Hero Elementary is a transmedia educational initiative aimed at improving the school readiness and academic achievement in science and literacy of children grades K-2. With an emphasis on Latinx communities, English Language Learners, youth with disabilities, and children from low-income households, Hero Elementary celebrates kids and encourages them to make a difference in their own backyards and beyond by actively doing science and using their Superpowers of Science. The project embeds the expectations of K–2nd NGSS and CCSS-ELA standards into a series of activities, including interactive games, educational apps, non-fiction e-books, hands-on activities, and a digital science notebook. The activities are organized into playlists for educators and students to use in afterschool programs. Each playlist centers on a meaningful conceptual theme in K-2 science learning.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Joan FreeseMomoko HayakawaBryce Becker
The Discovery Research K-12 program (DR-K12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools (RMTs). Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects. This project scales up the PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs (SRL), a model that trains teens to produce video reports on important STEM issues from a youth perspective. Participating schools receive a SRL journalism and digital media literacy curriculum, a mentor for students from a local PBS affiliate, professional development for educators, and support from the PBS NewsHour team. The production of news stories and student-oriented instruction in the classroom are designed to increase student learning of STEM content through student-centered inquiry and reflections on metacognition. Students will develop a deep understanding of the material to choose the best strategy to teach or tell the STEM story to others through digital media. Over the 4 years of the project, the model will be expanded from the current 70 schools to 150 in 40 states targeting schools with high populations of underrepresented youth. New components will be added to the model including STEM professional mentors and a social media and media analytics component. Project partners include local PBS stations, Project Lead the Way, and Share My Lesson educators.
The research study conducted by New Knowledge, LLC will add new knowledge about the growing field of youth science journalism and digital media. Front-end evaluation will assess students' understanding of contemporary STEM issues by deploying a web-based survey to crowd-source youth reactions, interest, questions, and thoughts about current science issues. A subset of questions will explore students' tendencies to pass newly-acquired information to members of the larger social networks. Formative evaluation will include qualitative and quantitative studies of multiple stakeholders at the Student Reporting Labs to refine the implementation of the program. Summative evaluation will track learning outcomes/changes such as: How does student reporting on STEM news increase their STEM literacy competencies? How does it affect their interest in STEM careers? Which strategies are most effective with underrepresented students? How do youth communicate with each other about science content, informing news media best practices? The research team will use data from pre/post and post-delayed surveys taken by 1700 students in the STEM Student Reporting Labs and 1700 from control groups. In addition, interviews with teachers will assess the curriculum and impressions of student engagement.
This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by developing a suite of digital tools designed to support positive messaging around skill-based education and careers and to improve mentors' communication with middle school-aged youth mentees. Maintaining U.S. economic advantage requires attracting talent to high-growth, high-demand skill-based, STEM-related careers that are traditionally attained through Career and Technical Education (CTE). Replacing old negative perceptions with new, more accurate messages about CTE and then reaching youth with these messages before high school is essential. Career-focused mentoring is a vehicle for delivering these messages and supporting youth exploration of CTE as a possible path for their own lives. Investigators will explore the hypothesis that through strong connections between those best positioned to articulate industry needs (mentors) and those most receptive to filling that need (mentees), this project will improve youth awareness and interest in CTE and the rewarding careers that are available to them. Research and development activities will be carried out collaboratively in informal learning environments in Boston and New York City that serve middle school-aged youth from underrepresented communities, through career-focused mentoring programs. The project team, led by media producers of the WGBH Education Foundation, includes market researchers and communications strategists at Global Strategy Group, learning scientists at Education Development Center, and mentorship program partners at SkillsUSA, Learning for Life's Middle School Explorer Clubs, and Boy Scouts of America's Scoutreach. If promising, the career-focused mentoring programs of SkillsUSA, Learning for Life, and Boy Scouts of America will incorporate the messaging roadmap and digital tools to support their mentoring curricula, which impact greater than one million youth in each year.
In the first phase of research, investigators will study perceptions of STEM-focused CTE from a nationwide sample of 800 middle school-aged youth and 30 mentors from skill-based STEM industries. In the second phase, investigators will work with six program leaders and 30 mentors from SkillsUSA, Explorer Clubs, Scoutreach, and other mentoring programs to document the needs of mentors for support as they enter into the mentoring process. The third phase will engage mentorship program leaders and 36 mentors in the iterative development of a suite of digital tools that would support positive messaging around skill-based education and careers and that would improve mentors' communication with youth mentees. In addition, a pre-post mentorship program pilot study will explore the promise of the digital tools for effectively supporting mentor-mentee communications that improve youth awareness and interest in STEM-focused CTE and skill-based, STEM-related careers. Thirty six mentors and 288 of their youth mentees will participate in the pilot study. Data sources for research include interviews and surveys of program leaders, mentors, and mentees, as well as tracking mentor activity within the online digital tool environment. This research would advance knowledge of how mentors influence disadvantaged youth perceptions of and interest in CTE and skill-based, STEM career pathways, in which there is currently little evidence as to how mentor preparation shapes ability to positively impact youth outcomes. Major outcomes will include a) deeper understandings of youth and mentor perceptions of CTE and mentors' needs for supporting their work with mentees, b) a messaging roadmap and digital tools that prepare mentors for their work with middle school youth, and c) empirical findings regarding the potential of the digital tools for effectively supporting mentor-mentee communications that improve youth's awareness and interest in CTE and skill-based, STEM-related careers. Outcomes will be shared widely to research, education, and industry communities, locally and nationally, through social media, partner networks, conference presentations, and research publications. An advisory board will provide independent review on the project activities.
Ruff Family Science is an exploratory project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that aims to foster joint media engagement and hands-on science exploration among diverse, low-income parents and their 4- to 8-year-old children. Building on the success of the PBS series FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman, the project leverages FETCH’s funny and charismatic animated host, along with its proven approach to teaching science, to inspire educationally disadvantaged families to explore science together. More specifically, the project is undertaking a research and design process to create prototype
The ACCEYSS (Association of Collaborative Communities Equipping Youth for STEM Success) Network and Model project, an NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot, at Texas State University is forming a university-community partnership between interdisciplinary researchers (ACCEYSS research team), faith leaders and other community partners to implement an innovative model that prepares underrepresented and underserved youth to pursue undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees. The inaugural ACCEYSS network will include Texas State University, San Marcos Consolidated Independent School District, San Marcos Youth Service Bureau, City of San Marcos-Office of the City Manager, Hays County Youth Initiative, the Calaboose African American History Museum, and several local faith-based organizations. Many historic advancements have been made through the efforts and activities of faith and community leaders uniquely poised to motivate and galvanize community-based action. A collaboration among these academic institutions, social/cultural organizations, and faith partners to work with the families and youth of underrepresented/underserved populations will be an essential asset for generating new perspectives and ideas for improving STEM academic and career outcomes related to broadening participation in the scientific enterprise.
During this launch pilot, the ACCEYSS research team and network will collaborate to design and develop the ACCEYSS model as a culturally-relevant, blended-learning strategy that integrates online and in-person STEM enrichment activities (e.g., summer institute, afterschool clubs) that are aligned with the Science and Engineering Practices and Disciplinary Core Ideas Dimensions of the K-12 Next Generation Science Education Standards. The collective impact framework will be used to build diverse capacity, leverage asset-based community development, and sustain mutually reinforcing non-exclusive policies and practices for STEM diversity and inclusion. Additionally, in this launch pilot, a multifaceted design-based research approach will be utilized to support middle and high school students' interest in and pursuit of STEM studies.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is creating, implementing and evaluating a forum for the NSF INCLUDES broadening participation community of practice and for engaging the NSF INCLUDES awardees and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) researchers across the nation to expand the NSF INCLUDES broadening participation network. The NSF INCLUDES program is a comprehensive national initiative designed to enhance U.S. leadership in STEM discoveries and innovations focused on NSF's commitment to diversity, inclusion, and broadening participation in these fields.
The NSF INCLUDES Open Forum will use the AAAS Trellis networking platform and the organization's experience engaging communities of practice focused on broadening participation, STEM education and STEM research. The project builds on the success of a prior NSF INCLUDES Conference award (HRD-1650509) that was addressing goals to define networking needs of the first round of NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilots (DDLP); to develop design specifications for NSF INCLUDES networking, curating of resources, and supporting communities of practice; and to propose tools, techniques, capacities and functionalities for an NSF INCLUDES national network.
The NSF INCLUDES Open Forum project includes advisory board members with expertise in networking platforms and others with broadening participation knowledge and experience. A yearly conference for NSF INCLUDES awardees will offer participants an opportunity to learn about how Trellis platform upgrades, functionality and technology options (e.g., a smartphone application) can be used in new ways to engage a broader community of partners interested in broadening participation in STEM research and education contexts. An external evaluator will assess the activities and outcomes of the NSF INCLUDES Open Forum both during implementation and at project end. The PIs will also communicate the outcomes of the project to broader audiences, both academic and non-academic, and encourage a dialogue within the NSF INCLUDES community about the use of technology for organization and communication within a network.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Shirley MalcomJosh Freeman
resourceprojectWebsites, Mobile Apps, and Online Media
The intent of this five-year project is to design, deliver, and study professional development for Informal Science Learning (ISL) educators in the arena of equity-focused STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) teaching and learning. While the strategy of integrating art and science to promote interest, identity, and other STEM-related learning has grown in recent years, this domain is still nascent with respect to a guiding set of best practices. Through prior work, the team has developed and implemented a set of design principles that incorporate effective practices for broadening participation of girls in science via science-art integration on the topic of the biology, chemistry and optics of "Colors in Nature." The continued initiative would impact the ISL field by providing a mechanism for ISL educators in museums, libraries and after-school programs to adopt and implement these STEAM design principles into their work. The team will lead long-term (12-18 months) professional development activities for ISL educators, including: 1) in-person workshops that leverage their four previously developed kits; 2) online, asynchronous learning activities featuring interactive instructional videos around their STEAM design principles; 3) synchronous sessions to debrief content and foster communities of practice; and 4) guided design work around the development or redesign of STEAM activities. In the first four years of the project, the team will work with four core institutional partners (Sitka Sound Science Center, Sno-Isle Libraries, the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District after-school program, and the Pima County Public Library system) across three states (Alaska, Washington, and Arizona). In the project's later stages, they will disseminate their learning tools to a broad, national audience. 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.
The project has three main goals: (1) To support ISL educators in offering meaningful STEAM activities, (2) To create institutional change among the partner organizations, and (3) To advance the ISL field with respect to professional development and designing for STEAM Programming. The research questions associated with the professional development activities address the ways in which change occurs and focus on all three levels: individual, institutional, and the ISL field. The methods are qualitative and quantitative, including videotaped observations, pre and post interviews, surveys and analysis of online and offline artifacts. In addition, the project evaluation will assess the implementation of the project's professional development model for effectiveness. Methods will include observations, interviews, surveys and Website analytics and program data.
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. The project will derive a nationwide online coaching/mentoring program for out of school educators in rural settings. The program builds on a Noyce Foundation pilot project. The issue to be addressed is that educators in rural settings are challenged in a multitude of ways due to isolation. This project will try to find ways to alleviate some of the consequences of isolation through resource sharing, knowledge sharing, and unique techniques for communicating with students. Partners in this effort are the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance, the National AfterSchool Association, Development Without Limits, and the Maine State Library.
By using widely-available technologies, this project will bring fully online instructional coaching in STEM to out-of-school educators who live too remotely to attend ongoing in-person workshops. The project team will achieve this by adapting a highly promising coaching program where groups of educators video-record their own work with youth, practice key skills, and meet regularly to discuss their work. The project will: (a) test technical challenges to achieve fully virtual implementation; (b) design and adapt a specific STEM-skill curriculum to align with different levels of need; (c) customize the model to work with rural librarians; and (d) integrate the work into existing state and national accreditation systems.
The Exploratorium’s livestream of the August 2017 Total Solar Eclipse reached over 63 million people. Live programs in English and Spanish provided an informal learning experience outside the museum. Over 2.75 million people viewed on-demand videos on eclipse science. Sixty major media providers rebroadcast the livestream telescope feed.
Edu, Inc. conducted a summative evaluation of the NASA-funded project. The study reveals that the Exploratorium successfully disseminated eclipse science and STEM content through media channels and a mobile app, delivering a museum experience to online
In March of 2016, a total solar eclipse occurred in the southwestern pacific; and in August of 2017, a total solar eclipse occurred across a broad swath of the United States. The Exploratorium launched a 2.5 year public education program—Navigating the Path of Totality—that used these two total solar eclipses as platforms for sparking public engagement and learning about the Sun, heliophysics, and the STEM content related to both. These sequential eclipses provided an unprecedented opportunity to build and scaffold public engagement and education. Our strategy was to start the public engagement process with the 2016 eclipse, nurture that engagement with resources, activities and outreach during the 17 months between the eclipses, so that audiences (especially in the U.S., where totality was visible in multiple areas across the country) would be excited, actively interested, and prepared for deeper engagement during the 2017 eclipse. For the August 2017 eclipse, the Exploratorium produced live telescope and program feeds from Madras, OR and Casper, WY. The Exploratorium worked with NASA to leverage what was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for millions to bring heliophysics information and research to students, educators, and the public at large through a variety of learning experiences and platforms.
The core of this project was live broadcasts/webcasts of each eclipse. To accomplish these objectives, the Exploratorium produced and disseminate live feeds of telescope-only images (no commentary) of each eclipse originating them from remote locations; produce and disseminate from the field live hosted broadcasts/webcasts of each eclipse using these telescope images; design and launch websites, apps, videos, educator resources, and shareable online materials for each eclipse; design and deliver eclipse themed video installations for our Webcast studio and Observatory gallery in the months that lead up to each eclipse and a public program during each eclipse; and conduct a formative and summative evaluation of the project.
These broadcasts/webcasts and pre-produced videos provide the backbone upon which complementary educational resources and activities can be built and delivered. Programs and videos were produced in English and Spanish languages. As a freely available resource, the broadcasts/webcasts also provide the baseline content for hundreds if not thousands of educational efforts provided by other science-rich institutions, schools, community-based organizations, and venues. Platforms such as NASA TV and NASA website, broadcast and online media outlets such as ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and PBS, as well as hundreds of science institutions and thousands of classrooms streamed the Exploratorium eclipse broadcasts as part of their own educational programming, reaching 63M people. These live broadcasts were relied upon educational infrastructure during total solar eclipses for institutions and individuals on the path and off the path alike.
WNET, working with Education Development Center, will lead a small scale Innovations in Development effort to develop, research, and evaluate a new model to engage underserved families in STEM learning. The new endeavor, Cyberchase: Mobile Adventures in STEM, will build on the proven impact of the public media mathematics series Cyberchase and the growing potential of mobile technology and texting to reach underserved parents. WNET will produce two new Cyberchase episodes for 6-9 year olds, focused on using math to learn about the environment. Drawing on these videos and an existing Cyberchase game, the team will produce a bilingual family engagement campaign that will combine an in-person workshop followed by a 6-8 week "text to parent" campaign, in which parents receive weekly text messages suggesting family STEM activities related to the media content. The engagement model will be piloted in three cities with large low-income/Latino populations, along with one texting campaign offered without the workshop. This project will build knowledge about how to deploy well-designed public media assets and text messaging to promote fun, effective STEM learning interactions in low-income families. While past research on educational STEM media has tended to focus on children, especially preschool age, this project will focus primarily on text messaging for parents, and on learners age 6-9, and the wider scope of parent/child STEM interactions possible at that age.
The primary goal of the project will be to develop, test and refine a family engagement model that includes a face-to-face workshop, rich narrative Cyberchase content, and text-message prompts for parents to engage in short, playful STEM activities with children. The project team will explore which features of the mobile text-and-media program have most value for low-income and Latino families and prompt STEM learning interactions, including a comparison of workshop-based and text-only variants. The project will have three phases: needs assessment and preliminary design; an early-stage test in New York and development and testing of media; and three late-stage tests in contrasting locations, two including workshops and one "text-only," and analysis of findings. Ultimately, the project will share knowledge with the field about the opportunities and challenges of using mobile texting and public media to reach underserved families effectively. This knowledge will also inform a future proposal for production and outcomes research, which, based on the study results, may include a scaled-up version in ten locations and a ten-city Randomized Control Test. 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.
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. The project will bring together science museum visitor experience developers, visitor studies staff, indoor location technology developers, cyber-learning researchers, and STEM informal learning specialists for a two day conference, COMPASS (Conference on Mobile Position Awareness Systems and Solutions), to address the achievements and potential of indoor location aware mobile (ILAM) technology in science museums. The pre-conference work, the conference itself, and a subsequent e-publication will provide multiple, informed perspectives and knowledge around ILAM for science museums to develop apps for visitors' own smartphones to enhance and personalize the visitor experience and to experiment with new kinds of inquiry-based learning. The goals of the conference are to form an integrated vision by consolidating expertise from disparate disciplines connected to ILAM tech development, to transform visitor mobile tools to provide more innovative forms of interaction and personalization, and to open new avenues for visitor research with automated data collection and analysis.
The COMPASS conference will bring together 80 participants for two days in September 2018 at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA. The first dissemination will take place in a presentation at the ASTC conference the following month in October 2018. A webinar sharing insights from COMPASS and inviting others to engage will be held in March 2019 hosted by ASTC and accessible by ASTC members and non-members alike. A companion COMPASS e-publication will be released for free download, also in March 2019, with summaries of conference proceedings, key issues identified, case histories of ILAM in museums, white papers and other resources. Conference outcomes include establishing a community of practice or special interest group and establishing common goals for future collaborative work. By gathering a diverse range of perspectives and expertise to share research and evidence based findings, COMPASS include collective problem solving and an informed cross disciplinary approach to planning and implementing ILAM technology in the museum environment. The conference will explicitly address the benefits and quality of open source code and protocols and how techniques could be shared among institutions. As professional experience with deploying ILAM apps grows, this tool could be used to increase accessibility for diverse visitor populations, put in use at smaller and medium sized science centers, and applied to a variety of research studies, increasing the impact for funders and benefiting the science center community at large.