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resource project Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The conference will provide a critical opportunity for enhancing knowledge around innovation in these areas and sharing lessons learned with and advancing collaboration. The focus will be on collective impact, rural empowerment, and successful rural STEM programs.
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resource research Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The Rural Informal STEM Conference (RISC), sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and held at its headquarters on September 13–14, 2018, was the first of its kind to bring together key innovators and experts in rural STEM learning outside of school. People who live in rural settings are a frequently overlooked and significantly under-represented STEM audience, who number roughly 60 million Americans. The conference addressed questions about the overall status of informal (out of school) STEM learning in rural places, including the following: How do we define rural places? What
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TEAM MEMBERS: Kate Kastelein Sue Allen Tom Keller Jan Mokros Corrine Kaczmarek Sam Theriault Asia Williams
resource research Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The 60 million people who live in rural settings are often overlooked as a significantly underrepresented STEM audience. In Sept 2018, a small invited conference brought together innovators and experts in rural STEM learning outside of school, to share lessons learned and plan next steps.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Sue Allen Janice Mokros Tom Keller
resource project Exhibitions
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches and resources for use in a variety of settings. Informal STEM educational activities have proliferated widely in the US over the last 20 years. Additional research will further validate the long-term benefits of this mode of learning. Thus, elaborating the multitude of variables in informal learning and how those variables can be used for individual learning is yet to be defined for the circumstances of the learners. Thus, the primary objective of this work is to produce robust and detailed evidence to help shape both practice and policy for informal STEM learning in a broad array of common circumstances such as rural, urban, varying economic situations, and unique characteristics and cultures of citizen groups. Rather than pursuing a universal model of informal learning, the principal investigator will develop a series of comprehensive models that will support learning in informal environments for various demographic groups. The research will undertake a longitudinal mixed-methods approach of Out of School Time/informal STEM experiences over a five-year time span of data collection for youth ages 9-19 in urban, suburban, town, and rural communities. The evidence base will include data on youth experiences of informal STEM, factors that exert an influence on participation in informal STEM, the impact of participation on choices about educational pathways and careers, and preferences for particular types of learning activities. The quantitative data will include youth surveys, program details (e.g. duration of program, length of each program session, youth/facilitator ratio, etc.), and demographics. The qualitative data will include on-site informal interviews with youth and facilitators, and program documentation. 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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resource project Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches and resources for use in a variety of settings. A frequently overlooked but significantly under-represented STEM audience is people who live in rural settings. The proposed conference is the first of its kind to bring together key innovators and experts in rural Informal STEM education, to address this question: How can we build on recent innovations to create more effective and scalable pathways for informal STEM learning in rural communities?

The conference will focus primarily on advancing informal STEM education for rural youth, but will also include some participants who cross boundaries, to situate the work in an ecosystem perspective: informal-formal education, childhood-adult education, rural ecosystems and economic drivers for STEM related jobs. The provisional list of topics will be refined through a pre-conference survey of participants, and will be followed with a report that includes survey responses, conference discussion, and final recommendations by participants. The conference will be held in Washington D.C. to enable policymakers to attend.

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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resource research Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Hubbard Brook Roundtables are a method of face-to-face PES developed by science communication practitioners at a long-term ecological research site in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Hubbard Brook Roundtables use facilitated dialogue with stakeholders and ecologists to harness the power of “ecosystem thinking” to address complex socioscientific questions. Here we present key lessons from more than ten years of convening roundtables in the Northern Forest region of the northeastern US.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Sarah Garlick
resource project Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Aligning for Impact: Computer Science Pathways Across Contexts [CS-PAC] is an NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot. It broadens participation of students who are underrepresented in computer science by using the convening and policy-making power of the Georgia State Department of Education to coalesce school district leaders to implement K-12 computer science education. The project provides a national model for how to work toward systemic change. With the State Department of Education's coordination, several school districts will collaboratively seek improvements in their own student participation rates. The coordination of data reporting and analysis, resources, communications, and policy promote more equitable participation in computer science education. Research emerging from this project informs other states about how to collaboratively shape computer science education policy and policy implementation.

Using a Collective Impact approach to systemic change, the project creates sustainable institutional change at the community, state, and national levels. Qualitative and quantitative data provide descriptions about how to utilize alignment strategies within Collective Impact in three different contexts: rural, suburban, and urban. Outcomes utilize a regression discontinuity analysis to justify successful implementation as well as qualitative analysis of implementation efforts that were deemed most effective by all stakeholders. The project outputs directly affect over 88,000 students across five districts and indirectly affect over 1.7 million in Georgia alone. The culminating project goal is the development of a coherent framework for aligning K-12 computer science education pathways.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Caitlin Dooley Bryan Cox Shawn Utley