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. There are few empirical studies of sustained youth engagement in STEM-oriented making over time, how youth are supported in working towards more robust STEM related projects, on the outcomes of such making experiences among youth from historically marginalized communities, or on the design features of making experiences which support these goals. The project plans to conduct a set of research studies to develop: a theory-based and data-driven framework for equitably consequential making; a set of related individual-level and program-level cases with exemplars (and the associated challenges) that can be used by researchers and practitioners for guiding the field; and an initial set of guiding principles (with indicators) for identifying equitably consequential making in practice. The project will result in a framework for equitably consequential making with guiding principles for implementation that will contribute to the infrastructure for fostering increased opportunities to learn among all youth, especially those historically underrepresented in STEM.
Through research, the project seeks to build capacity among STEM-oriented maker practitioners, researchers and youth in the maker movement around equitably consequential making to expand the prevailing norms of making towards more transformative outcomes for youth. Project research will be guided by several questions. What do youth learn and do (in-the-moment and over time) in making spaces that work to support equity in making? What maker space design features support (or work against) youth in making in equitably consequential ways? What are the individual and community outcomes youth experience in STEM-making across settings and time scales? What are the most salient indicators of equitably consequential making, how do they take shape, how can these indicators be identified in practice? The project will research these questions using interview studies and critical longitudinal ethnography with embedded youth participatory case study methodologies. The research will be conducted in research-practice partnerships involving Michigan State University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and 4 local, STEM- and youth-oriented making spaces in Lansing and Greensboro that serve historically underrepresented groups in STEM, with a specific focus on youth from lower-income and African American backgrounds.
This workshop is funded through the "Dear Colleague Letter: Principles for the Design of Digital Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Learning Environments (NSF 18-017)." In today's educational climate, organizations are creating physical learning spaces for hands-on STEM activities, often called makerspaces, co-working spaces, innovation labs, or fablabs. These spaces have evolved to be interdisciplinary centers that personalize learning for individual, diverse learners in collaborative settings. When designed well, these physical spaces create communities that contextualize learning around participants' goals and thus address STEM learning in a dynamic and integrated way. Participation in these learning environments encourages the cultivation of STEM identities for young people and can positively direct their career trajectories into STEM fields. This workshop will bring together a community of collaborators from multiple stakeholder groups including academia, public libraries, museums, community based organizations, non-profits, media makers and distribution channels, and educators within and beyond K-12 schools. Led by the University of Arizona, and held at Biosphere 2, an international research facility, participants will engage in activities that invite experimentation with distributed learning technologies to examine ways to adapt learning to the changing technological landscape and create robust, dynamic online learning environments. The workshop will culminate in a synthesis of design principles, assessment approaches, and tools that will be shared widely. Partnerships arising from the workshop will pave the way for sustained efforts in this area that span research and practice communities. Outcomes will address research and development of the next generation of digitally distributed learning environments.
The three day workshop convening will provide a unique forum to (1) exchange innovative ideas and share challenges and opportunities, (2) connect practical and research-based expertise and (3) form cross-institutional and cross-community partnerships that envision, propose, and implement opportunities for collecting and analyzing data to systematically inform the collective understanding. Participation-based activities will include design-based experiences, participatory activities, demonstrations of works in progress, prototyping, creative pitching, practitioner lightning talks, small group breakouts, hands-on design activities, and an 'unconference' style synthesis of bold ideas. Participants will be invited to experiment with distributed learning technologies. Five focus areas for the workshop include (1) inclusivity of learning spaces that invite multiple perspectives and full participation, (2) documenting learning in ways that are linked to outcomes and impacts for all learners, (3) implementing the use of new technologies in diverse settings, such as the workforce, (4) interpersonal interactions and peer-to-peer learning that may encourage a STEM career-path, and, (5) methods for collecting and analyzing data at the intersection of people, the learning environment, and new technologies at multiple levels. Outcomes of the workshop will serve to advance knowledge regarding critical gaps and opportunities and identify and characterize models of collaboration, networking, and innovation that operate within and across studio-based STEM learning environments.
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.
Described by Wohlwend, Peppler, Keune and Thompson (2017) as “a range of activities that blend design and technology, including textile crafts, robotics, electronics, digital fabrication, mechanical repair or creation, tinkering with everyday appliances, digital storytelling, arts and crafts—in short, fabricating with new technologies to create almost anything” (p. 445), making can open new possibilities for applied, interdisciplinary learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Martin, 2015), in ways that decenter and democratize access to ideas, and promote the construction
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Jill CastekMichelle Schira HagermanRebecca Woodland
Providing an original framework for the study of makerspaces in a literacy context, this book bridges the scholarship of literacy studies and STEM and offers a window into the practices that makers learn and interact with. Tucker-Raymond and Gravel define and illustrate five key STEM literacies—identifying, organizing, and integrating information; creating and traversing representations; communicating with others for help and feedback during making; documenting processes; and communicating finished products—and demonstrate how these literacies intersect with making communities.
YR Media (formerly Youth Radio) engages young people in digital media production that combines journalism, design, data, and coding. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), YR Media collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s App Inventor to launch WAVES — A STEM-Powered Youth News Network for the Nation. This three-year initiative expanded YR Media’s model of informal STEM education through the launch of a national platform that utilizes STEM-powered tools to create and distribute news stories, mobile apps, and digital interactives.
Rockman et al, an
We examined the conversational reflections of 248 families with 6–11‐year‐old children shortly after they visited a tinkering exhibit. Our aim was to understand the conditions of tinkering and conversational reflection that can enhance STEM learning opportunities for young children. We discuss implications for the design of tinkering and reflection activities that can both reveal and advance STEM learning.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. The project will develop and research, as a feasibility study, a series of art-inclusive, pop-up Science, Art, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEAM) makerspaces in a high-poverty, primarily rural county in Oklahoma. A makerspace is a collaborative work space inside a library, school or other community space for making, learning, exploring and sharing that uses high tech to low tech tools. The makerspaces will be temporary workshops that are developed through a community planning process that assesses the needs and interests of citizen stakeholders. Scientists, artists and other experts will work together with the community to design a series of thematic pop-up makerspace sessions. The project builds a collaborative infrastructure and capacity for small and rural communities by bringing together resource providers and experts to identify and design science-oriented challenges. Long-term benefits for participants include sustained focus on new approaches for civic engagement through STEAM-driven making which could foster new role identities pertaining to science and art. The project deliverables include: (1) a theoretically informed model to build a community's capacity to collaborate toward fostering civic engagement through science-oriented pop-up makerspaces, (2) Pop-Up STEAM Studio makerspaces, (3) training for pop-up facilitators, and (4) visual documentation panels and web-based digital stories to communicate progress and process.
Project research will enhance knowledge-building of the process of developing a science-oriented community challenge that embraces STEAM and making. A key contribution of the proposed project will be the generation of insights into how community members establish consensus around the joint goal of designing, documenting, and facilitating integrated art and science making activities to address and communicate the challenge. Research will focus on the roles participants take when engaging in the making process through an identity-based model of motivated action. Analysis of advisory board meeting artifacts and focus group data will allow the researchers to identify processes of negotiation and consensus building at the collective level and in relation to each issue to which the group attends. Emergent themes (such as negotiation, shared learning, idea or project revisions, diverse perspectives coming to consensus, etc.) will be examined across individual and group units of analysis, from all data sources, and through the congruent theoretical lenses of role identity theory and negotiated learning pedagogy. The research outcomes should inform efforts to build infrastructure and capacity of community resources by providing a model for developing collaborative pop-up makerspaces.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sheri VasindaJoanna GarnerStephanie HathcockRebecca Brienen
Cities are facing new demands as their urban populations rapidly grow. Smart City initiatives are being developed to address issues of mobility, infrastructure, security, and safety, while enhancing the quality of life of citizens. One-size-fits-all solutions are not viable. Instead, the diversity of a city's residents, including life experiences, cultural backgrounds, needs, and behaviors, must be taken into account to achieve transformative, citizen-centered solutions. Engineers, scientists, policy makers, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders must be prepared to tackle future Smart City challenges, and address knowledge barriers in understanding the needs of citizens across age, occupation, financial standing, disability, and technology savviness. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award to the Arizona State University addresses this need by training the next generation of MS and PhD students for careers in Smart Cities-related fields. The project anticipates training thirty-eight (38) MS and PhD students, including twenty-four (24) funded trainees, from the following degree programs: Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology; Public Affairs; Computer Science; Civil, Environmental, and Sustainable Engineering; Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering; and Applied Engineering Programs. In addition to trainees, it is envisioned that over 300 other MS and PhD students in STEM disciplines will participate in opportunities made available through this traineeship. The knowledge and technologies developed from this project will contribute toward improving the quality of life for all of society through interdisciplinary, citizen-centered Smart City solutions.
An integrated education-research-practice model focused on the technological, societal, and environmental research aspects of citizen-centered solutions for Smart Cities will be employed to instill trainees with transdisciplinary skills and knowledge through cross-disciplinary courses; experience with leading collaborative, use-inspired research projects; applied learning through internships with partners and teaching opportunities; research experiences through service learning and leadership; and entrepreneurial education. Trainees will pursue research thrusts in Citizen-Centered Design; Smart City Infrastructure and Dynamics; and Socio-Environmental Practices and Policies. These thrusts are embedded in integrative priority application areas of Transportation and Accessibility; Safety, Security, and Risk Reduction; and Engagement and Education. Research efforts will significantly advance data-enabled citizen engagement; urban informatics; Internet-of-Things technologies; inclusion and accessibility; urban infrastructure; transportation systems; cybersecurity; swarm robotics; urban sustainability; quality of life and equity for citizens; hazards management and risk reduction; and societal concerns and ethics of emerging Smart City technologies. Focused efforts will be made to recruit underrepresented minorities, women, and individuals with disabilities, in order to tap underutilized talent, equip them to address the needs of their communities, and increase involvement of these groups in Smart Cities-related fields.
The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The program is dedicated to effective training of STEM graduate students in high priority interdisciplinary research areas through comprehensive traineeship models that are innovative, evidence-based, and aligned with changing workforce and research needs.
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:
Michael KennedyRam PendyalaCynthia SelinAnn McKennaTroy McDanielGail-Joon AhnSethuraman Panchanathan
This project aims to broaden participation in STEM education among underserved populations through innovative and inclusive approaches to technology education. The project is designed to enhance knowledge and comfort with technology and develop computational thinking among women who were formerly incarcerated and are now seeking to reenter the workforce or adjust to their lives outside the criminal justice system ("women in transition") in the Midwest. While women have become the fastest growing segment of the incarcerated population, prison education and reentry programs are not well prepared to respond to this influx. Women in transition are rarely exposed to STEM education and they are generally isolated from the digital world while in prison. Consequently, they face post-incarceration challenges in accessing and using rapidly changing digital technologies. Against this backdrop, this three-year technology education project will aim to help women in transition in Kansas and Missouri develop STEM skills relevant to job applications and post-incarceration adjustments. The project may serve as a template for building evidence-based workforce preparation efforts in informal settings, and the concurrent online peer networking and app development may also facilitate adaptation for and scaling to other regions and other similarly digitally disadvantaged populations. This project is funded by the 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 design is informed by the research team's past experiences offering technology education to women in transition and other underserved populations in the Midwest. The design includes three interrelated aspects: (1) technology education, (2) web/mobile app development, and (3) original empirical research. The research team will offer hybrid (online and offline) technology training programs to 300 women in transition in Kansas and Missouri. Learners will attend weekly face-to-face technology classes at different levels (introductory, intermediate, and advanced) at public libraries. A member-only online site and an accompanying mobile application for online tutorials and virtual meet-ups will enhance exposure to different types of technologies. Starting with interest-based technology topics including online resume building, information verification, and identity protection, the team will introduce women to deeper STEM topics including elementary coding skills and computational thinking. Empirical research will examine how different modalities of offering technology education are associated with learning outcomes for women participating in the program and the association of increasing knowledge and skills in digital technologies with self-efficacy, perceived social support, employment, and reduced recidivism.
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:
Hyunjin SeoHannah BrittonMegha RamaswamyBaek-Young ChoiSejun Song
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).