Informal STEM learning experiences (ISLEs), such as participating in science, computing, and engineering clubs and camps, have been associated with the development of youth’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics interests and career aspirations. However, research on ISLEs predominantly focuses on institutional settings such as museums and science centers, which are often discursively inaccessible to youth who identify with minoritized demographic groups. Using latent class analysis, we identify five general profiles (i.e., classes) of childhood participation in ISLEs from data
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Remy DouHeidi CianZahra HazariPhilip SadlerGerhard Sonnert
Youth generate data in the form of social media posts, and they are likely to understand that these data can be used by others for multiple purposes. However, they may be less likely to know that other personal data, such as records related to shopping patterns or medical visits, can also be tracked, analyzed, and used. Consequently, today's young people have a personal stake in their ability to understand and critically question multiple types of data practices. This project will advance knowledge regarding how informal educational organizations can empower young people in a data-centric world. In partnership with public libraries in New York City, Pratt Institute will develop a model for supporting critical data literacy in informal settings. Critical data literacy includes the ability to critique data practices throughout the data life cycle; to situate data within broader contexts such as cyberinfrastructures and societal trends; and to use data to answer questions and to achieve purposes that are personally meaningful and important. To develop a model of informal education that supports critical data literacy, the project team will co-design data literacy sessions with teenagers in libraries. These data literacy sessions will provide teens with opportunities to engage in critical data practices and inquiry in the context of issues they identify as being important to them. The project team will conduct research on the methods that support youths' co-design of critical data literacy programs. This project will result in a model of a youth-driven educational program that can be scaled and enacted in libraries and informal settings nationwide, with the ultimate purpose of fostering a more empowered, data-literate citizenry.
The project will recruit 25 teenagers ages 13-17, including those from underrepresented groups, to co-design and implement four to six 90-minute critical data literacy sessions in a public library. The research team will use design-based participatory research to study the process of co-design, and they will improve this co-design process with three additional cohorts of 25 teenagers each. This study will answer the following three research questions: (1) How can critical data literacy be supported within the sociohistorical context of the public library in ways that speak to young people? (2) How can the affordances of co-design scaffold meaningful informal learning about critical data literacy? (3) What do the designs and artifacts created by young people say about sustained engagement and learning with regard to facets of critical data literacy? To answer these questions, the research team will use thematic and descriptive coding to analyze data sources such as interviews and focus groups with teens and library staff, observations of critical data literacy sessions, youth-generated artifacts, and surveys with youth participants. Empirical findings will be disseminated widely through professional networks, conferences, and journals for informal educators, educational researchers, and information scientists, and the co-design model will be disseminated widely to practitioners of informal science education. This project is funded by the Advanced Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program. As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the AISL program 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.
This Pilot and Feasability Study 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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Leanne BowlerMark RosinIrene Lopatovska
In partnership with the Digital NEST, students engage in near to peer learning with a technical tool for the benefit of a nonprofit that tackles issues the youth are passionate about. Youth build first from an 'internal’ Impactathon, to planning and developing an additional Impactathon for a local partner and then traveling to another partner elsewhere in the state. Participants range from 14 to 24 from UC Santa Cruz students to middle schoolers from Watsonville and Salinas.
This poster was presented at the 2019 AISL Principal Investigators Meeting.
This one-year Collaborative Planning project seeks to bring together an interdisciplinary planning team of informal and formal STEM educators, researchers, scientists, community, and policy experts to identify the elements, activities, and community relationships necessary to cultivate and sustain a thriving regional early childhood (ages 3-6) STEM ecosystem. Based in Southeast San Diego, planning and research will focus on understanding the needs and interests of young Latino dual language learners from low income homes, as well as identify regional assets (e.g., museums, afterschool programs, universities, schools) that could coalesce efforts to systematically increase access to developmentally appropriate informal STEM activities and resources, particularly those focused on engineering and computational thinking. This project has the potential to enhance the infrastructure of early STEM education by providing a model for the planning and development of early childhood focused coalitions around the topic of STEM learning and engagement. In addition, identifying how to bridge STEM learning experiences between home, pre-k learning environments, and formal school addresses a longstanding challenge of sustaining STEM skills as young children transition between environments. The planning process will use an iterative mixed-methods approach to develop both qualitative and quantitative and data. Specific planning strategies include the use of group facilitation techniques such as World Café, graphic recording, and live polling. Planning outcomes include: 1) a literature review on STEM ecosystems; 2) an Early Childhood STEM Community Asset Map of southeast San Diego; 3) a set of proposed design principles for identifying and creating early childhood STEM ecosystems in low income communities; and 4) a theory of action that could guide future design and research. This project is funded 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.
The FIRST Longitudinal Study is a multi-year longitudinal study assessing the impacts of FIRST’s afterschool robotics programs on the STEM related interests and educational and career trajectories of program participants. FIRST is one of the nation’s largest after-school robotics programs, serving more than 460,000 youth aged 6-18 annually through the FIRST LEGO League (Ages 7-14), the FIRST Tech Challenge (grades 7-12) and the FIRST Robotics Competition (grades 9-12). The study is tracking over 1200 program participants and comparison students, using a quasi-experimental design, over a
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Alan MelchiorCathy BurackMatthew HooverJill Marcus
This NSF INCLUDES pilot addresses the challenge of broadening participation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) among minoritized youth in grades 5-8 and their access to computer science (CS), which is recognized as integral to all STEM disciplines. This project will specifically focus on developing and understanding computing experiences intentionally designed to strengthen mathematical skills utilizing culturally responsive pedagogy. Culturally responsive pedagogy integrates knowledge relevant to students' identities and communities with computational learning activities, and maximizes the potential for increasing engagement, competence, and belonging of underrepresented youth in computing. This pilot will be situated in community-based organizations, including Boys and Girls Clubs and Public Libraries, with the support of industry partners and the local Department of Education. Given the role of community-based organizations and libraries across the nation for community engagement and educational enrichment, this work represents an exciting opportunity for spreading into thousands of libraries and community centers across the nation, thereby having collective impact that materializes CS for All.
This project will engage minoritized youth in grades 5-8. The overarching vision is to establish a scalable model for providing these students with recurrent opportunities to create computational artifacts that are culturally-responsive to their community contexts. In addition, there will be an explicit and simultaneous focus on strengthening students' mathematical skills. The project has four goals: (1) facilitate culturally-responsive learning of key CS concepts and practices; (2) build youth and community knowledge around positive impacts of computing on local communities; (3) increase participants' knowledge, confidence and interest in becoming creators of computing innovations; and (4) strengthen mathematical skills through intentional computing experiences. The project will adapt and implement CS modules from the NSF-funded Exploring Computer Science curriculum, and will intentionally reinforce mathematics skills and community engagement. It will design and implement a culturally-responsive training model for establishing community instructors who can support CS project learning. Finally, it will create instruments for monitoring project goals and participant outcomes. Due to the collaboration with community-based organizations present in cities across the nation, the model has strong potential to scale up regionally and nationally.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Lori PollockChrystalla MouzaJohn PeleskoRosalie Rolon-Dow
This is an Early-concept Grant for Exploratory Research supporting research in Smart and Connected Communities. The research supported by the award is collaborative with research at the University of Colorado. The researchers are studying the use of technologies to enable communities to connect youth and youth organizations to effectively support diverse learning pathways for all students. These communities, the youth, the youth organizations, formal and informal education organizations, and civic organizations form a learning ecology. The DePaul University researchers will design and implement a smart community infrastructure in the City of Chicago to track real-time student participation in community STEM activities and to develop mobile applications for both students and adults. The smart community infrastructure will bring together information from a variety of sources that affect students' participation in community activities. These include geographic information (e.g., where the student lives, where the activities take place, the student transportation options, the school the student attends), student related information (e.g., the education and experience background of the student, the economic status of the student, students' schedules), and activity information (e.g., location of activity, requirements for participation). The University of Colorado researchers will take the lead on analyzing these data in terms of a community learning ecologies framework and will explore computational approaches (i.e., recommender systems, visualizations of learning opportunities) to improve youth exploration and uptake of interests and programs. These smart technologies are then used to reduce the friction in the learning connection infrastructure (called L3 for informal, formal, and virtual learning) to enable the student to access opportunities for participation in STEM activities that are most feasible and most appropriate for the student. Such a flexible computational approach is needed to support the necessary diversity of potential recommendations: new interests for youth to explore; specific programs based on interests, friends' activities, or geographic accessibility; or programs needed to "level-up" (develop deeper skills) and complete skills to enhance youths' learning portfolios. Although this information was always available, it was never integrated so it could be used to serve the community of both learners and the providers and to provide measurable student learning and participation outcomes. The learning ecologies theoretical framework and supporting computational methods are a contribution to the state of the art in studying afterschool learning opportunities. While the concept of learning ecologies is not new, to date, no one has offered such a systematic and theoretically-grounded portfolio of measures for characterizing the health and resilience of STEM learning ecologies at multiple scales. The theoretical frameworks and concepts draw together multiple research and application domains: computer science, sociology of education, complexity science, and urban planning. The L3 Connects infrastructure itself represents an unprecedented opportunities for conducting "living lab" experiments to improve stakeholder experience of linking providers to a single network and linking youth to more expanded and varied opportunities. The University of Colorado team will employ three methods: mapping, modeling, and linking youth to STEM learning opportunities in school and out of school settings in a large urban city (Chicago). The recommender system will be embedded into youth and parent facing mobile apps, enabling the team to characterize the degree to which content-based, collaborative filtering, or constraint based recommendations influence youth actions. The project will result in two measurable outcomes of importance to key L3 stakeholder groups: a 10% increase in the number of providers (programs that are part of the infrastructure) in target neighborhoods and a 20% increase in the number of youth participating in programs.
This is an Early-concept Grant for Exploratory Research supporting research in Smart and Connected Communities. The research supported by the award is collaborative with research at DePaul University. The researchers are studying the use of technologies to enable communities to connect youth and youth organizations to effectively support diverse learning pathways for all students. These communities, the youth, the youth organizations, formal and informal education organizations, and civic organizations form a learning ecology. The DePaul University researchers will design and implement a smart community infrastructure in the City of Chicago to track real-time student participation in community STEM activities and to develop mobile applications for both students and adults. The smart community infrastructure will bring together information from a variety of sources that affect students' participation in community activities. These include geographic information (e.g., where the student lives, where the activities take place, the student transportation options, the school the student attends), student related information (e.g., the education and experience background of the student, the economic status of the student, students' schedules), and activity information (e.g., location of activity, requirements for participation). The University of Colorado researchers will take the lead on analyzing these data in terms of a community learning ecologies framework and will explore computational approaches (i.e., recommender systems, visualizations of learning opportunities) to improve youth exploration and uptake of interests and programs. These smart technologies are then used to reduce the friction in the learning connection infrastructure (called L3 for informal, formal, and virtual learning) to enable the student to access opportunities for participation in STEM activities that are most feasible and most appropriate for the student. Such a flexible computational approach is needed to support the necessary diversity of potential recommendations: new interests for youth to explore; specific programs based on interests, friends' activities, or geographic accessibility; or programs needed to "level-up" (develop deeper skills) and complete skills to enhance youths' learning portfolios. Although this information was always available, it was never integrated so it could be used to serve the community of both learners and the providers and to provide measurable student learning and participation outcomes. The learning ecologies theoretical framework and supporting computational methods are a contribution to the state of the art in studying afterschool learning opportunities. While the concept of learning ecologies is not new, to date, no one has offered such a systematic and theoretically-grounded portfolio of measures for characterizing the health and resilience of STEM learning ecologies at multiple scales. The theoretical frameworks and concepts draw together multiple research and application domains: computer science, sociology of education, complexity science, and urban planning. The L3 Connects infrastructure itself represents an unprecedented opportunities for conducting "living lab" experiments to improve stakeholder experience of linking providers to a single network and linking youth to more expanded and varied opportunities. The University of Colorado team will employ three methods: mapping, modeling, and linking youth to STEM learning opportunities in school and out of school settings in a large urban city (Chicago). The recommender system will be embedded into youth and parent facing mobile apps, enabling the team to characterize the degree to which content-based, collaborative filtering, or constraint based recommendations influence youth actions. The project will result in two measurable outcomes of importance to key L3 stakeholder groups: a 10% increase in the number of providers (programs that are part of the infrastructure) in target neighborhoods and a 20% increase in the number of youth participating in programs.
This Research in Service to Practice project, a collaboration of Pepperdine University and the New York Hall of Science, will establish a network of STEM-related Media Making Clubs comprised of after-school students aged 12 - 19 and teachers in the U.S. and in three other countries: Kenya, Namibia and Finland. The media produced by the students may include a range of formats such as videos, short subject films, games, computer programs and specialized applications like interactive books. The content of the media produced by the students will focus on the illustration and teaching of STEM topics, where the shared media is intended to help other students become enthused about and learn the science. This proposal builds on the principal investigator's previous work on localized media clubs by now creating an international network in which after-school students and teachers will collaborate at a distance with other clubs. The central research questions for the project pertain to three themes at the intersection of learning, culture and collaboration: the impact of participatory teaching, virtual networks, and intercultural, global competence. The research will combine qualitative, cross-cultural and big data methods. Critical to the innovation of the project, the research team will also develop a network assessment tool, adapting epistemic network analysis methods to the needs of this initiative. 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:
Eric HamiltonKatherine McMillanPriya Mohabir
Afterschool continues to be promoted as a complementary setting to school for strengthening science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education (for example, Krishnamurthi, Bevan, Rinehart, & Coulon, 2013). This is a reasonable idea: 10.2 million children and youth in the U.S. participate in structured afterschool programs (Afterschool Alliance, 2014), and the flexibility of afterschool settings allows for innovative approaches to STEM exploration and engagement.