint funding effort is to make transformational steps toward improving the knowledge base and practices of informal STEM experiences to better understand, strengthen, and coordinate STEM engagement and learning. Within NSF, Science Learning+ is part of the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program that seeks to enhance learning in informal environments.
Transdisciplinary, equity-oriented OST programs can provide supportive social contexts in which STEM concepts and practices are taken up as the means for meaningful participation in valued activities, building students' STEM skills in ways that can propel their future academic, career, and lifelong learning choices. This project will build the knowledge base about these emerging 21st century transdisciplinary approaches to broadening participation investigating: 1) The epistemic intersections across a range of disciplines (art, science, computation, design) that operate to broaden appeal and meaningful participation for underrepresented youth; 2) How transdisciplinary activities undertaken in the context of consequential learning (e.g., producing a radio segment, designing an exhibition for the general public) can illuminate the relevance of STEM to young people's lives, concerns, and futures; and 3) How participation in such programs can propel students' longer-term life choices and STEM learning trajectories. The project is a collaboration of the University of Washington, Science Gallery Dublin, Indiana University, Youth Radio in Oakland California, Guerilla Science in New York and London, and the London School of Economics.
This Partnerships for Innovation: Building Innovation Capacity (PFI:BIC) project from the University of New Hampshire focuses on a "living bridge", which exemplifies the future of smart, sustainable, user-centered transportation infrastructure. Bridges deliver such a fundamental service to society that they are often taken for granted. Typically, bridges only stir the public's interest when they must unexpectedly be replaced at great cost, or, worse, fail. The Living Bridge project will create a self-diagnosing, self-reporting "smart bridge" powered by a local renewable energy source, tidal energy, by transforming the landmark Memorial Bridge--a vertical lift bridge over the tidal Piscataqua River, with pedestrian access connecting Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Kittery, Maine--into a living laboratory for researchers, engineers, scientists, and the community at large. The Living Bridge will engage innovators in sensor and renewable energy technology by creating an incubator platform on a working bridge, from which researchers can field test and evaluate the impact and effectiveness of emerging technologies. The Living Bridge will also serve as a community platform to educate citizens about innovations occurring at the site and in the region, and about how incorporating renewable energy into bridge design can lead to a sustainable transportation infrastructure with impact far beyond the region. Sustainable, smart bridges are key elements in developing a successful infrastructure system. To advance the state of smart service systems and clean energy conversion, this project team will design and deploy a structural and environmental monitoring system that provides information for bridge condition assessment, traffic management, and environmental stewardship; advances renewable energy technology application; and excites the general public about bridge innovations. This PFI:BIC project is enabled through partnerships between academic researchers with expertise in structural, mechanical and ocean engineering, sensing technology and social science; small businesses with expertise in instrumentation, data acquisition, tidal energy conversion; and state agencies with bridge design expertise. The Living Bridge technical areas are structural health monitoring, tidal energy conversion with fluid-structure interaction measurements, estuarine environmental monitoring, and outreach communication. Sensors will be used to calibrate a three-dimensional analytical structural finite element model of the bridge. The predicted structural response from this model will assess the measured structural response of the bridge as acceptable or not. Instruments installed on the turbine deployment platform will measure the spatio-temporal structure of the turbulent inflow and modified wake flow downstream of the turbine. Resulting data will include turbine performance and loads for use in fluid-structure interaction models. Deployed environmental sensors will measure estuarine water quality; wildlife deterrent sensors will deter fish from the turbine. Hydrophones and video cameras will be used before and during turbine deployment to monitor environmental changes due to turbine presence. Outreach efforts will make bridge data, history, and information about new systems accessible and understandable to the public and K-12 educators, facilitated by an information kiosk installed at the bridge. Public awareness will be assessed with survey methods used in the N.H. Granite State Poll. The lead institution is the University of New Hampshire (UNH) with its departments of Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Sociology, and the Center for Ocean Engineering. Primary industrial partners are a large business, MacArtney Underwater Technology Group, Inc. (Houston, TX) and two small businesses Lite Enterprises, Inc. (Nashua, NH) and Eccosolutions, LLC (New Paltz, NY.) Broader context partners are New Hampshire Department of Transportation, NH Fish & Game Department, NH Port Authority, NH Coastal Program, City of Portsmouth (NH), Sustainable Portsmouth (nonprofit), Maine Department of Transportation; U.S. Coast Guard, Archer/Western (Canton, MA, large business), Parsons-Brinkerhoff (Manchester, NH, large business), UNH Tech Camp, UNH Infrastructure and Climate Network, UNH Leitzel Center for Mathematics, Science and Engineering Education, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Changing Places (a joint Architecture and Media Laboratory Consortium, in Cambridge, MA).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Erin BellTat FuMartin WosnikKenneth BaldwinLawrence Hamilton
The Exploratorium, in collaboration with the Boys and Girls Club Columbia Park (BGC) in the Mission District of San Francisco, is implementing a two-year exploratory project designed to support informal education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) within underserved Latino communities. Building off of and expanding on non-STEM-related efforts in a few major U.S. cities and Europe, the Exploratorium, BGC, and residents of the District will engage in a STEM exhibit and program co-development process that will physically convert metered parking spaces in front of the Club into transformative public places called "parklets." The BGC parklet will feature interactive, bilingual science and technology exhibits, programs and events targeting audiences including youth ages 8 - 17 and intergenerational families and groups primarily in the Mission District and users of the BGC. Parklet exhibits and programs will focus on STEM content related to "Observing the Urban Environment," with a focus on community sustainability. The project explores one approach to working with and engaging the public in their everyday environment with relevant STEM learning experiences. The development and evaluation processes are being positioned as a model for possible expansion throughout the city and to other cities.
This document is a “think piece” about why and how informal science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education institutions could be placing amusing, novel experiences in people’s paths to create memorable STEM experiences embedded in their everyday lives. The report focuses on what we learned about creating interactive STEM exhibits in public spaces outside of a science center. That said, the content can inform hands-on learning experiences on other topics, as well, within the limits outlined.