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.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Carl FranzblauDonald DeRosaCarla Romney
Research misconduct has become an important matter of concern in the scientific community. The extent to which such behavior occurs early in science education has received little attention. In the current study, using the web-based data collection program REDCap, we obtained responses to an anonymous and voluntary survey about science fair from 65 high school students who recently competed in the Dallas Regional Science and Engineering Fair and from 237 STEM-track, post-high school students (undergraduates, 1st year medical students, and 1st year biomedical graduate students) doing research at
This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by engaging in hands-on field experience, laboratory/project-based entrepreneurship tasks and mentorship experiences.
Twin Cities Public Television project on Gender Equitable Teaching Practices in Career and Technical Education Pathways for High School Girls is designed to help career and technical education educators and guidance counselors recruit and retain more high school girls from diverse backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) pathways, specifically in technology and engineering. The project's goals are: 1) To increase the number of high school girls, including ethnic minorities, recruited and retained in traditionally male -STEM pathways; 2) To enhance the teaching and coaching practices of Career and Technical Education educators, counselors and role models with gender equitable and culturally responsive strategies; 3) To research the impacts of strategies and role model experiences on girls' interest in STEM careers; 4) To evaluate the effectiveness of training in these strategies for educators, counselors and role models; and 5) To develop training that can easily be scaled up to reach a much larger audience. The research hypothesis is that girls will develop more positive STEM identities and interests when their educators employ research-based, gender-equitable and culturally responsive teaching practices enhanced with female STEM role models. Instructional modules and media-based online resources for Minnesota high school Career and Technical Education programs will be developed in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and piloted in districts with strong community college and industry partnerships. Twin Cities Public Television will partner with STEM and gender equity researchers from St. Catherine University in St. Paul, the National Girls Collaborative, the University of Colorado-Boulder (CU-Boulder), the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System.
The project will examine girls' personal experiences with equitable strategies embedded into classroom STEM content and complementary mentoring experiences, both live and video-based. It will explore how these experiences contribute to girls' STEM-related identity construction against gender-based stereotypes. It will also determine the extent girls' exposure to female STEM role models impact their Career and Technical Education studies and STEM career aspirations. The study will employ and examine short-form autobiographical videos created and shared by participating girls to gain insight into their STEM classroom and role model experiences. Empowering girls to respond to the ways their Career and Technical Education educators and guidance counselors guide them toward technology and engineering careers will provide a valuable perspective on educational practice and advance the STEM education field.
In this paper, we use the concept of consequential learning to frame our exploration of what makes learning and doing science matter for youth from nondominant communities, as well as the barriers these youth must confront in working toward consequential ends. Data are derived from multimodal cases authored by four females from nondominant communities that present an account of 'science that matters' from their work during their middle school years. We argue that consequential learning in science for these girls involves engaging science with a commitment to their community. This form of
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Daniel BirminghamAngela Calabrese BartonAutumn McDanielJalah JonesCamryn TurnerAngel Roberts
NASA's Universe of Learning provides resources and experiences that enable diverse audiences to explore fundamental questions in astronomy, experience how science is done, and discover the universe for themselves. Using its direct connection to science and science experts, NASA's Universe of Learning creates and delivers timely and authentic resources and experiences for youth, families, and lifelong learners. The goal is to strengthen science learning and literacy, and to enable learners to discover the universe for themselves in innovative, interactive ways that meet today's 21st century needs. The program includes astronomical data tools, multimedia resources, exhibits and community programs, and professional learning experiences for informal educators. It is developed through a unique partnership between the Space Telescope Science Institute, Caltech/IPAC, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and Sonoma State University.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Denise SmithGordon SquiresKathy LestitionAnya BifernoLynn Cominsky
This exploratory learning research and design project will study how to use emerging technologies to help document practices in maker-based learning experiences. Despite its established potential for consolidating learning and sense-making, project documentation is often overlooked, not prioritized or seen as burdensome and therefore not integrated into the learning experiences. The project team seeks to understand and address with practice partners the barriers to documentation by systematically exploring how to physically embed and incorporate smart tools and documentation practices into learning environments, specifically creative hands-on learning spaces, like makerspaces. The goal is to understand how to scaffold learners to become more aware, reflective and attentive to their progress towards learning outcomes by embedding supportive tools physically in space as the actions unfold. Making and maker-based learning experiences offer tremendous opportunities to more fully engage diverse learners in STEM education and build a workforce prepared for innovation. Documentation of these learning experiences, both as an authentic practice that professionals engage in as well as an assessment practice for instruction, is often not supported. The project will create open source documentation for solutions and develop supporting case studies, web resources and guides to facilitate easy uptake and adoption of promising approaches.
This proposal will make significant research contributions in three ways: (1) develop and iteratively test a suite of embedded "smart" tools designed to scaffold, manage and trace process documentation practices; (2) study the integration of these tools in formal and informal activities and programs settings and characterize their influence on instruction and the assessment of learning outcomes; (3) establish a set of rubrics based on learner data streams to aid instruction and mark learner progress. Improving documentation practices and the assessment of learning outcomes will advance making as a core STEM educational activity. Through a better understanding of why and how to place networked documentation tools sensitive to space, time and context cues, the threshold for enactment and scaffolded usage can be lowered in a broader range of settings. Ultimately, this exploratory project will not only develop an integrated set of situated documentation tools, but also help us develop hypotheses for how documentation as a mediating process productively supports learning.
The Discovery Research K-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools (RMTs). Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects. The Multimedia Immersion (MI) project is will develop, pilot, and evaluate a nine-week STEM-rich multimedia production course for high school students. MI will make important contributions to the field through its efforts to design and evaluate the promises and challenges of a nine-week multimedia curriculum in multiple urban high schools. The MI course will engage teams of students to develop a personally and socially relevant storyline that guides their use of accessible audio and video technologies to create a five-minute animated video. To develop student STEM experience and provide technical support, the project will provide guidance and learning experiences in engineering (e.g., criteria, constraints, optimization, tradeoffs), science (e.g. sound, light, energy, mechanics) and multimedia technologies (e.g., computer based audio production, video editing and visualizations through animatics (i.e., shooting a succession of storyboards with a soundtrack). animatics).
Because the curriculum situates engineering and science learning in the context of multimedia production, there are natural synergies with several existing high school courses including engineering design, audio/video media production, and multimedia technology. Although these courses are typically electives in high school, developing a 5-minute animated short on a topic of interest may encourage girls and students from underrepresented groups to select this course over other electives. MI will impact 10 teachers and approximately 250 high school students per year. The project will result in the following resources: nine-week curricular unit (multimedia, science, engineering); assessments to monitor student learning of science, engineering and technology (design logs); and research on changes in student knowledge, interest, and a nine-week curricular unit (multimedia, science, engineering). Project resources will be disseminated to teachers, researchers, and curriculum and professional development providers via conference presentations, publications, and online webinars.
The MI project builds on student familiarity and interest in music, video and technology to promote an: (1) understanding of engineering design and physics and an (2) an appreciation of the fundamental role of STEM in popular culture. Project evaluation will be conducted using student surveys and an examination of work products in conjunction with implementation challenges and successes to generate evidence for the feasibility and utility of a high school multimedia course that explicitly addresses science and engineering learning. Project evaluation will use student design logs as a window into student design processes and conceptual understanding. Student design logs are an essential feature of MI curriculum design. With an appropriate structure, these design logs can inform teaching, afford an opportunity for students to reflect on their own work, and provide evidence of student thinking and learning for assessment purposes. Using student design logs as a window into students? design process and conceptual understanding is an important contribution to the engineering education community which has few options for measuring student knowledge in ways that are consistent with the hands-on, iterative nature of the design process.
Reconceptualizing STEM + Computing Literacy is funded by the STEM+Computing Partnership (STEM+C) program, which seeks to advance multidisciplinary integration of computing and computational thinking in K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teaching and learning through applied research and development across one or more domains, and broadening participation in computing and computing-related fields. The project will study the integration of computational thinking as part of a new and more contemporary perspective of STEM literacy, and will design, develop, and beta-test a prototype literacy assessment tool that will measure computational thinking literacy along with measures of literacy in other STEM content areas. The tool will be available to the general public as a self-measurement application (App) that can be used by individuals to test their own literacy, and by teachers, schools, and informal educators and organizations to assess literacy development in their students and in their STEM education programs. This transdisciplinary research project will begin the process of creating an innovative approach and tool for measuring literacy that will expand the definition of literacy to include computational skills along with science reasoning. Literacy is an important concept and measurement that has traditionally been used to assess an individual's knowledge of science. This project will explore a broader literacy perspective that incorporates learning derived from out of school and one that incorporates computational skills and thinking as part of a more contemporary perspective of STEM literacy. A prototype web-based App allowing individuals and education organizations to assess literacy levels, and ways to enhance literacy, will be developed and studied. The methodology will be developed using discussions and knowledge from over 60 experts across computing, education, science, social science, and other STEM fields using a Delphi method to engage in reconceptualization of literacy. The hypothesis is that this new STEM+C literacy framework should be structured along four interacting but semi-independent domains: 1) general STEM+C knowledge; 2) self-defined areas of STEM+C knowledge and expertise; 3) attitudes and beliefs related to STEM+C; and 4) the skills and competencies necessary to participate in STEM+C related pursuits and discussions, including measures of modes of STEM+C thinking. Each of these four domains is likely to include numerous sub-domains and associated descriptors, which collectively describe the different aspects of being a STEM+C literate citizen. The application will be designed to provide feedback to individuals on their knowledge, attitudes and skills compared with those of others and suggest ways to enhance and improve their skills and understanding through an embedded feedback mechanism. This project creates public benefit by providing individuals and organizations with a responsive real-time understanding measuring STEM+C literacy, deepening the dialogue about the value of public engagement in science, engineering, technology, math and computing and revealing the dynamic factors that inform STEM+C literacy.
Brokering Youth Pathways was created to share tools and techniques around the youth development practice of “brokering” or connecting youth to future learning opportunities and resources.
This toolkit shares ways in which various out-of-school educators and professionals have approached the challenge of brokering. It provides a framework, practice briefs and reports that focus on a particular issue or challenge and provide concrete examples, as well as illustrate how project partners partners worked through designing new brokering routines in partnership with a research team.
We cannot take access to equitable out‐of‐school science learning for granted. Data compiled in 2012 show that between a fifth (22% in Brazil) and half (52% in China and the United States) of people in China, Japan, South Korea, India, Malaysia, the United States, the European Union, and Brazil visited zoos, aquaria, and science museums (National Science Foundation, 2012). But research suggests participation in out‐of‐school science learning is far from equitable and is marked by advantage, not least the social axes of age, social class, and ethnicity (Dawson, 2014, 2014; National Science
The Discovery Research K-12 program (DR-K12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools (RMTs). Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects. This project scales up the PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs (SRL), a model that trains teens to produce video reports on important STEM issues from a youth perspective. Participating schools receive a SRL journalism and digital media literacy curriculum, a mentor for students from a local PBS affiliate, professional development for educators, and support from the PBS NewsHour team. The production of news stories and student-oriented instruction in the classroom are designed to increase student learning of STEM content through student-centered inquiry and reflections on metacognition. Students will develop a deep understanding of the material to choose the best strategy to teach or tell the STEM story to others through digital media. Over the 4 years of the project, the model will be expanded from the current 70 schools to 150 in 40 states targeting schools with high populations of underrepresented youth. New components will be added to the model including STEM professional mentors and a social media and media analytics component. Project partners include local PBS stations, Project Lead the Way, and Share My Lesson educators.
The research study conducted by New Knowledge, LLC will add new knowledge about the growing field of youth science journalism and digital media. Front-end evaluation will assess students' understanding of contemporary STEM issues by deploying a web-based survey to crowd-source youth reactions, interest, questions, and thoughts about current science issues. A subset of questions will explore students' tendencies to pass newly-acquired information to members of the larger social networks. Formative evaluation will include qualitative and quantitative studies of multiple stakeholders at the Student Reporting Labs to refine the implementation of the program. Summative evaluation will track learning outcomes/changes such as: How does student reporting on STEM news increase their STEM literacy competencies? How does it affect their interest in STEM careers? Which strategies are most effective with underrepresented students? How do youth communicate with each other about science content, informing news media best practices? The research team will use data from pre/post and post-delayed surveys taken by 1700 students in the STEM Student Reporting Labs and 1700 from control groups. In addition, interviews with teachers will assess the curriculum and impressions of student engagement.
This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase student motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by designing, implementing, and testing an afterschool internship program that will engage older youth in work-based learning experiences in in STEM fields. The new model program will link the resources and learning approaches of the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program to career academies where youth from populations underrepresented in STEM fields will gain direct experiences in data collection and analysis through student-led investigations in the geosciences and environmental studies. Two key outcomes of this project will be: (a) Development of a replicable model of an afterschool STEM internship program for informal STEM learning environments and schools across the nation, and (b) Development of a set of measurement tools and approaches that can assess and promote understanding regarding how youth think and feel about science and their possible future roles in science careers. Participating youth will master scientific practices and become immersed in science culture through opportunities to develop research projects, interact with scientists, and collaborate with fellow student-researchers. In the process, they will develop collaboration and communication skills, and gain an increased sense of identity and agency in science fields. They will also learn new strategies to attain their career goals.
In developing and testing the new model of an afterschool program focusing on STEM careers, the project will draw on both existing and emerging knowledge from three areas of inquiry: informal STEM learning, youth development, and work-based learning. The project will bring together theory related to work-based learning and apprenticeship to knowledge about informal STEM learning and youth development, addressing the needs of older youth as they transition to adulthood. The program will also explore the use of measurement tools that address workforce-related student learning goals in addition to social-emotional learning and STEM learning goals, adapting existing tools and developing new tools as needed. The result will be a replicable model for an afterschool, career-focused internship that facilitates STEM learning and identity, employing youth development principles, such as experiential learning, peer collaboration, adult mentoring, and meaningful contributions to the world beyond school. The project will use a mixed-methods approach to investigate four research questions: (1) What aspects of the program are most important for promoting the development of scientific practices, socio-emotional learning, and career skills? (2) How can afterschool informal science learning be designed to address the perceptions and needs of diverse groups, especially those from populations underrepresented in STEM? (3) How do youth make gains in developing facility with STEM practices, key social-emotional outcomes needed in work and civic life, and career development knowledge? And (4) How do we accurately measure development of scientific practices, socio-emotional learning and career skills? The project will develop pretest and posttest self-report measures to gauge program influence on social-emotional outcomes and career-related outcomes, and performance-based assessments and rubrics will be used to assess culminating science projects. Other factors contributing to the success of the new model will be examined through analysis of coach instructional logs, surveys, and questions, as well as participant observations, interviews, and focus groups. Project participants will be youth of ages 14-18 recruited from ten inner-city schools having large populations of students from groups underrepresented in STEM fields. Participants will meet in teams of approximately 14 interns for a total of 2.5 hours per week for 32 weeks. Each team will also meet an additional 4-6 times for weekend or overnight outings associated with their study sites.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Manuel AlonsoCathy RingstaffSvetlana Darche