Hero Elementary is a transmedia educational initiative aimed at improving the school readiness and academic achievement in science and literacy of children grades K-2. With an emphasis on Latinx communities, English Language Learners, youth with disabilities, and children from low-income households, Hero Elementary celebrates kids and encourages them to make a difference in their own backyards and beyond by actively doing science and using their Superpowers of Science. The project embeds the expectations of K–2nd NGSS and CCSS-ELA standards into a series of activities, including interactive games, educational apps, non-fiction e-books, hands-on activities, and a digital science notebook. The activities are organized into playlists for educators and students to use in afterschool programs. Each playlist centers on a meaningful conceptual theme in K-2 science learning.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Joan FreeseMomoko HayakawaBryce Becker
Techbridge Girls’ mission is to help girls discover a passion for science, engineering, and technology (SET). In August 2013, Techbridge Girls was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation grant to scale up its after-school program from the San Francisco Bay Area to multiple new locations around the United States. In the fall of 2014, Techbridge Girls began offering after-school programming at five elementary and two middle schools in the Highline Public School district, located near Seattle, WA.
Education Development Center is conducting the formative and summative evaluation of the
The 5-year longitudinal study on Iridescent's Family Science Learning model was conducted with 2,173 participants from 9 schools and museum sites in Los Angeles and New York City. Participants were underserved elementary school students and their parents. Families met once a week for 5 weeks in a row. Five families (~20 participants) came for all 5 years.
Each program implementation was coordinated by Iridescent team members. The goal of this study was to:
* To identify scalable methods of engaging underserved audiences in STEM.
* To identify sustainable methods of supporting long-term
Our Sky is a series of Out-of-School Time and museum educational programs that inspire an appreciation and understanding of Earth and Space Science (ESS) in a diverse population of children ages 3-10 and their parents, caregivers and educators. All resources are developed through a partnership between Boston Children’s Museum and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The vision for Our Sky is that children ages 3-10 and their adult caregivers will gain an appreciation for celestial objects and phenomena as a foundation for understanding of Earth and Space Science. All resources and activities will be designed to realize this vision, and to:
Serve a diverse range of audiences, with an emphasis on urban and low-income children and families;
Increase appreciation among diverse adults and children of the sky as an accessible science learning resource;
Share NASA resources with, and help develop foundational STEM skills in children;
Encourage adults to engage in and guide ESS learning experiences with children;
Inspire practical application of STEM skills by children and adults as they explore celestial objects together; and
Expand the capacity of museum staff and afterschool educators to engage families in learning STEM skills through ESS exploration.
Our Sky activities will result in:
A series of museum-based programs that incorporate NASA resources and ESS activities across a range of content areas; and
A series of new ESS-focused activities for the award-winning “Beyond the Chalkboard” afterschool curriculum that include NASA resources and will reach hundreds of thousands of children around the world.
The L.C. Bates Museum will provide 1,700 rural fourth grade students and their families museum-based STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) educational programming including integrated naturalist, astronomy, and art activities that explore Maine's environment and its solar and lunar interactions. The project will include a series of eight classroom programs, family field trips, TV programs, family and classroom self-guided educational materials, and exhibitions of project activities including student work. By bringing programs to schools and offering family activities and field trips, the museum will be able to engage an underserved, mostly low-income population that would otherwise not be able to visit the museum. The museum's programming will address teachers' needs for museum objects and interactive explorations that enhance student learning and new Common Core science curriculum objectives, while offering students engaging learning experiences and the opportunity to develop 21st century leadership skills.
The Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies Program funds efforts that will help in envisioning the next generation of learning technologies and advancing what we know about how people learn in technology-rich environments. Development and Implementation (DIP) Projects build on proof-of-concept work that showed the possibilities of the proposed new type of learning technology, and project teams build and refine a minimally-viable example of their proposed innovation that allows them to understand how such technology should be designed and used in the future and answer questions about how people learn with technology. Although for years researchers have believed technology could afford anytime-anywhere learning, we still don't understand how learners behave differently across contexts, such as home, school, and in the community, and how to get youth to identify as learners across those contexts. This proposal aims to use mobile devices and strategically placed shared kiosks to 'scientize' youth in two low-income communities. Through strategic partnerships with community organizations, educators, and families, the innovation is to get primary and middle-school students engaging in scientific inquiry in the context of their neighborhoods. Research will help determine how the technology can best be deployed, but also answer important questions about how communities can provide support to help kids think like scientists and identify with science. This project will design and implement ubiquitous technology tools that include mobile social media and tangible, community displays (collectively called ScienceKit) that are deeply embedded into two urban neighborhoods, and demonstrate how such ubiquitous technologies and related cyberlearning strategies are vital to improve information flow and coordination across a neighborhood ecosystem, in order to create environments where children can connect their science learning across contexts and time (e.g. scientizing). A program called ScienceEverywhere comprised of partnerships between tightly connected neighborhood organizations with mentors, teachers, parents, and researchers will help learners develop scientifically literate practices both in and out of school, and will demonstrate students' learning to their communities. Research will consist of mixed methods studies of use of the tools, including iterative design-based research, ethnography, and the use of participant observers from the community; these will be triangulated with usage logs of the technologies and content analysis of microblogs by the learners on their identities and interests. Discourse analysis of interviews with focal learners will orient the qualitative work on identity development, and analysis using activity theory will inform the influences of the social practices and sociotechnical systems on learner trajectories. Formative evaluation will help shed light on if and how the sociotechnical system promotes STEM literacy and STEM identity development.
Many communities across the country are developing "maker spaces," environments that combine physical fabrication equipment, social communities of people working together, and educational activities for learning how to design and create objects. Increasingly, maker spaces and maker technologies are being designed to provide extended learning opportunities for school-aged young people. Unfortunately, few youth from under-represented populations have had the opportunity to participate in these maker spaces, and many communities do not have the resources to establish facilities dedicated to making activities. This project, a collaboration of faculty at California State University, San Marcos and San Diego County Office of Education, the Vista Unified School District, and the San Diego Fab Lab, is a feasibility study that will work to address these needs by implementing and evaluating a pilot Mobile Making program in an underserved youth population. It will bring Making to four after-school programs in underserved communities in San Diego by using a van to take both equipment and undergraduate student mentors to program sites. At these sites, between 50% and 90% of the students are Hispanic or Latino and between 40% and 90% are eligible for free or reduced price lunch. The project employs a research-based approach to the design and implementation of the Mobile Making program, coupled with an evidenced-based plan for developing a model for future dissemination. Project objectives are: increasing the participants' interest, self-efficacy, and perception of the relevance of Making/STEM in everyday life; identifying and overcoming challenges associated with a Mobile Making program; developing a model for implementing and assessing Mobile Making in underserved communities; and disseminating materials and guides for practitioners. Development will be guided by five research-based principles for design of out-of-school time programs in underserved communities: access to resources; ethnically diverse near-peer leaders; authentic activities; legitimacy within the community; and ongoing input from participants. To inform program development and implementation, including continuous monitoring and adjustment throughout the two-year initiative, the evaluation component will use a mixed methods approach to study outcomes with respect to the students, their parents and the undergraduate mentors. Future work will apply the lessons learned in the project to guide implementations and study the model's applicability in other informal education settings. The dissemination plan will include publication of project findings, activities, practitioner's guides, and the model for implementing making programs in underserved communities.
This full-scale project addresses the need for more youth, especially girls, to pursue an interest in engineering and eventually fill a critical workforce need. The project leverages museum-based exhibits, girls' activity groups, and social media to enhance participants' engineering-related interests and identities. The project includes the following bilingual deliverables: (1) Creative Solutions programming will engage girls in group oriented engineering activities at partner community-based organizations, where the activities highlight altruistic, personally relevant, and social aspects of engineering. Existing community groups will use the activities in their regular meeting structure. Visits to the museum exhibits, titled Design Your World will reinforce messages; (2) Design Your World Exhibits will serve as a community hub at two ISE institutions (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and the Hatfield Marine Science Center). They will leverage existing NSF-funded Engineer It! (DRL-9803989) exhibits redesigned to attract, engage, and mobilize a more diverse population by showcasing altruistic, personally relevant, and social aspects of engineering; (3) Digital engagement through targeted use of social media will complement program and exhibit content and be an online portal for groups engaged in the project; (4) A community action group (CAG) will provide professional development opportunities to stakeholders interested in girls' STEM identity (e.g. parents, STEM-based business professionals) to promote effective engineering messaging throughout the community and engage them in supporting project participants; and (5) Longitudinal research will explore how girls construct and negotiate engineering-related identities through discourse across the project activities and over time.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. This research project leverages ongoing longitudinal research to investigate whether, and if so how, youth from ages 10 to 15 in a diverse, under-resourced urban community become interested and engaged in STEM. The project addresses a global issue; fewer youth choose to major in scientific fields or take science coursework at high school or university levels. These declining numbers result in fewer STEM professionals and fewer scientifically literate citizens who are able to function successfully in an increasingly scientific and technological society. These declines are observed for youth as a whole, but are most pronounced for girls and particular non-white ethnic minorities. Data collected from youth in this community of study, including non-white ethnic minorities, mirrors this decline. NSF funding will support a five-year systematic and systemic process in which project researchers work collaboratively with existing informal and formal educational partners (e.g., museums, libraries, afterschool providers, schools) to develop sets of customized, connected, and coordinated learning interventions, in and out of school, for youth with different backgrounds, needs, and interests, all with the goal of averting or dampening this decline of STEM interest and participation during early adolescence. In addition to new research and community STEM networks, this project will result in a Community Toolkit that includes research instruments and documentation of network-building strategies for use by other researchers and practitioners nationally and internationally. This mixed methods exploratory study has two distinct but interrelated populations - youth and educators from across informal and formal institutions. To develop a clearer understanding of the factors that influence youths' STEM interest development over time, particularly among three youth STEM Interest Profiles identified in a secondary analysis (1-Dislike Math, 2-Like all STEM, 3-Dislike all STEM), the design combines surveys with in-depth interviews and observations. To study educators and institutions, researchers will combine interviews, focus groups, and observations to better understand factors that influence community-wide, data-driven approaches to supporting youth interest development. Research will be conducted in three phases with the goal of community-level change in youth STEM interest and participation. In Phase 1 (Years 1 & 2) four educational partners will develop interventions for a 6th and 7th grade youth cohort that will be iteratively refined through a design-based approach. Educational partners and researchers will meet to review and discuss interest and participation data and use these data to select content, as well as plan activities and strategies within their programs (using a simplified form of conjecture mapping). By Phase 2 (Years 3 & 4) four additional partners will be included, more closely modeling the complex system of the community. With support from researchers support and existing partners, new educational partners will similarly review and discuss data, using these to select content, as well as plan activities consistent with program goals and strategies. Additional interventions will be implemented by the new partners and further assessed and refined with a new 6th and 7th grade cohort, along with the existing interventions of the first four partners. In Phase 3 (Year 5) data will be collected on pre-post community-level changes in STEM interest and participation and the perceived effectiveness of this approach for youth. These data will inform future studies.
University of California, Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS), in partnership with the Children's Hospital and Research Center Oakland (CHRCO), proposes to design, develop, implement, and evaluate a hospital-based educational program using pedagogically rich mobile learning experiences with age-appropriate K-12 health sciences content. LHS staff will combine educational technology, curriculum, and learning research expertise to create a new, inquiry based health science program delivered through tablet computers or PlayPads. The interactive media, digital stories, and gaming on PlayPads will feature everyday concepts and important foundations in health education based on the science content and learning frameworks from successful science curricula created at LHS. Hospital patients and their families, visitors, staff, and volunteers will encounter PlayPads with finished waiting room exhibit media stations designed and constructed by Exploratorium Exhibit Services, on teaching carts deployed by hospital educators, and through individual check-out units. PlayPads content will also be available outside of the hospital setting through the Internet for extended use on personal mobile devices and computers. The mission of the PlayPads program is to increase exposure of the hospital-going public to topics directly relevant to healthy lives and families through mobile technology. PlayPads will be an inviting experience for youth, framing interactions with driving questions and common misconceptions to inspire the curiosity of participants. Youth ages 8 to 16 will experience wide-ranging interactives including: games that show the hazards of smoking, simulations of blood flow through the heart, brain quizzes to hone memory function, or lively info-graphics about the nutritional shortcomings of junk food. Given the recent strides in the affordability of touch screen technology and the rapid adoption of mobile computing ecosystems, this is an unprecedented time to build a ubiquitous health educational program within a contextually relevant environment like a hospital. PlayPads will be a model for delivering health education content in a unique educational setting leveraging the great strides in consumer mobile technology. By working with a strong, local hospital partner that serves a highly diverse ethnic and socioeconomic population, LHS staff will ensure the portability of the program for future healthcare providers. With the extensive private and public networks of both LHS and CHRCO, PlayPads will potentially have a lasting impact on health education efforts in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.
This paper, commissioned as part of a consensus study on successful out-of-school STEM learning from the National Research Council's Board on Science Education, explores evidence-based strategies developed in out-of-school time STEM programs for successfully engaging youth from underrepresented demographics in STEM learning.