This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).
The Accessible Oceans study will design auditory displays that support learning and understanding of ocean data in informal learning environments like museums, science centers, and aquariums. Most data presentations in these spaces use visual display techniques such as graphs, charts, and computer-generated visualizations, resulting in inequitable access for learners with vision impairment or other print-related disabilities. While music, sound effects, and environmental sounds are sometimes used, these audio methods are inadequate for conveying quantitative information. The project will use sonification (turning data into sound) to convey meaningful aspects of ocean science data to increase access to ocean data and ocean literacy. The project will advance knowledge on the design of auditory displays for all learners, with and without disabilities, as well as advance the use of technology for STEM formal and informal education. The study will include 425 participants but will reach tens of thousands through the development of education materials, public reporting, and social media. The study will partner with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Ocean Discovery Center, the Georgia Aquarium, the Eugene Science Center, the Atlanta Center for the Visually Impaired, and Perkins School for the Blind.
The project will leverage existing educational ocean datasets from the NSF-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative to produce and evaluate the feasibility of using integrated auditory displays to communicate tiered learning objectives of oceanographic principles. Integrated auditory displays will each be comprised of a data sonification and a context-setting audio introduction that will help to make sure all users start with the same basic information about the phenomenon. The displays will be developed through a user-centered design process that will engage ocean science experts, visually impaired students and adults (and their teachers), and design-oriented undergraduate and graduate students. The project will support advocacy skills for inclusive design and will provide valuable training opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students in human-centered design and accessibility. The project will have foundational utility in auditory display, STEM education, human-computer interaction, and other disciplines, contributing new strategies for representing quantitative information that can be applied across STEM disciplines that use similar visual data displays. The project will generate publicly accessible resources to advance studies of inclusive approaches on motivating learners with and without disabilities to learn more about and consider careers in STEM.
This Pilots and Feasibility Studies project is supported by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, which 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.
There is a dearth of prominent STEM role models for underrepresented populations. For example, according to a 2017 survey, only 3.1% of physicists in the United States are Black, only 2.1% are Hispanic, and only 0.5% are Native American. The project will help bridge these gaps by developing exhibits that include simulations of historical scientific experiments enacted by little-known scientists of color, virtual reality encounters that immerse participants in the scientists' discovery process, and other content that allows visitors to interact with the exhibits and explore the exhibits' themes. The project will develop transportable, interactive exhibits focusing on light: how we perceive light, sources of light from light bulbs to stars, uses of real and artificial light in human endeavors, and past and current STEM innovators whose work helps us understand, create, and harness light now. The exhibits will be developed in three stages, each exploring a characteristic of light (Color, Energy, or Time). Each theme will be explored via multiple deliveries: short documentary and animated films, virtual reality experiences, interactive "photobooths," and technology-based inquiry activities. The exhibit components will be copied at seven additional sites, which will host the exhibits for their audiences, and the project's digital assets will enable other STEM learning organizations to duplicate the exhibits. The exhibits will be designed to address common gaps in understanding, among adults as well as younger learners, about light. What light really is and does, in scientific terms, is one type of hidden story these exhibits will convey to general audiences. Two other types of science stories the exhibits will tell: how contemporary research related to light, particularly in astrophysics, is unveiling the hidden stories of our universe; and hidden stories of STEM innovators, past and present, women and men, from diverse backgrounds. These stories will provide needed role models for the adolescent learners, helping them learn complex STEM content while showing them how scientific research is conducted and the diverse community of people who can contribute to STEM innovations and discoveries.
The project deliverables will be designed to present complex physics content through coherent, immersive, and embodied learning experiences that have been demonstrated to promote engagement and deeper learning. The project will research whether participants, through interacting with these exhibits, can begin to integrate discrete ideas and make connections with complex scientific content that would be difficult without technology support. For example, students and other novices often lack the expertise necessary to make distinctions between what is needed and what is extra within scientific problems. The proposed study follows a Design-Based Research (DBR) approach characterized by iterative cycles of data collection, analysis, and reflection to inform the design of educational innovations and advance educational theory. Project research includes conceiving, building, and testing iterative phases, which will enable the project to capture the complexity of learning and engagement in informal learning settings. Research participants will complete a range of research activities, including focus group interviews, observation, and pre-post assessment of science content knowledge and dispositions.
By showcasing such role models and informing about related STEM content, this project will widen perspectives of audiences in informal learning settings, particularly adolescents from groups underrepresented in STEM fields. Research findings and methodologies will be shared widely in the informal STEM learning community, building the field's knowledge of effective ways to broaden participation in informal science learning, and thus increase broaden participation in and preparation for the STEM-based workforce.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Todd BoyetteJill HammJanice AndersonCrystal Harden
Becoming computationally literate is increasingly crucial to everyday life and to expanding workforce capacity. Research suggests that computational literacy--knowing what, when, how, and why to use the ideas of computer science, in combination with the capacity to view problems and potential solutions through the lens of computational structures and procedures--can be supported through digital game play. This project aims to develop a social and creative exhibit game that foregrounds aspects of computer science, specifically artificial intelligence (AI) and computer programming, in ways that enable youth to explore, construct, and share computational complex systems content with one another and other museum visitors. To play the game, pairs of youth visitors will use code cards to program the behavior of AI animals in a virtual forest. As they do so, youth will engage with computational literacy practices, such as basic computer programming, describing their computational ideas, and doing computational problem solving with their friends. Their activity will be projected on a large screen as a strategy for enabling youth to test, rehearse, and communicate their computational ideas and to also interest other visitors into computational problem solving.
Using multi-perspective and iterative design-based research, university learning scientists, museum practitioners, and game developers will pursue research questions around how science museums can better engage youth who are traditionally underrepresented in computer science in complex computational practices. Data sources will include interactive-log data, observations of visitor interactions with the game, visitor interviews, and visitor surveys. A multimodal and mixed methods approach that searches for convergences between qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis, and learning analytics will be used to generate research findings. Changes in computational literacy will be assessed by evaluating what problems visitors choose to solve with programming, how they frame those problems, and their selections from among possible solutions, what they program, how they program, and how they describe programming ideas. The results of this project will include: 1) a social, interactive gameplay experience that supports the development of computational literacy; 2) design principles for game-based exhibits that facilitate development of computational literacy; and 3) new knowledge of variations in design and gameplay across diverse gameplay users, including those from underrepresented groups in computer science. It is anticipated that 1,000 museum youth visitors will directly participate in the study.
This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which 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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Matthew BerlandLeilah LyonsMatthew Cannady
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. This study will capitalize on the increased availability and affordability of immersive interactive technologies, such as Augmented Reality devices and virtual characters, to investigate their potential for benefitting STEM learning in informal museum contexts. This project will combine these technologies to create an Augmented Reality experience that will allow middle-school youth and their families to meet and assist a virtual crew on a historic ship at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia. The players in this game-like experience will encounter technologies from the turn of the 20th century, including steam power, electricity, and wireless communication. Crew members and technologies will be brought to life aboard the USS Olympia, the largest and fastest ship in the US Navy launched in 1892. The historic context will be positioned in relation to current day technologies in ways that will enable a change in interest towards technology and engineering in middle school-age youth. This will result in a testbed for the feasibility of facilitating short-term science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) identity change with interactive immersive technologies. A successful feasibility demonstration, as well as the insights into design, could open up novel ways of fostering STEM interest and identity in informal learning contexts and of demonstrating the impact of this approach. The potential benefit to society will rest in the expected results on the basic science regarding immersive interactive technologies in informal learning contexts as well as in demonstrating the feasibility of the integrated approach to assessment.
This project will use a living lab methodology to evaluate interactive immersive technologies in terms of their support for STEM identity change in middle-school age youth. The two-year design-based research will iteratively develop and improve the measurement instrument for the argument that identity change is a fundamental to learning. A combination of Augmented Reality and intelligent virtual agents will be used to create an interactive experience--a virtual living lab--in an informal museum learning exhibit that enables change interests towards technology and engineering and provides short-term assessment tools. In collaboration with the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, the testbed for the approach will be an experience that brings to life the technologies of the early 20th century aboard a historic ship. Through the application of Participatory Action Research techniques, intelligent virtual agents interacting with youth and families will customize STEM information relating to the ship's mission and performance. Topics explored will make connections with current day technologies and scientific understanding. Mixed-methods will be used to analyze interactions, interview and survey data, will form the basis for assessing the impact on youth's STEM interests. The elicitation method specifically includes assessment metrics that are relevant to the concept of learning as identity change. This assessment, through immersive interactive technologies, will target the priority areas of engagement in STEM as well as the measurement of outcomes.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Stefan RankAyana AllenGlen MuschioAroutis FosterKapil Dandekar
The aim of the study was to analyse learning using Augmented Reality (AR) technology and the motivational and cognitive aspects related to it in an informal learning context. The 146 participants were 11- to 13-year-old Finnish pupils visiting a science centre exhibition. The data, which consisted of both cognitive tasks and self-report questionnaires, were collected using a pre- post-test design and were analysed by SEM path-analysis. The results showed that AR-technology experience was beneficial for all, but especially for the lowest-achieving group and for the girls. In general, pre
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Hannu SalmiHelena ThunebergMari-Pauliina Vainikainen
This project, a collaboration of teams at Georgia Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, and the Museum of Design Atlanta and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, will investigate how to foster engagement and broadening participation in computing by audiences in museums and other informal learning environments that can transfer to at-home and in-school engagement (and vice versa). The project seeks to address the national need to make major strides in developing computing literacy as a core 21st century STEM skill. The project will adapt and expand to new venues their current work on their EarSketch system which connects computer programming concepts to music remixing, i.e. the manipulation of musical samples, beats and effects. The initiative involves a four-year process of iteratively designing and developing a tangible programming environment based on the EarSketch learning environment. The team will develop three new applications: TuneTable, a multi-user tabletop exhibit for museums; TunePad, a smaller version for use at home and in schools; and an online connection between the earlier EarSketch program and the two new devices.
The goal is to: a) engage museum learners in collaborative, playful programming experiences that create music; b) direct museum learners to further learning and computational music experiences online with the EarSketch learning environment; c) attract EarSketch learners from local area schools to visit the museum and interact with novice TuneTable users, either as mentors in museum workshops or museum guests; and d) inform the development of a smaller scale, affordable tangible-based experience that could be used at homes or in smaller educational settings, such as classrooms and community centers. In addition to the development of new learning experiences, the project will test the hypothesis that creative, playful, and social engagement in the arts with computer programming across multiple settings (e.g. museums, homes, and classrooms) can encourage: a) deeper learner involvement in computer programming, b) social connections to other learners, c) positive attitudes towards computing, and d) the use and recognition of computational concepts for personal expression in music. The project's knowledge-building efforts include research on four major questions related to the goals and evaluation processes conducted by SageFox on the fidelity of implementation, impact, success of the exhibits, and success of bridging contexts. Methods will draw on the Active Prolonged Engagement approach (unobtrusive observation, interviews, tracking-and-timing, data summaries and team debriefs) as well as Participatory Action Research methods.
This work is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michael HornBrian MagerkoJason Freeman
This article presents some of the challenges faced in developing an interactive exhibit on nanoscience and nanotechnology in Brazil. Presenting a scientific-technological area which is still in formation and which is little known by the population leads to a (re)consideration of the role of museums and science centers in the conformation and consolidation of scientific practice itself. Museographically, the exhibit deals with the challenge of making matter visible in an expression which is distant from the human perception. Some reflections are presented here on the option of musealization
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Sandra MurrielloDjana ContierMarcelo Knobel
In support of a summative evaluation of SciGirls Season Three, Multimedia Research developed a scale to assess preteen girls’ interest in nature and science. The work was sponsored by Twin Cities PBS under NSF Grant No. 1323713. Multimedia Research developed, piloted, validated and implemented the GINSS: A nine statement Likert scale constructed to reveal girls’ strength of interest in nature and science activities. Researchers and evaluators are encouraged to use this scale to extend its application. Please email if you eventually use the scale in your research or evaluation: Flagg
Researchers at the American Association of Variable Star Observers, the Living Laboratory at the Boston Museum of Science, and the Adler Planetarium are studying stereoscopic (three-dimensional or 3D) visualizations so that this emerging viewing technology has an empirical basis upon which educators can build more effective informal learning experiences that promote learning and interest in science by the public. The project's research questions are: How do viewers perceive 3D visualizations compared to 2D visualizations? What do viewers learn about highly spatial scientific concepts embedded in 3D compared to 2D visualizations? How are viewers\' perceptions and learning associated with individual characteristics such as age, gender, and spatial cognition ability? Project personnel are conducting randomized, experimental mixed-methods research studies on 400 children and 1,000 adults in museum settings to compare their cognitive processing and learning after viewing two-dimensional and three-dimensional static and dynamic images of astronomical objects such as colliding galaxies. An independent evaluator is (1) collecting data on museum workers' and visitors' perceived value of 3D viewing technology within museums and planetariums and (2) establishing a preliminary collection of best practices for using 3D viewing technology based on input from museum staff and visitors, and technology creators. Spatial thinking is important for learning many domains of science. The findings produced by the Two Eyes, 3D project will researchers' understanding about the advantages and disadvantages of using stereoscopic technology to promote learning of highly spatial science concepts. The findings will help educators teach science in stereoscopic ways that mitigate problems associated with using traditional 2D materials for teaching spatial concepts and processes in a variety of educational settings and science content areas, including astronomy.
This report includes six separate formative evaluations conducted to inform the design and development of the deliverables for the 3D Visualization Tools for Enhancing Awareness, Understanding and Stewardship of Freshwater Ecosystems project. Deliverables were tested with both students and general visitor groups, with a focus on groups including late elementary and middle school children. Many different components were tested, including prototype versions of 3D visualizations, high-tech interactive experiences, apps on tablets and phones, and table top exhibits. Results are reported in each of
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded an Informal Science Education (ISE) grant, since renamed Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) to a group of institutions led by two of the University of California, Davis’s centers: the Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) and the W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in Earth Sciences (KeckCAVES). The purpose of the evaluation was to gather feedback from museum professionals and the general public about the proposed 3D visualization project and its related components. Additionally, the study aimed to assess the current understanding
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University of California, DavisSteven Yalowitz
A two stage summative evaluation was conducted following the launch of the Mystic Seaport for Educators website, the final output resulting from the IMLS National Leadership grant entitled Mystic E-Port Digital Classroom project. The results of four focus groups, conducted in two phases, found consistent results suggesting that the project was successful at achieving all four goals as outlined in the original grant proposal. Appendix includes focus group protocol.