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.
Since distance education has evolved over time and continues to evolve, and most recently been influenced and challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is the position of the authors that the literature is not yet clear or definitive on what it can confidently state about what are tested best practices in distance education, especially when it comes to informal learning environments.
This report is a literature review of the history of distance education/distance learning. The scan covers the nearly 250 years of documented distance education programs and traces the changes in the technologies that supported the learning purpose.
This paper presents synthesized research on where XR is most effective within a museum setting and what impact XR might have on the visitor experience.
The goal of our project is to develop strategies that effectively engage autistic adolescents in informal STEM learning opportunities that promote the self-efficacy and interest in STEM careers that will empower them to seek out career opportunities in STEM fields.
The research aims are to:
1. Identify evidence-based strategies to engage autistic youth in informal STEM learning opportunities that are well matched to their attentional profiles:
Hypothesis 1: Pedagogical strategies vary in how engaging they are for people with diverse attentional profiles; people with more focused
In this study we explore two different faciitation styles, collaboration and competition, in an 1-hour long, highly interactive, digital experience called Future Energy Chicago. The aim of the faciliations is to affect guests' energy literacy, that is their knowledge of, and their attitude and behavior toward energy conservation. In the collaboration condition, guests were encouraged to talk as a whole room about what they had learned about energy during the latest round of play with the goal for the whole room to get as high a score as possible. In the competition condition, guests met only
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.
“Reclaiming Digital Futures” is a free guide and associated website for youth organizations to use as they integrate digital learning into their programming and practices. The report is available at DigitalLearningPractices.org.
The report and the associated DigitalLearningPractices.org site contain a cross-section of resources to aid organizations and educators in developing quality programming that integrate technology and youth development. Rather than focusing on efforts to help youth become fluent and skilled in uses of technology simply for the sake of meeting predetermined standards
AHA! Island is a new project that uses animation, live-action videos, and hands-on activities to support joint engagement of children and caregivers around computational thinking concepts and practices. This research is intended to examine the extent to which the prototyped media and activity sets support the project’s learning goals. Education Development Center (EDC), WGBH’s research partner for the project, conducted a small formative study with 16 English-speaking families (children and their caregivers) to test out these media and activity set prototypes. During the in-person video
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 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.