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.
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resourceresearchMuseum and Science Center Exhibits
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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Julia ParrishYurong HeBenjamin Haywood
resourceevaluationProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Summative evaluation study for the Space Earth and Informal Science Education (SEISE) project examining professional impacts including project reach, partnerships, professional knowledge, and professionals' use of the project’s public-facing products and their implementation of practices for engaging the public
Over the course of the five-year NASA grant, the Space and Earth Informal STEM Education (SEISE) project offered a range of free professional development opportunities and resources to support informal educators’ ability to offer Earth and space programming and to partner with others
The Space and Earth Informal STEM Education (SEISE) project, led by the Arizona State University with partners Science Museum of Minnesota, Museum of Science, Boston, and the University of California Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science and Space Sciences Laboratory, is raising the capacity of museums and informal science educators to engage the public in Heliophysics, Earth Science, Planetary Science, and Astrophysics, and their social dimensions through the National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Net). SEISE will also partner on a network-to-network basis with other existing coalitions and professional associations dedicated to informal and lifelong STEM learning, including the Afterschool Alliance, National Girls Collaborative Project, NASA Museum Alliance, STAR_Net, and members of the Association of Children’s Museums and Association of Science-Technology Centers. The goals for this project include engaging multiple and diverse public audiences in STEM, improving the knowledge and skills of informal educators, and encouraging local partnerships.
In collaboration with the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD), SEISE is leveraging NASA subject matter experts (SMEs), SMD assets and data, and existing educational products and online portals to create compelling learning experiences that will be widely use to share the story, science, and adventure of NASA’s scientific explorations of planet Earth, our solar system, and the universe beyond. Collaborative goals include enabling STEM education, improving U.S. scientific literacy, advancing national educational goals, and leveraging science activities through partnerships. Efforts will focus on providing opportunities for learners explore and build skills in the core science and engineering content, skills, and processes related to Earth and space sciences. SEISE is creating hands-on activity toolkits (250-350 toolkits per year over four years), small footprint exhibitions (50 identical copies), and professional development opportunities (including online workshops).
Evaluation for the project will include front-end and formative data to inform the development of products and help with project decision gates, as well as summative data that will allow stakeholders to understand the project’s reach and outcomes.
The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) is one of the world's single largest employers of science communicators, with over 350,000 students and 40,000 staff. Its science communication activities include five museums (Universum, Museo de la Luz, the Geology Museum, Museo de la Medicina Mexicana and Musem of Geophysics), botanical gardens, as well as a wide range of cultural and outreach activities. It has several programmes for training professional science communicators. The science communication staff are spread across the campuses in Mexico City and four other cities, including
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Ana Claudia NepoteElaine Reynoso-Haynes
Roots of Wisdom (also known as Generations of Knowledge) is a 5-year project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF-DRL #1010559) in support of a cross-cultural reciprocal collaboration to develop a traveling exhibit, banner exhibit, and education resources that bring together Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and western science. The summative evaluation for public audience impacts was conducted by the Lifelong Learning Group (COSI, Columbus, OH), in collaboration with Native Pathways (Laguna, NM).
The Interactive Video Science Consortium is a non-profit group of fifteen science centers and museums that developed interactive video exhibits about Earth and Planetary sciences with two purposes in mind. One, the videodisc-based kiosk exhibits served as educational vehicles for four million visitors, representing the combined audiences of the fifteen participating museums. Two, through extensive testing and visitor research during the development process, the consortium members enlarged understanding of the appropriate and effective uses of the interactive video medium in science museums
Living Liquid will identify strategies for creating visualization tools that can actively engage the public with emerging research about the ocean's microbes and their impact on our planet. It addresses a critical issue for the ISE field: creating ways for visitors to ask and answer their own questions about emerging areas of science with visualizations. This Pathway project will provide important lessons learned for a future full-scale development project at the Exploratorium's new location over San Francisco Bay, and for informal science educators and other professionals working to create interactive visualization tools using the vast data sets now available. Living Liquid is a collaboration between developers, educators and learning researchers at the Exploratorium, computer scientists at the Visualization Interface and Design Innovation Group at UC Davis, and marine scientists at the Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education. The project's research and development process includes a front-end study of visitors' interests and prior knowledge related to ocean microbes, interviews with scientists to identify potential datasets and activities, a survey of candidate visualizations, and a series of prototypes to identify promising strategies to engage visitors with and allow visitors to explore large scientific datasets through visualization tools.
The Louisiana State Museum and Tulane University/Xavier University Center for Bioenvironmental Research and the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography, along with several other research collaborators, designers, evaluators, and the Times-Picayune newspaper are partnering to develop a multi-pronged approach on educating the general public, school children, teachers and public officials on the STEM-related aspects of Hurricane Katrina and its implications for the future of New Orleans and other parts of the country. The major products will be an 8,500 square-foot semi-permanent exhibit, smaller exhibits for Louisiana regional libraries, a comprehensive Web site on hurricanes, a set of studies on informal learning, a case study for public officials about the relevance of science research to policy and planning, teacher workshops, and a workshop for interested exhibit designers from around the country. This project advances the field of informal science education by exploring how museums, universities, and their communities can work together to provide meaningful learning experiences on STEM topics that are critical to solving important community and national issues.
The Nature Research Center is a project through which the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences provides NASA with a permanent presence through the creation of NASA-themed exhibits in its new wing (the Nature Research Center), hosting special events, educator workshops and special programming, all of which serve the general population and seek to improve understanding of and engagement with science. The lead institution is the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Goals, expected and actual outcomes are as follows: Exhibits in the new wing were expected to reach 200,000 individuals in its inaugural year; in only 8 months, the Museum has welcomed over 1 million visitors. Astronomy Days’ goal was to reach 20,000 people per year and is on target for meeting this goal. Educator Workshops’ goal was to reach 32 educators per workshop and is on target for meeting this goal. The Museum’s visitor base has demonstrated an insatiable desire for NASA-themed programs. Attendance at Astronomy Days remains impressive and special space events (such as the transit of Venus, or live downlinks with the International Space Station) attract larger-than-expected audiences. The Museum appreciates NASA’s support and is eager to continue providing NASA with an ongoing presence in Raleigh, NC.
The Dynamic Earth: You Have To See it To Believe It is a public exhibition and suite of programming designed to educate and excite K-8 students, teachers, and families about weather and climate science, plate tectonics, erosion, and stream formation. The Dynamic Earth program draws attention to the importance of large-scale earth processes and the human impacts on these processes, utilizing real artifacts, hands-on models, and NASA earth imagery and data. The program includes the exhibition, student workshops, family workshops, annual professional development opportunities for classroom teachers, innovative theater shows, lectures for adults by visiting scientists, and interpretive activities. The Montshire Museum of Science has partnered with Chabot Space and Science Center (CA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (NH) on various components. The project has broadened our internal capacity for providing quality earth science programming by greatly expanding our program titles and allowing us to create hands-on materials for use by our educators and to loan to schools in our Partnership Initiative. Programming developed during the grant period continues to reach thousands of students and teachers each year, both on-site and as part of our rural outreach efforts.
STEMtastic: NASA in Our Community is a two-year project designed to educate and inspire teachers, students and life-long learners to embrace NASA STEM content. The project will increase awareness of NASA activities, while educating and inspiring students to train for careers that are critical to future economic growth of the country in general, and NASA’s future missions in particular. The Virginia Air & Space Center (VASC) will partner with the Virginia Space Grant Consortium and Analytical Mechanics Associates, Inc. to accomplish this project. VASC will deliver NASA STEM content through (1) STEMtastic Teacher Institutes and Education Modules: (a) a series of two five-day professional development institutes for educators which will result in the (b) development and dissemination of new education modules for grades 4-9; and (2) STEMtastic Exhibits and Demonstrations: new interactive exhibits to used for live demonstrations at VASC; those demonstrations will also be delivered to traditionally underserved schools in the region. All classroom and teaching materials—educator institutes, education modules, exhibit software and demonstration modules—will be developed using NASA content and shared with other institutions to promote the expansion of knowledge about best practices in providing STEM education in both formal and informal education settings. STEMevals, a robust evaluation plan, will be implemented to assess success in each project area. Adjustments will be made along the pipeline to increase effectiveness in reaching the target audience. The project has the potential to reach countless educators, students and museum visitors throughout the U.S."