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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Adam MarcusTheresa Gillespie
resourceprojectProfessional Development and Workshops
This is an "Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science" (INCLUDES) Design and Development Launch Pilot that will implement a plan to assess the feasibility of a strategy designed to ensure high levels of improvement in K-12 grade students' mathematics achievement. The plan will focus on an often-neglected group of students--those who have been performing at the lowest quartile on state tests of mathematics, including African American, Hispanic, Native American, students with disabilities, and those segregated in urban and rural communities across the country. The project will draw on lessons learned from the nation's Civil Rights Movement and a community-organizing strategy learned during the struggle to achieve voting rights for African Americans. The Algebra Project (AP) is a national, nonprofit organization that uses mathematics as an organizing tool to ensure quality public school education for every child in America; it believes that every child has a right to a quality education to succeed in this technology-based society. AP's unique approach to school reform intentionally develops sustainable, student-centered models by building coalitions of stakeholders within the local communities, particularly the historically underserved populations. The AP works to change the deeply rooted social attitudes that encourage the disenfranchisement of a third of the nation's population. It delivers a multi-pronged approach to build demand for and support of quality public schools, including research and development, school development, and community development education reform efforts through K-12 initiatives.
The Algebra Project and the Young People's Project (YPP) will join efforts to bring together over 70 individuals and organizations, including 17 universities of which 8 are Historical Black Colleges and Universities, school districts, mathematics educators, and researchers to examine their experiences, and use collective learning to refine and hone strategies that they have piloted and tested to promote mathematics inclusion. The role of YPP in the proposed project will be to organize and facilitate the youth component, such that project activities reflect the language and culture of students, continuously leveraging and building upon their voice, creative input, and ongoing feedback. YPP will conduct workshops for students organized around math-based games that provide collective experiences in which student learning requires individual reflection, small group work, teamwork and discussion. The proposed work will comprise the design of effective learning opportunities; building and supporting a cadre of teachers who can effectively work with students learning under the proposed approach; using technologies to enhance teaching and learning; and utilizing evaluation and research to drive continuous improvement. Because bringing together an effective network with diverse expertise to collaborate towards national impact requires expert facilitation processes, the project will establish working groups around three major principles: (1) Organizing from the bottom up through students, their teachers, and others in local communities committed to their education, allied with individuals and organizations who have expertise and dedication for achieving the stated goals, can produce significant progress and the conditions for collective impact; (2) Effective learning materials and formal and informal learning opportunities in mathematics can be designed and implemented for students performing in the bottom academic quartile; and (3) Teachers and other educators can become more proficient and more confident in their capacity to produce students who are successful in learning the level of mathematics required for full participation in STEM. The working groups will also be tasked to consider two cross-cutting topics: (a) the communication structures and technologies needed to operate and expand the present network, and to create the "backbone" and other structures needed to operate and expand the network; and (b) the measurements and metrics for major needs, such as assessing students' mathematics literacy, socio-emotional development in specified areas; teachers' competencies; as well as the work of the network. The final product of this plan will be a "Theory of Collective Action and Strategic Plan". The plan will contain recommendations for collective actions needed in order for the current network to coordinate, add appropriate partners, develop the needed backbone structures, and become an NSF Alliance for national impact on the broadening participation challenge of improving the mathematics achievement. An external evaluator will conduct both formative and summative aspects of this process.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Robert MosesNell CobbGregory BudzbanMaisha MosesWilliam Crombie
Community colleges play a vital role in educating undergraduate students. These higher education institutions educate nearly half of the nation's undergraduate students, particularly among low-income and first-generation students and students of color. Because of the rich diversity that currently exists at these institutional-types, there are immense opportunities to broadening participation throughout the engineering enterprise. To this end, the investigator outlines a joint collaboration with five community colleges, three school systems, two college career academies, and a state partner in Georgia - referred as the Georgia Science, Technology, and Engineering Partnerships for Success (GA STEPS) - to provide dual enrollment classes in career pathways for Georgia high school students in grades 9-12, thereby allowing secondary students to earn college credit. The Georgia STEPS program proposes to leverage mechatronics engineering as a means for broadening engineering participation for community colleges and underserved, underrepresented populations in 48 rural counties to increase engineering awareness, skills training and college and career readiness. The project builds on an existing collaboration that has developed successful engineering opportunities at the community college level, by including a wider regional network of rural Georgia counties and high schools. Further, this project has immense potential to transform engineering education and course-taking for students at the secondary and postsecondary level in Georgia and beyond. It has potential great potential to be scaled and replicated at other placed around the United States.
The project's intellectual merit and innovation is that it leverages a successful mechatronics engineering curriculum that supports engineering skills that support local industry as well as supporting innovations in the mechatronics field. The project includes a collective impact framework, involving various stakeholders and aligning quantitative and qualitative metrics and measurable objectives. The broader impacts of this project is that it increases the engineering knowledge and skills of underserved, underrepresented students that are enrolled in community colleges. Also, the impact to rural communities in Georgia support the fact that this project would meet broader groups that can be positively impacted by this type of collaborative. The ability to provide different parts of this engineering discipline across broad audiences in community colleges - that support underrepresented groups understanding of mechatronics engineering - is broadly useful to the field of engineering.
Abstract: We aim to disrupt the multigenerational cycle of poverty in our rural indigenous (18% Native American and 82% Hispanic) community by training our successful college students to serve as role models in our schools. Poverty has led to low educational aspirations and expectations that plague our entire community. As such, its disruption requires a collective effort from our entire community. Our Collective unites two local public colleges, 3 school systems, 2 libraries, 1 museum, 1 national laboratory and four local organizations devoted to youth development. Together we will focus on raising aspirations and expectations in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) topics, for STEM deficiencies among 9th graders place them at risk of dropping out while STEM deficiencies among 11th and 12th graders preclude them from pursuing STEM majors in college and therefore from pursuing well paid STEM careers. We will accomplish this by training, placing, supporting, and assessing the impact of, an indigenous STEM mentor corps of successful undergraduate role models. By changing STEM aspirations and expectations while heightening their own sense of self-efficacy, we expect this corps to replenish itself and so permanently increase the flow of the state's indigenous populations into STEM majors and careers in line with NSF's mission to promote the progress of science while advancing the national health, prosperity and welfare.
Our broader goal is to focus the talents and energies of a diverse collective of community stakeholders on the empowerment of its local college population to address and solve a STEM disparity that bears directly on the community's well-being in a fashion that is generalizable to other marginalized communities. The scope of our project is defined by six tightly coupled new programs: three bringing indigenous STEM mentors to students, one training mentors, one training mentees to value and grow their network of mentors, and one training teachers to partner with us in STEM. The intellectual merit of our project lies not only in its assertion that authentic STEM mentors will exert an outsize influence in their communities while increasing their own sense of self-efficacy, but in the creation and careful application of instruments that assess the factors that determine teens' attitudes, career interests, and behaviors toward a STEM future; and mentors' sense of self development and progress through STEM programs. More precisely, evaluation of the programs has the potential to clarify two important questions about the role of college-age mentors in schools: (1) To what degree is the protege's academic performance and perceived scholastic competence mediated by the mentor's impact on (a) the quality of the protege's parental relationship and (b) the social capital of the allied classroom teacher; (2) To what degree does the quality of the student mentor's relationships with faculty and peers mediate the impact of her serving as mentor on her self-efficacy, academic performance, and leadership skills?
Developing and maintaining a diverse, innovative workforce in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (known as STEM) is critical to American competitiveness in the world, but national surveys report a current and future shortage of highly qualified STEM professionals in the US. One problem creating this shortage is that more than half of all college students who declare a major in STEM fields drop out or change their majors in the first two years of their post-secondary education. This problem is particularly acute for first generation college students. If we could increase the STEM degree completion rate by just 25%, we would make up 75% of the additional workforce needed over the next decade.
Our project aims to increase the STEM persistence of first generation college students and focuses on rural students in West Virginia. Project partners including scientists from National Labs, college faculty, local school system staff, informal educators, State Department of Education officials, and West Virginia college students will collaborate to develop summer and academic year activities that support young undergraduates majoring in STEM. Activities that we will pilot include early opportunities to do science research, academic year courses that develop science, math and communication skills, and the formation of Hometown STEM Ambassadors; undergraduate STEM students that encourage younger students back in their hometown schools. We will study the impact of these activities on students' persistence in STEM majors.
Our Project is called FIRST TWO: Improving STEM Persistence in the First Two Years of College (FIRST TWO).
Technical Details:
During the Development Launch Project, partners will create and pilot components of two courses that will confer college credit to students in two and four year schools. Each course will have as its center piece a research and development internship. By the end of the Project Development Pilot, FIRST TWO course modules will be integrated into courses the State, and be transferable between community colleges and four-year schools.
An innovative component of FIRST TWO is the creation of Hometown STEM ambassadors--students who participate in both courses will be prepared to mentor their peers, and also conduct outreach in their home school districts. They will make presentations to hometown K-12 students, and will discuss STEM college readiness issues with local education leaders. We believe reconnecting post-secondary students with their home communities and providing place-based relevance to their STEM education will have a positive impact on their persistence, as well as the added benefit of encouraging K-12 students to envision themselves as future STEM professionals.
FIRST TWO will:
- integrate early experience in STEM internships, online communities of practice and STEM skills development into a discovery-based "principles of research and development" college seminar for first year students;
- sustain engagement through a second service learning course, called STEM Leadership that will develop communication and mentoring skills and produce peer mentors who will mentor younger students, join in the efforts to change the STEM education experience at their schools, and conduct outreach in their hometown communities during the students? second year and third years.
- secure state-wide adoption and transferability of these courses, or course materials, and ultimately scale the program across the Appalachian region and to other states with large rural student populations.
- collaborate with National Labs to determine the feasibility of a National STEM Persistence Alliance partnering National Lab internship programs with 2 and 4-year schools who serve FGC students.
Finally, there are many studies that inquire into the factors that correlate with post-secondary retention in general, and with STEM attrition specifically but few that focus on rural students. FIRST TWO will fully articulate a rigorous educational research project aimed at advancing understanding of the factors affecting rural students' entry into and persistence in STEM career pathways. This research will study the impact FIRST TWO program components make on rural FGC students' persistence in STEM majors. Instruments will be developed and validated that test the components proposed in FIRST TWO interventions. As we scale the program to a larger Alliance, so will the research study scale, providing a unique opportunity to inform the education community about the rural students' experience.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sue HeatherlyKaren ONeilErica Harvey
One common barrier to STEM engagement by underserved and underrepresented communities is a feeling of disconnection from mainstream science. This project will involve citizen scientists in the collection, mapping, and interpretation of data from their local area with an eye to increasing STEM engagement in underrepresented communities. The idea behind this is that science needs to start at home, and be both accessible and inclusive. To facilitate this increased participation, the project will develop a network of stakeholders with interests in the science of coastal environments. Stakeholders will include members of coastal communities, academic and agency scientists, and citizen science groups, who will collectively and collaboratively create a web-based system to collect and view the collected and analyzed environmental information. Broader impacts include addressing the STEM barriers to those who reside in the coastal environment but who are underrepresented in STEM education, vocations and policy-making. These include tribal communities (racial and ethnic inclusion), fishery communities (inclusion of communities of practice), and rural communities without direct access to colleges or universities. This project will create a physical, a social, and a virtual, environment where all participants have an equal footing in the processes of "doing science" - the Coastal Almanac. The Almanac is simultaneously a network of individuals and organizations, and a web-based repository of coastal data collected through the auspices of the network. During the testing phase, the researchers will implement the "rules of engagement" through multiple interaction pathways in the growing Coastal Almanac network: increases in rigorous citizen science, development of specific community-scientist partnerships to collect and/or use Almanac data, development of K-12 programs to collect and/or use Almanac data. The proposed work will significantly scale up citizen science and community-based science programs on the West Coast, broadening participation by targeting members of coastal communities with limited access to mainstream science, including participants from non-STEM vocations, and Native Americans. The innovation of the Coastal Almanac is in allowing the process of deepening involvement in science, and through that process increasing agency of community members to be bona fide members of the science team, to evolve organically, in the manner dictated by community members and the situation, rather than a priori by the project team and mainstream science. The project has the potential in the long-term to increase participation in marine science education, workforce, and policy-making by underrepresented groups resident in the coastal environment. Contributions by project citizen scientists will also provide valuable data to mainstream science and to resource management efforts.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Julia ParrishMarco HatchSelina Heppell
While the term 'failure' brings to mind negative associations, there is a current focus on failure as a driver of innovation and development in many professional fields. It is also emerging from prior research that for STEM professionals and educators, failure plays an important role in designing and making to increase learning, persistence and other noncognitive skills such as self-efficacy and independence. By investigating how youth and educators attend to moments of failure, how they interpret what this means, and how they respond, we will be better able to understand the dynamics of each part of the experience. The research team will be working with youth from urban, suburban and rural settings, students from Title I schools or who qualify for free/reduced-price lunches, those from racial and ethnic minority groups, as well as students who are learning English as a second language. These youth are from groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM and in making, and research indicates they are more likely to experience negative outcomes when they experience failure.
The intellectual merit of this project centers on establishing a baseline understanding of how failure in making is triggered and experienced by youth, what role educators play in the process, and what can be done to increase persistence and learning, rather than failure being an end-state. The research team will investigate these issues through the use of qualitative and quantitative research methods. In particular, the team will design and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions on increasing the abilities of youth and educators in noticing and responding to failures and increasing positive (e.g., resilience) outcomes. Research sites are selected because they will allow collection of data on youth from a wide range of backgrounds. The research team will also work to test and revise their hypothesized model of the influence of factors on persistence through failures in making. This project is a part of NSF's Maker Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) portfolio (NSF 15-086), a collaborative investment of Directorates for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR) and Engineering (ENG).
Community education with regard to science comes in many forms and is usually designed to address issues within that community. In this proposal, land use is the focus. This is a general topic and applicable in nearly all locations within communities and in the State. In this case, the topic is used to educate adults and high school students providing each with unique identities. Using satellite-enabled tools, the topology of an area can be mapped in detail and assessed for use thus enabling science education for both adults and high school students. The studies will involve intergenerational learning which is an area needing additional study. Also, the proposers are going to broaden the scope so that it impacts several different areas in the State of Connecticut. This is important because in doing so it will include the diversity of cultures within the State and the education results will reflect this diversity. As a part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds research and innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. This proposed effort aims to promote lifelong STEM learning through a focus on conservation, geospatial technology and community engagement. The goals are to: (1) develop particular STEM knowledge and skills, and foster STEM identity authoring/learning in two disparate groups of lifelong learners, and (2) gain a deeper understanding of the ways that this learning occurs through research and evaluation. The project will develop an educational program that focuses on conservation science and recent advances in web-enabled geospatial technologies (geographic information systems, remote sensing, and global positioning systems) that, for the first time, make these technologies accessible and attainable for the public. The focus will be on urban and rural areas with underrepresented populations of STEM learners. Two groups of lifelong learners will be targeted: adult volunteers involved with community land conservation issues, and high school-aged adolescents enabling the project to investigate the processes and impacts of intergenerational learning.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
John VolinDavid MossDavid CampbellChester ArnoldCary Chadwick
Rural communities across the Nation are, in general, underserved in terms of the various forms of STEM education. Clearly, they are under-represented in the realm of contemporary STEM subjects often because they are geographically isolated and cannot travel to cities where there are Science and Museum Centers for informal education opportunities. 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 award will, in a collaborative effort within the community, bring STEM activities to selected communities in Arizona. Among the initial activities, there will be a STEM festival highlighting aspects of the community and its assets in an effort to gather support and begin to give perspective on identity for an extended effort of longevity. Further, these communities will be networked to facilitate discussion and to enhance effectiveness.
This project will develop STEM activities and STEM learning within a selected community by giving the community and its residents identity and opportunities for youth development and career choices. The selected communities in Arizona represent a diverse group that includes Native Americans and Latinos. In collaboration with community residents, a designed plan will be established that satisfies the needs and opportunities that can be derived from the extant community assets whether it is mining, tourism, or government facilities. Evaluation efforts are set to determine what the key features and methodologies are that facilitate STEM knowledge acquisition for each rural community. This project represents seminal and foundational work in the area of rural informal STEM education. Researchers will explore the following questions: 1) understanding how rural communities currently perceive, access, and engage in informal science learning, and the extent to which they identify themselves and/or their community in relation to science; and 2) the extent to which relevant, place-based networks can increase public awareness of local STEM assets, resources, and opportunities, and foster a science-related identity at both the personal and community level. These data will be compared to data on other rural community projects in the AISL portfolio. The partners in this effort include the Arizona Science Center, community leaders from four rural regions in Arizona, Arizona State University, and the Center of Science and Industry.
A frequently missing element in environmental education programs is a concerted effort by communities, organizations, government, and academic stakeholders to build meaningful partnerships and cultivate informal science learning opportunities via public participation in environmental research. This collaborative approach not only makes scientific information more readily available, it also engages community members in the processes of scientific inquiry, synthesis, data interpretation, and the translation of results into action. This project will build a co-created citizen science program coupled with a peer education model and an extensive communication of results to increase environmental STEM literacy. The project targets historically underrepresented populations that are likely to be disproportionately impacted by climate, water scarcity, and food security. Based upon past needs assessments in the targeted communities, gardens irrigated by harvested rainwater will become hubs for environmental STEM education and research. For this project, gardens irrigated by harvested rainwater will serve as hubs for environmental literacy education efforts. Researchers from the University of Arizona and Sonora Environmental Research Institute will work alongside community environmental health workers, who will then train families residing in environmentally compromised areas (urban and rural) on how to monitor their soil, plant, and harvested water quality. The project aims to: (1) co-produce environmental monitoring, exposure, and risk data in a form that will be directly relevant to the participants' lives, (2) increase the community's involvement in environmental decision-making, and (3) improve environmental STEM literacy and learning in underserved rural and urban communities. The project will investigate and gather extensive quantitative and quantitative data to understand how: (1) participation in a co-created citizen science project enhances a participant's overall environmental STEM literacy; (2) a peer-education model coupled with a co-created citizen science program affects participation of historically underrepresented groups in citizen science; and (3) the environmental monitoring approach influences the participant's environmental health learning outcomes and understanding of the scientific method. In parallel, this project will evaluate the role of local-based knowledge mediators and different mechanisms to communicate results. These findings will advance the fields of informal science education, environmental science, and risk communication. Concomitantly, the project will facilitate the co-generation of a robust dataset that will not only inform guidelines and recommendations for harvested rainwater use, it will build capacity in underserved communities and inform the safe and sustainable production of food sources. This research effort is especially critical for populations in arid and semiarid environments, which account for ~40% of the global land area and are inhabited by one-third of the world's population. This program will be available in English and Spanish and can truly democratize environmental STEM research and policy. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understandings of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program supports new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This project will meet this goal through rigorous research and the broad implementation of an environmental science literacy professional development and learning program for informal educators and youth engaged in outdoor science programs (OSP). With growing support from the literature and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), much attention has been placed on creating and leveraging interdisciplinary science learning opportunities beyond science classrooms. As such, an estimated 300 residential OSPs currently exist in the United States. Unfortunately, the informal educators often charged with facilitating these deep and impactful science learning experiences often lack robust formal training in evidenced-based, age-appropriate environmental science content knowledge and pedagogy specific for the youth in their programs. This issue is often more pronounced in under-resourced and under-served programs and communities. This project will directly address these pervasive challenges in the field by not only providing much needed science focused professional development and resources to informal educators but also by specifically targeting and training informal leaders and educators serving youth in predominately rural areas, low-income communities, and underrepresented communities.
Approximately 200 OSP leaders at 100 OSPs around the country will participate in a week-long, intensive training in the professional development model at one of five regional residential leadership institutes. OSP leaders will then redeliver the training to the approximately 1,500 OSP educators/field instructors in their home institutions. The OSP educators/field instructors will then use what they learn through the professional development to facilitate the environmental science learning program (i.e., curriculum, field experiences, resources, pedagogy) to over 1 million youth (grades 3-8) enrolled in their residential outdoor science programs. In addition, a rigorous implementation study, efficacy study and evaluation will be conducted. The implementation study will investigate: (a) Which of the professional learning model practices were implemented and (b) What successes and challenges the programs faced implementing the model. The mixed methods efficacy study will explore: (a) if outdoor science programs contribute to the development of science learning activation and environmental literacy? and (b) what are the features of these experiences that are correlated with increases in science learning activation and environmental literacy. Approximately 25-35 youth will be randomly selected from each of 50 randomly selected sites to participate in the efficacy study. The data and findings from the research and evaluation produced by this project will contribute to a relatively sparse knowledge and research base specific to youth efficacy and implementation processes and practices across nearly 1/3 of the estimated 300 existing residential outdoor science programs in the United States.
Chemistry is an important and widely relevant field of science. However, when compared with other STEM content areas, chemistry is under-represented in U.S. science museums and other informal educational environments. This project will build, and build knowledge about, innovative approaches to delivering informal science learning activities in chemistry. The project will not only increase public interest and understanding of chemistry but also increase public perception of chemistry's relevance and increase the public's self-efficacy with respect to chemistry. This project outcomes will include a guide for practitioners along with activity materials that will be packaged into a kit, distributed, and replicated for use by informal science educators, chemists, and chemistry students at 250 sites across the U.S. The project team will reach out to organizations that serve diverse audiences and diverse geographic locations, including organizations in rural and inner-city areas. The kits will provide guidance on engaging girls, people with various abilities, Spanish speakers, and other diverse audiences, and include materials in Spanish. Written guides, training videos, and training slides will be included to support training in science communication in general, as well as chemistry in particular. This project is supported by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds research and innovative resources for use in a variety of settings, as a part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments.
This project will take an innovative approach to develop informal educational activities and materials about chemistry. Rather than starting with content goals, the project will start with a theoretical framework drawn from research about affecting attitudes about science related to interest, relevance, and self-efficacy. A design-based research approach (DBR) will be used to apply that framework to the development of hands-on educational activities about chemistry, while also testing and modifying the framework itself. (DBR blends empirical educational research with the theory-driven design of learning environments.) Existing or new educational activities that appear to embody key characteristics defined in the framework will be tested with public audiences for their impact on visitors. Researchers and educators will determine how different characteristics of the educational activities defined in the framework affect the outcomes. The activities will be modified and tested iteratively until the investigators achieve close alignment between framework and impacts.. The project team will continue the design-based research approach both to examine groups of activities in which synergies can have impacts beyond single interactions as well as to examine varied ways of training facilitators who can also significantly affect outcomes. In this way, the project will generate knowledge about how kits of hands-on informal learning activities can stimulate attitudes of interest, relevance, and self-efficacy with respect to the neglected field of chemistry. The project teams will broadly disseminate project outcomes within the educational research, science and informal Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education communities. While this project will focus on chemistry, the strategies it will develop and test through a design-based research process will provide valuable insight into effective approaches for informal STEM education more broadly.