An adapted three-dimensional model of place attachment is proposed as a theoretical framework from which place-based citizen science experiences and outcomes might be empirically examined in depth.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Julia ParrishYurong HeBenjamin Haywood
The Massachusetts Audubon Society will develop, pilot, and implement an evaluation framework for nature-based STEM programming that serves K-12 students visiting its network of nature centers and museums. Working with an external consultant, the society will develop the framework comprised of a logic model and theory of change for fieldtrips, and develop a toolkit of evaluation data collection methodology suitable to various child development stages. The project team will design and conduct three professional development training seminars to help Massachusetts Audubon school educators develop a working understanding of the new evaluation framework for school programs and gain the skills necessary to support protocol implementation. This project will result in the development and adoption of a universal protocol to guide the collection, management, and reporting of education program evaluation data across the 19 nature centers and museums in the Massachusetts Audubon system.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kris Scopinich
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Developing solutions to large-scale collective problems -- such as resilience to environmental challenges -- requires scientifically literate communities. However, the predominant conception of scientific literacy has focused on individuals, and there is not consensus as to what community level scientific literacy is or how to measure it. Thus, a 2016 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, “Science Literacy: Concepts, Contexts, and Consequences,” stated that community level scientific literacy is undertheorized and understudied. More specifically, the committee recommended that research is needed to understand both the i) contexts (e.g., a community’s physical and social setting) and ii) features of community organization (e.g., relationships within the community) that support community level science literacy and influence successful group action. This CAREER award responds to this nationally identified need by iteratively refining a model to conceptualize and measure community level scientific literacy. The model and metrics developed in this project may be applied to a wide range of topics (e.g., vaccination, pandemic response, genetically-modified foods, pollution control, and land-use decisions) to improve a community’s capacity to make scientifically-sound collective decisions. This CAREER award is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) and the EHR CORE Research (ECR) programs. It supports the AISL program goals to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. It supports the ECR program goal to advance relevant research knowledge pertaining to STEM learning and learning environments.
The proposed research will conceptualize, operationalize, and measure community level scientific literacy. This project will use a comparative multiple case study research design. Three coastal communities, faced with the need to make scientifically-informed land-use decisions, will be studied sequentially. A convergent mixed methods design will be employed, in which qualitative and quantitative data collection and analyses are performed concurrently. To describe the i) context of each community case, this project will use qualitative research methods, including document analysis, observation, focus groups, and interviews. To measure the ii) features of community organization for each community case, social network analysis will be used. The results from this research will be disseminated throughout and at the culmination of the project through professional publications and conference presentations as well as with community stakeholders and the general public. The integrated education activities include a professional learning certificate for informal science education professionals and STEM graduate students. This certificate emphasizes high-quality community-engaged scholarship, placing students with partners such as museums, farmer’s markets, and libraries, to offer informal learning programs in their communities. This professional learning program will be tested as a model to provide training for STEM graduate students who would like to communicate their research to the public through outreach and extension activities.
This is the final evaluation report from RMC Research Corp. for the PES@LTERs project. Appendix includes instruments.
RMC Research designed evaluation activities to provide formative and summative feedback to Harvard Forest and the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation (Hubbard Brook) on their plan to embed public engagement with science (PES) into the cultures and practices of Long-Term Ecological Research Sites (LTERs) in the northeastern US. The purpose of this project was to build PES mechanisms into long-term ecosystem studies that create on-going, open exchanges between scientists and
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.
The attached evaluation is of the A2A (Awareness to Action) Planning Workshop held February 21-23 in two locations simultaneously connected by internet: the University of Colorado, Boulder and Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. It was made possible thanks to a collaboration of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) and EcoArts Connections, with additional assistance from the National Center for Atmospheric Research. A2A brought together 39 natural and social scientists, artists, urban planners, “sustainablists” (e.g. sustainability professionals working in a variety
The attached Briefing Booklet was created collaboratively by A2A (Awareness to Action) Planning Workshop facilitators and organizers in advance of the February 2018 convening and was available to participants.
The workshop's primary goal was to establish an operational strategy for knowledge sharing across entities, networks, and associations designed to strengthen communities of practice nationally to better conceive, conduct, and evaluate projects for the public, working at the intersection of science, arts, and sustainability.
The booklet contains an overview of the workshop purpose
How does focusing on “community science literacy” change the role of an informal science learning center?
This poster was presented at the 2019 NSF AISL Principal Investigators meeting.
What is a "learning organization," and does this model help organizations achieve desired outcomes? The impetus for investigating literature and talking with practitioners about organizational learning was to understand whether it is relevant to my thesis project, an endeavor to improve environmental protection work at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR). This project is the focus of my graduate work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Institute for Environmental Studies, Land Resources Program. My advisor, Dr. Patrick Eagan, and I began work on this project in May 2002