RISES (Re-energize and Invigorate Student Engagement through Science) is a coordinated suite of resources including 42 interactive English and Spanish STEM videos produced by Children's Museum Houston in coordination with the science curriculum department at Houston ISD. The videos are aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, and each come with a bilingual Activity Guide and Parent Prompt sheet, which includes guiding questions and other extension activities.
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum will amplify its partnership with Hart Magnet School, a Title 1 elementary school in urban Stamford, Connecticut, by increasing exposure and access to the arts for first-fifth graders, their families, and educators. A new program model, leveraging the museum's artist exhibitions, will focus on technology and an inquiry-based approach to science. Students, educators, and families will be encouraged to see and think in new ways through on-site STEAM tours at the museum, artist-led workshops at Hart, teacher professional development, and afterschool family activities. Outside evaluators will work with the project team to develop goals and associated metrics to measure how the model of museum-school partnership can enhance student achievement, engage families more deeply in their child's school experience and community, and contribute to teacher professional development. The evaluator will also train museum staff on best practices for program assessment.
Wireless radio communications, such as Wi-Fi, transmit public and private data from one device to another, including cell phones, computers, medical equipment, satellites, space rockets, and air traffic control. Despite their critical role and prevalence, many people are unfamiliar with radio waves, how they are generated and interact with their surroundings, and why they are the basis of modern communication and navigation. This topic is not only increasingly relevant to the technological lives of today’s youth and public, it is critical to the National Science Foundation’s Industries of the Future activities, particularly in advancing wireless education and workforce development. In this project, STEM professionals from academia, industry and informal education will join forces to design, evaluate, and launch digital apps, a craft-based toolkit, activity guides, and mobile online professional learning, all of which will be easily accessed and flexibly adapted by informal educators to engage youth and the public about radio frequency communications. Experiences will include embodied activities, such as physically linking arms to create and explore longitudinal and transverse waves; mobile experiences, such as augmented reality explorations of Wi-Fi signals or collaborative signal jamming simulations; and technological exploration, such as sending and receiving encrypted messages.
BSCS Science Learning, Georgia Tech, and the Children’s Creativity Museum (CCM) with National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Net) museum partners will create pedagogical activity designs, digital apps, and a mobile online professional learning platform. The project features a rigorous and multipronged research and development approach that builds on prior learning sciences studies to advance a learning design framework for nimble, mobile informal education, while incorporating the best aspects of hands-on learning. This project is testing two related hypotheses: 1) a mobile strategy can be effective for supporting just-in-time informal education of a highly technical, scientific topic, and 2) a mobile suite of resources, including professional learning, can be used to teach informal educators, youth, and the general public about radio frequency communications. Data sources include pre- and post- surveys, interviews, and focus groups with a wide array of educators and learners.
A front-end study will identify gaps in public understanding and perceptions specific to radio frequency communications, and serve as a baseline for components of the summative research. Iterative formative evaluation will incorporate participatory co-design processes with youth and informal educators. These processes will support materials that are age-appropriate and culturally responsive to not only youth, with an emphasis on Latinx youth, but also informal educators and the broader public. Summative evaluation will examine the impact of the mobile suite of resources on informal educators’ learning, facilitation confidence and intentions to continue to incorporate the project resources into their practice. The preparation of educators in supporting public understanding of highly technological STEM topics can be an effective way for supporting just-in-time public engagement and interests in related careers. Data from youth and museum visitors will examine changes to interest, science self-efficacy, content knowledge, and STEM-related career interest. If successful, this design approach may influence how mobile resources are designed and organized effectively to impact future informal education on similarly important technology-rich topics. All materials will be released under Creative Commons licenses allowing for widespread sharing and remixing; research and design findings will be published in academic, industry, and practitioner journals.
This project is co-funded by two NSF programs: 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. The Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers.
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.
Described by Wohlwend, Peppler, Keune and Thompson (2017) as “a range of activities that blend design and technology, including textile crafts, robotics, electronics, digital fabrication, mechanical repair or creation, tinkering with everyday appliances, digital storytelling, arts and crafts—in short, fabricating with new technologies to create almost anything” (p. 445), making can open new possibilities for applied, interdisciplinary learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Martin, 2015), in ways that decenter and democratize access to ideas, and promote the construction
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jill CastekMichelle Schira HagermanRebecca Woodland
As professionals, we often assume that the engaging experiences visitors have in our exhibits and programs will lead to long-term learning. But how do we know this is happening, and, moreover, how do we design exhibits, programs and interactions to maximize visitors’ ability to learn from their experiences? At Chicago Children’s Museum a long- standing research collaboration with Northwestern University and Loyola, Chicago University has allowed us to examine how families’ conversational reflections during and after their in-museum experiences impact children’s ability to process and recall
While there is increased interest in youth-centered maker programs in informal educational contexts, scarce research-informed professional development exist that focus on how informal educators do or should plan and handle ongoing, just-in-time support during moments of failure. Prior research supports the important role of failure in maker programming to increase learning, resilience and other noncognitive skills such as self-efficacy and independence. The objective of this project is to address this gap through adapting, implementing, and refining a professional development program for informal educators to productively attend, interpret, and respond to youths’ experiences with failure while engaged in maker programs in informal learning contexts. In the first two years of the project, the research team will work closely with six partners to implement and refine the professional development model: The Tech Museum of Innovation, The Bakken Museum, Montshire Museum of Science, The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Thinkery, and Amazeum Children’s Museum. In the last year of the project, the team will scale-up the professional development model through partnering with an additional nine institutions implementing maker programming for youth. The professional development consists of two models. In the first model, we support one to two lead facilitators at each partnering institution through an initial three-day workshop and ongoing support meetings. In the second model, the lead facilitators support other informal educators at their institution implementing making programs for youth. This project will enhance the infrastructure for research and education as collaborations and professional learning communities will be established among a variety of informal learning institutions. The project will also demonstrate a link between research and institutional and societal benefits through shifting the connotation and perceptions of failure to be valued for its educational potential and to empower informal educators to support discomfort and struggle throughout maker programs with youth.
The three goals of this collaborative project are to (a) advance the field of informal education through a research-based professional development program specific to youths’ failures during maker programs; (b) support shifts in informal educators’ facilitation practices and perspectives around youth’s failure experiences, and (c) investigate the effects of the professional development on youths’ resilience and failure mindset. The iterative nature of this project will be informed by the collection and analysis of video data of professional development sessions and informal educators facilitating maker programs, reflective journaling, surveys regarding the professional development, and pre-post surveys from youth engaged in the maker programs. Dissemination will address multiple stakeholders, including informal educators, program developers, evaluators, researchers, and public audiences.
This Innovations in Development 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.
Engaging with Tinkering is a highly stimulating and complex experience and invites rich reflections from museum practitioners and teachers. "Tinkering as an inclusive approach for building STEM identity and supporting students facing disadvantage or with low science capital” presents the reflective practice process and tools designed by the "Tinkering EU: Building Science Capital for All" project aiming to understand in more depth the potential impact of using a Tinkering approach with students facing disadvantage. Using tools specifically designed to help teachers observe their students
This Conference Paper was presented at the International Soceity for the Learning Sciences Confernece in June 2018. We summarize interviews with youth ages 9-15 about their failure mindsets, and if those midsets cross boundaries between learning environments.
Previous research on youth’s perceptions and reactions to failure established a view of failure as a negative, debilitating experience for youth, yet STEM and in particular making programs increasingly promote a pedagogy of failures as productive learning experiences. Looking to unpack perceptions of failure across contexts and
Casual games are everywhere. People play them throughout life to pass the time, to engage in social interactions, and to learn. However, their simplicity and use in distraction-heavy environments can attenuate their potential for learning. This experimental study explored the effects playing an online, casual game has on awareness of human biological systems. Two hundred and forty-two children were given pretests at a Museum and posttests at home after playing either a treatment or control game. Also, 41 children were interviewed to explore deeper meanings behind the test results. Results show
This poster was created for the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program Primary Investigator (PI) meeting. The research presented here is a summary of the various informal STEM learning opportunities offered as part of the collaboration between university researchers and museum practionners. We were interested in how museums can advance parent-child engagment in STEM-rich tinkering and reflection. The participants were able to take part of a few different activities that allowed for informal reflection and tinkering at the Tinkering Lab, a musuem exhibit that invites families to take
This study was designed to examine narratives that families recorded shortly after visiting the Tinkering Lab at the Chicago Children’s Museum. We view this work as intersecting with the event memory literature concerning variations in parental reminiscing styles for talking about past events (Fivush, Haden, Reese, 2006). The study also connects with efforts to assess learning in museum settings (Haden, Cohen, Uttal, & Marcus, 2016).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Lauren PaganoDanielle NesiDestinee JohnsonDiana AcostaCatherine HadenDavid UttalPerla Gamez