The Arboretum at Flagstaff will complete an interactive outdoor exhibition to provide relevant and science-based climate change information to its northern Arizona audience, as well as visitors from throughout the state. Project activities include the addition of three kiosks to the climate change exhibition; developing standards-based curriculum guides for educators to assist them with both onsite and classroom instruction for students in grades 6-8; and the development of new webpage interfaces designed to make data files and curriculum guides readily available. The climate change center will engage students and general audiences in the STEM components of real-time climate change research, interpretation, and mitigation.
This Smart and Connected Community (SCC) project will partner with two rural communities to develop STEMports, an innovative Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) learning game for workforce development. The game's activities will take players on localized Augmented Reality (AR) missions to both engage in STEM learning challenges and discover emerging STEM careers in their community, specifically highlighting innovations in the fields of sustainable agriculture and aquaculture, forest products, and renewable energy. Community Advisory Teams (CATs) and co-design teams, including youth, representatives from the targeted emerging STEM economies, and decision-makers will partner with project staff to co-design STEMports that reflect the interests, cultural contexts, and envisioned STEM industries of the future for each community.
The project will: (a) design and pilot an AR game for community STEM workforce development; (b) develop and adapt a community engagement process that optimizes community networking for co-designing the gaming application and online community; and (c) advance a scalable process for wider applications of STEMports. This project is a collaboration between the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance and the Field Day Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to both build and research the co-designing of a SCC based within an AR environment. The project will contribute knowledge to the informal STEM learning, community development, and education technology fields in four major ways:
Deepening the understanding of how innovative technological tools support rural community STEM knowledge building as well as STEM identity and workforce interest.
Identifying design principles for co-designing the STEMports community related to the technological design process.
Developing social network approaches and analytics to better understand the social dimensions and community connections fostered by the STEMport community.
Understanding how participants' online and offline interactions with individuals and experiences builds networks and knowledge within a SCC.
With the scaling of use by an ever-growing community of players, STEMports will provide a new AR-based genre of public participation in STEM and collective decision making. The research findings will add to the emerging literature on community-wide education, innovative education technologies, informal STEM learning (especially place-based learning and STEM ecosystems), and participatory design research.
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.
Development of a prototype of an immersive game set in 17th-century London that explores the relationship between science, culture, and history.
The Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) is developing Age of Alchemy, a game exploring alchemy’s “Golden Age” in Europe during the 1600s. In this era, alchemy was not a fool’s quest for riches and eternal life: it provided economic opportunity, invited curiosity, and examined relationships between humankind and the natural world. Alchemy formed our current ideas about experimental scientific practices and paved the way for modern chemistry. It also impacted period literature, visual art, and music and continues to excite public imagination. Age of Alchemy draws on CHF’s collections of alchemical art and rare books to produce a visually rich and historically accurate experience, awakening empathy for past individuals who used experimental work to navigate society. During this prototyping phase, we will work with playtesters and our advisory team of experts to shape key game mechanics and assess levels of audience engagement and the successful communication of our humanities themes.
Development of an online interactive exhibition of patient and medical practitioner testimonials from six to eight Central Texas communities.
Communities of Care: Documenting Voices of Healing and Endurance is a community-based multimedia storytelling project focusing on illness and healthcare narratives. This project will generate and curate its own archive by asking participants to produce narratives through writing, photography, video, and oral histories.
Development of an interactive, multimedia atlas exploring the people, places, and events that shaped key moments in California agriculture.
The Animated Atlas of California Farming History will encourage public thought and dialogue around key historical moments in the development of an industry that has shaped the way America—and the world—eats. The atlas will create a series of online maps that deepen user engagement with an existing set of stories that dig into what may seem like a straightforward subject to uncover often surprising tales of human triumph, loss, ingenuity, abuse and connection. Discovery funding will focus a broad group of scholars on: 1) selecting the best digital platform, 2) designing an engaging user interface, 3) exploring the feasibility of illustrating “alternative” histories using digital mapping programs and 4) identifying digital team members who will build a prototype atlas. Our digital project team will craft a design plan for producing maps that reveal how stories affected the California landscape and spark vibrant public discussion about how that landscape might have looked differently.
Production of an immersive website exploring the history, culture, and archaeology of the Giza plateau.
The Giza Project at Harvard University plans to build the full-scale version of its forthcoming public website, Digital Giza. Using the tools of the future to study the past, this free online resource will integrate diverse primary documentation from over 100 years of international archaeological research in Egypt with a scientifically-informed 3D immersive computer model of the whole Giza Plateau, including the pyramids, temples, settlements, and surrounding cemeteries. Through various “digital archaeology experiences,” visitors to the site will engage with new forms of interpretation and story-telling based on Giza materials digitally embedded and clearly contextualized in their original spatial settings. The Giza Project’s ultimate deliverable will be a powerful new online education and research tool for the world community at all levels of expertise: an interactive website and virtual environment encouraging exploration into Egyptological, historical, and broader humanities themes.
The goal of this project is to promote informal STEM education in polar research through a novel interactive learning display that uses virtual and augmented reality technology. A new display system will be developed that combines the successful techniques of touch-enabled tabletop displays with new low-cost, head-mounted display technology to deliver an immersive 3D learning experience for the IceCube Neutrino Detection system located at the South Pole. The system will provide new means for engaging the public in learning about the IceCube Neutrino Dectection system and the challenges of Antarctic research.
The proposal relies on collaboration between three groups on the University of Wisconsin- Madison campus, including the Living Environments Laboratory (LEL), the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC), and the Games Learning Society (GLS). Once developed, the display system will be installed at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery Town Center, a public space that attracts close to 50,000 people per year. This proposal was submitted as an Exploratory Pathways proposal, meaning that it represents a chance to establish the basis for future research, design, and development of innovations or approaches. Outcomes from this project will inform the PIs of how best to extend the system to add more 3D environments for other research locations in Antarctica. The system will be implemented in an extensible fashion so that a user can select from one of several Antarctic research station locations, not just IceCube, from the main menu of the system and suddenly be immersed in a 3D world that seeks to teach users about polar research at that location. Contents of the interactive learning display will be translated into Spanish, and users will be able to choose which language they want to use. Evaluations of the system will also inform designers about how these museum-type systems impact learning outcomes for the general public.
This project was submitted to the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, but will be funded by the Division of Polar Programs. AISL seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
Genetic Modification (GM) has been a topic of public debates during the 1990s and 2000s. In this paper we explore the relative importance of two hypothesized explanations for these controversies: (i) people's general attitude toward science and technology and (ii) their trust in governance, in GM actors, and in GM regulations, in explaining the Dutch public's Attitude toward GM applications, and in addition to that, the public's GM Information seeking behaviour. This will be conducted through the application of representative survey methodology. The results indicate that Attitudes toward GM
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Lucien HanssenAnne DijkstraSusanne SleenhoffLynn FrewerJan Gutterling
According to the Gateway Belief Model, scientists and science educators should stress the scientific consensus when engaging with the lay population across a wide variety of mediums, including debates. The purpose of this study, then, was to determine if engaging in such debates does more harm than good in terms of persuading individuals towards accepting the scientific consensus of controversial issues. Participants (N = 208) read a manipulated debate segment altered by the issue discussed as well as the position/title of the skeptic debater. Results indicate that it is possible to influence
It can be argued that ethical considerations in science communication are a significantly overlooked area although these considerations are implicit in many ongoing academic debates within the field, and within the practical implications of work which is being both constructed and shared within the discipline. Priest, Goodwin and Dahlstrom's [2018] edited collection, ‘Ethics and Practice in Science Communication’, is therefore a significant step forwards in allowing for contemporary reflection on the ethical considerations currently influencing the field. In shining a light on some of the
A study in South Africa shed light on a set of factors, specific to this country, that compel South African scientists towards public engagement. It highlights the importance of history, politics, culture and socio-economic conditions in influencing scientists' willingness to engage with lay audiences. These factors have largely been overlooked in studies of scientists' public communication behaviours.
The night skies and the planet on which we live can be inspirational to young and old alike. In the run up to its 200th anniversary in 2020, the U.K.'s Royal Astronomical Society has put together a £1 million scheme to fund outreach and engagement activities for groups that are less well served in terms of access to astronomy and geophysics. This article outlines the projects funded and the impact they are starting to have.