The National Building Museum will plan and design an exhibition to tell the story of the design, planning, and construction of the Washington DC Metro system. The exhibition will explore the history, design, engineering and construction process. It will also contain stories of the residents whose lives were disrupted by Metro’s construction. An exhibition team will document memories from the large community of Metro riders, and an advisory committee will help refine the project’s themes. Working with external consultants, the museum will prototype interactive exhibit components and test narratives through surveys and focus groups with a broad range of stakeholders. The project will result in a schematic of the exhibition’s floor plan, style sheets for graphic treatments, and initial planning for media elements. The museum’s education staff will develop educational resources incorporating STEAM themes to accompany the exhibition.
Researchers and practitioners have identified numerous outcomes of place-based environmental action (PBEA) programs at both individual and community levels (e.g., promoting positive youth development, fostering science identity, building social capital, and contributing to environmental quality improvement). In many cases, the primary audience of PBEA programs are youth, with less attention given to lifelong learners or intergenerational (e.g., youth and adult) partnerships. However, there is a need for PBEA programs for lifelong learners as local conservation decisions in the United States
This study explores the field of scientific policy advice in environmental and energy policies in France to gain insights into the role of think tanks. The field evolved along with the growth of think tanks. The think tanks refer to several orders of worth and combine them in their communication in order to qualify their expertise. The results of the study reveal that the think tanks have become more independent actors and that the field of scientific policy advice has gained autonomy. Both aspects indicate that the relationship between politics and expertise has gradually changed in France.
Implementation of a traveling exhibition, website, curriculum, and public programs exploring the history of the scrap industry in America.
The Jewish Museum of Maryland (JMM) is developing Scrap Yard: Innovators of Recycling, a temporary, traveling exhibit that will allow visitors to explore the evolution of the American scrap industry over 250 years through the stories of people who created it – immigrants, their descendants and their successors. In addition to the 2,000-sq ft, experiential exhibit exploring scrap recycling through the lenses of history, sociology and technology, JMM intends to publish a companion book and free interpretive brochure, create a website, plan public programs, collect and curate select oral histories, and develop educational curricula. The exhibit will feature historical objects, oral histories, texts, images, multimedia, and interactives. Resources will be drawn from JMM’s collections, the archives of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), and a variety of other sources. Scrap Yard opens at JMM in 2019 and begins a national tour in 2020.
Planning for a permanent exhibition examining the role of horse-drawn vehicles in American life in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
A World Before Cars represents the latest phase of a major redesign of the LIM’s carriage museum, which contains one of the largest and finest holdings of horse-drawn vehicles and related transportation artifacts in the country. Utilizing the expertise of skilled consultants and the highly-regarded H. Lee Skolnick Architecture and Design Partnership, the LIM will plan an interpretive gallery composed of hands-on activity areas that explore the experiences of carriage riding/driving, the integral role of horses in 19th-century America, and the ways in which carriage design innovations informed and influenced automobile design. From a ride simulation exercise to interactive computer kiosks and a comparative display of carriage and automobile parts, this new gallery will be designed to engage a variety of different visitor age and experience levels, providing an immersive entry into the world of carriages, and the unexpected ways in which they connect to our modern lives.
There is a dearth of prominent STEM role models for underrepresented populations. For example, according to a 2017 survey, only 3.1% of physicists in the United States are Black, only 2.1% are Hispanic, and only 0.5% are Native American. The project will help bridge these gaps by developing exhibits that include simulations of historical scientific experiments enacted by little-known scientists of color, virtual reality encounters that immerse participants in the scientists' discovery process, and other content that allows visitors to interact with the exhibits and explore the exhibits' themes. The project will develop transportable, interactive exhibits focusing on light: how we perceive light, sources of light from light bulbs to stars, uses of real and artificial light in human endeavors, and past and current STEM innovators whose work helps us understand, create, and harness light now. The exhibits will be developed in three stages, each exploring a characteristic of light (Color, Energy, or Time). Each theme will be explored via multiple deliveries: short documentary and animated films, virtual reality experiences, interactive "photobooths," and technology-based inquiry activities. The exhibit components will be copied at seven additional sites, which will host the exhibits for their audiences, and the project's digital assets will enable other STEM learning organizations to duplicate the exhibits. The exhibits will be designed to address common gaps in understanding, among adults as well as younger learners, about light. What light really is and does, in scientific terms, is one type of hidden story these exhibits will convey to general audiences. Two other types of science stories the exhibits will tell: how contemporary research related to light, particularly in astrophysics, is unveiling the hidden stories of our universe; and hidden stories of STEM innovators, past and present, women and men, from diverse backgrounds. These stories will provide needed role models for the adolescent learners, helping them learn complex STEM content while showing them how scientific research is conducted and the diverse community of people who can contribute to STEM innovations and discoveries.
The project deliverables will be designed to present complex physics content through coherent, immersive, and embodied learning experiences that have been demonstrated to promote engagement and deeper learning. The project will research whether participants, through interacting with these exhibits, can begin to integrate discrete ideas and make connections with complex scientific content that would be difficult without technology support. For example, students and other novices often lack the expertise necessary to make distinctions between what is needed and what is extra within scientific problems. The proposed study follows a Design-Based Research (DBR) approach characterized by iterative cycles of data collection, analysis, and reflection to inform the design of educational innovations and advance educational theory. Project research includes conceiving, building, and testing iterative phases, which will enable the project to capture the complexity of learning and engagement in informal learning settings. Research participants will complete a range of research activities, including focus group interviews, observation, and pre-post assessment of science content knowledge and dispositions.
By showcasing such role models and informing about related STEM content, this project will widen perspectives of audiences in informal learning settings, particularly adolescents from groups underrepresented in STEM fields. Research findings and methodologies will be shared widely in the informal STEM learning community, building the field's knowledge of effective ways to broaden participation in informal science learning, and thus increase broaden participation in and preparation for the STEM-based workforce.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Todd BoyetteJill HammJanice AndersonCrystal Harden
This poster was presented at the 2019 AISL PI Meeting, and describes the the ongoing research questions and goals of the Ute STEM Project, which explores the integration of the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of the Ute Indians of Colorado and Utah and Western science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
The Sustainability Teams Empower and Amplify Membership in STEM (S-TEAMS), an NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot project, will tackle the problem of persistent underrepresentation by low-income, minority, and women students in STEM disciplines and careers through transdisciplinary teamwork. As science is increasingly done in teams, collaborations bring diversity to research. Diverse interactions can support critical thinking, problem-solving, and is a priority among STEM disciplines. By exploring a set of individual contributors that can be effect change through collective impact, this project will explore alternative approaches to broadly enhance diversity in STEM, such as sense of community and perceived program benefit. The S-TEAMS project relies on the use of sustainability as the organizing frame for the deployment of learning communities (teams) that engage deeply with active learning. Studies on the issue of underrepresentation often cite a feeling of isolation and lack of academically supportive networks with other students like themselves as major reasons for a disinclination to pursue education and careers in STEM, even as the numbers of underrepresented groups are increasing in colleges and universities across the country. The growth of sustainability science provides an excellent opportunity to include students from underrepresented groups in supportive teams working together on problems that require expertise in multiple disciplines. Participating students will develop professional skills and strengthen STEM- and sustainability-specific skills through real-world experience in problem solving and team science. Ultimately this project is expected to help increase the number of qualified professionals in the field of sustainability and the number of minorities in the STEM professions.
While there is certainly a clear need to improve engagement and retention of underrepresented groups across the entire spectrum of STEM education - from K-12 through graduate education, and on through career choices - the explicit focus here is on the undergraduate piece of this critical issue. This approach to teamwork makes STEM socialization integral to the active learning process. Five-member transdisciplinary teams, from disciplines such as biology, chemistry, computer and information sciences, geography, geology, mathematics, physics, and sustainability science, will work together for ten weeks in summer 2018 on real-world projects with corporations, government organizations, and nongovernment organizations. Sustainability teams with low participation by underrepresented groups will be compared to those with high representation to gather insights regarding individual and collective engagement, productivity, and ongoing interest in STEM. Such insights will be used to scale up the effort through partnership with New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability (NJHEPS).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Amy TuiningaAshwani VasishthPankaj Lai
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will continue its collaboration in providing to early- and mid-career scientists and engineers experiential professional development and public service fellowships via the AAAS Science and Technology Fellowship Program. Consistent with the immersion model adopted by AAAS, Fellows at NSF will be selected annually through a competitive process and placed in organizations throughout the Foundation. Fellows will work with NSF staff on a broad range of activities in order to gain insight into how national science and technology policy goals are translated into and reflected by NSF's mission and strategic goals and how and by whom national science and technology policy is driven, shaped and prioritized. NSF fellowship assignments are designed to: educate and expose Fellows to NSF programmatic planning, development and oversight activities in all fields of fundamental research via hands-on engagement; utilize the Fellows' expertise on projects that apprise NSF officials in areas of mutual interest to the Fellow and the host organization; and provide developmental opportunities to inform future career decisions. The program includes an orientation on executive branch and congressional operations, as well as a year-long suite of knowledge- and skill-building seminars involving science, technology and public policy within the federal as well as NSF contexts.
In the long-term, the AAAS Fellowship program seeks to build leadership capacity for a strong national science and engineering enterprise. Upon completion of the Fellowship, Fellows will have gained: a broader understanding and increased insights about the development and execution of federal-level science, technology, engineering and mathematics policies and initiatives as well as how policy and science intersect; enhanced skills in communicating science to support policy development; and a greater capacity to serve more effectively in future leadership roles in diverse environments, including public and policy arenas, academia and the private sector. The ultimate outcome of the Fellowship program experience -- policy savvy science and engineer leaders who understand government and policymaking and are well-trained to develop and execute solutions to address the nation's challenges.
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. This study will capitalize on the increased availability and affordability of immersive interactive technologies, such as Augmented Reality devices and virtual characters, to investigate their potential for benefitting STEM learning in informal museum contexts. This project will combine these technologies to create an Augmented Reality experience that will allow middle-school youth and their families to meet and assist a virtual crew on a historic ship at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia. The players in this game-like experience will encounter technologies from the turn of the 20th century, including steam power, electricity, and wireless communication. Crew members and technologies will be brought to life aboard the USS Olympia, the largest and fastest ship in the US Navy launched in 1892. The historic context will be positioned in relation to current day technologies in ways that will enable a change in interest towards technology and engineering in middle school-age youth. This will result in a testbed for the feasibility of facilitating short-term science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) identity change with interactive immersive technologies. A successful feasibility demonstration, as well as the insights into design, could open up novel ways of fostering STEM interest and identity in informal learning contexts and of demonstrating the impact of this approach. The potential benefit to society will rest in the expected results on the basic science regarding immersive interactive technologies in informal learning contexts as well as in demonstrating the feasibility of the integrated approach to assessment.
This project will use a living lab methodology to evaluate interactive immersive technologies in terms of their support for STEM identity change in middle-school age youth. The two-year design-based research will iteratively develop and improve the measurement instrument for the argument that identity change is a fundamental to learning. A combination of Augmented Reality and intelligent virtual agents will be used to create an interactive experience--a virtual living lab--in an informal museum learning exhibit that enables change interests towards technology and engineering and provides short-term assessment tools. In collaboration with the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, the testbed for the approach will be an experience that brings to life the technologies of the early 20th century aboard a historic ship. Through the application of Participatory Action Research techniques, intelligent virtual agents interacting with youth and families will customize STEM information relating to the ship's mission and performance. Topics explored will make connections with current day technologies and scientific understanding. Mixed-methods will be used to analyze interactions, interview and survey data, will form the basis for assessing the impact on youth's STEM interests. The elicitation method specifically includes assessment metrics that are relevant to the concept of learning as identity change. This assessment, through immersive interactive technologies, will target the priority areas of engagement in STEM as well as the measurement of outcomes.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Stefan RankAyana AllenGlen MuschioAroutis FosterKapil Dandekar
This article will consider the alignment of scientific and media practice at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Over several decades after 1817 certain instrument makers began to specialise in the domestic entertainment market, transferring skills from optical instrument manufacture to the design of fashionable novelty devices. The instrument trade was expanding into a new middle-class market to exploit an increasing popular trade in optical novelties, exemplified by the 1817 Kaleidoscope craze and new interest among the middle classes for microscopes, telescopes, and magic lanterns
This article examines the 1935 Science Museum temporary exhibition on Noise Abatement, situating it in the sound historical context of inter-war Britain, and making an argument that the ‘way of hearing’ it advanced was part of an attempt to shape auditory perception in the interests of a class-bound culture of acoustic civilization. Further, the article uses this exhibition to mount an argument that museum scholars should consider sound not simply as a medium of engagement, but also as a politically interested and socially active field.