This is an Early-concept Grant for Exploratory Research supporting research in Smart and Connected Communities. The research supported by the award is collaborative with research at DePaul University. The researchers are studying the use of technologies to enable communities to connect youth and youth organizations to effectively support diverse learning pathways for all students. These communities, the youth, the youth organizations, formal and informal education organizations, and civic organizations form a learning ecology. The DePaul University researchers will design and implement a smart community infrastructure in the City of Chicago to track real-time student participation in community STEM activities and to develop mobile applications for both students and adults. The smart community infrastructure will bring together information from a variety of sources that affect students' participation in community activities. These include geographic information (e.g., where the student lives, where the activities take place, the student transportation options, the school the student attends), student related information (e.g., the education and experience background of the student, the economic status of the student, students' schedules), and activity information (e.g., location of activity, requirements for participation). The University of Colorado researchers will take the lead on analyzing these data in terms of a community learning ecologies framework and will explore computational approaches (i.e., recommender systems, visualizations of learning opportunities) to improve youth exploration and uptake of interests and programs. These smart technologies are then used to reduce the friction in the learning connection infrastructure (called L3 for informal, formal, and virtual learning) to enable the student to access opportunities for participation in STEM activities that are most feasible and most appropriate for the student. Such a flexible computational approach is needed to support the necessary diversity of potential recommendations: new interests for youth to explore; specific programs based on interests, friends' activities, or geographic accessibility; or programs needed to "level-up" (develop deeper skills) and complete skills to enhance youths' learning portfolios. Although this information was always available, it was never integrated so it could be used to serve the community of both learners and the providers and to provide measurable student learning and participation outcomes. The learning ecologies theoretical framework and supporting computational methods are a contribution to the state of the art in studying afterschool learning opportunities. While the concept of learning ecologies is not new, to date, no one has offered such a systematic and theoretically-grounded portfolio of measures for characterizing the health and resilience of STEM learning ecologies at multiple scales. The theoretical frameworks and concepts draw together multiple research and application domains: computer science, sociology of education, complexity science, and urban planning. The L3 Connects infrastructure itself represents an unprecedented opportunities for conducting "living lab" experiments to improve stakeholder experience of linking providers to a single network and linking youth to more expanded and varied opportunities. The University of Colorado team will employ three methods: mapping, modeling, and linking youth to STEM learning opportunities in school and out of school settings in a large urban city (Chicago). The recommender system will be embedded into youth and parent facing mobile apps, enabling the team to characterize the degree to which content-based, collaborative filtering, or constraint based recommendations influence youth actions. The project will result in two measurable outcomes of importance to key L3 stakeholder groups: a 10% increase in the number of providers (programs that are part of the infrastructure) in target neighborhoods and a 20% increase in the number of youth participating in programs.
As a part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds research and innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. This media and technology project will scale up Youth Radio's proven model of STEM education through youth-driven multimedia journalism and related app development using the MIT App Inventor. A new Youth News Network (YNN) will implement a nationwide feeder system of youth reporters and educators using the previously developed and proven STEM curriculum. Previous research and evaluation has demonstrated that this model can engage underserved youth and put them in leadership positions in technological innovation. Key deliverables include the YNN STEM Desk that will produce 15-20 STEM-related stories each year; bootcamps (1-3 day workshops) training youth around the country focusing on app development and media links; and new toolkits providing resources to help with app development, data analysis and other STEM-specific skills. Project partners include MIT Media Lab, National Public Radio, Best Buy's Teen Tech Centers, National Writing Project, Computer Clubhouses, and PBS Learning Media among others.
Over the previous eight years, research and evaluation findings had been used to refine the project. These data served as the foundation for this scale-up project. The research conducted by the investigator and the Scholar-in-Residence in this scale-up uses an embedded ethnographic approach that combines field notes, recorded meetings and discussions, media artifacts, etc.--data that is transcribed and coded for indicators of STEM learning and critical computational literacy. The external summative evaluation will build on prior evidence regarding how this unique model engages youth and impacts their skills in STEM related media and technology.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Elisabeth SoepEllin O'LearyHarold Abelson
The project will research and further develop an interactive platform, Visitor Interactions in Microbiology (VIM), that enables museum visitors to influence and learn about the behavior of live microorganisms. Hands-on museum exhibits encourage visitors to engage with, and manipulate, scientific content. Currently, museum visitors experience microbiology by observing microorganisms through a microscope, through models, or through simulations, all of which limit interactivity. With the VIM platform, visitors draw on a screen or use a Kinect motion sensor to generate microscopic light images. The single celled organisms respond to these images in real-time. Preliminary testing shows that the platform has significant potential to promote prolonged engagement and science inquiry by visitors. The project will develop and research additional technological and design considerations to understand how VIM can be translated into effective museum exhibits. This project is supported by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program which funds research and innovative resources for use in a variety of settings as a part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments.
Project researchers will first compare VIM to existing microscopic exhibits to investigate both advantages as well as limitations with the platform. Based on that research, three iterations of prototypes of VIM and user testing will explore possible extensions of VIM with respect to modes of visitor interactions, types of organisms and types of stimuli. In addition to improving the VIM platform, the knowledge gained from this study will inform a new approach to informal science learning -- an approach that supports self-directed inquiry, interest in microbiology, and interest in underlying technology. The project will produce: (1) research results concerning the potential of VIM and the variety of interaction modes that are effective using the system and (2) an open-source catalogue of hardware, software and protocol instructions that will enable other institutions to take advantage of the research on VIM. Project research findings and resources will be widely disseminated to practitioners via conferences and professional journals. The research will provide the foundation for future work that will include the design of a permanent exhibition.
This Research in Service to Practice project, a collaboration of Pepperdine University and the New York Hall of Science, will establish a network of STEM-related Media Making Clubs comprised of after-school students aged 12 - 19 and teachers in the U.S. and in three other countries: Kenya, Namibia and Finland. The media produced by the students may include a range of formats such as videos, short subject films, games, computer programs and specialized applications like interactive books. The content of the media produced by the students will focus on the illustration and teaching of STEM topics, where the shared media is intended to help other students become enthused about and learn the science. This proposal builds on the principal investigator's previous work on localized media clubs by now creating an international network in which after-school students and teachers will collaborate at a distance with other clubs. The central research questions for the project pertain to three themes at the intersection of learning, culture and collaboration: the impact of participatory teaching, virtual networks, and intercultural, global competence. The research will combine qualitative, cross-cultural and big data methods. Critical to the innovation of the project, the research team will also develop a network assessment tool, adapting epistemic network analysis methods to the needs of this initiative. This work 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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Eric HamiltonKatherine McMillanPriya Mohabir
This project will capitalize on the power of story to teach foundational computational thinking (CT) concepts through the creation of animated and live-action videos, paired with joint media engagement activities, for preschool children and their parents. Exposure at a young age to CT is critical for preparing all students to engage with the technologies that have become central to nearly every occupation. But despite this recognized need, there are few, if any, resources that (1) introduce CT to young children; (2) define the scope of what should be taught; and (3) provide evidence-based research on effective strategies for bringing CT to a preschool audience. To meet these needs, WGBH and Education Development Center/Center for Children and Technology (EDC/CCT) will utilize an iterative research and design process to create animated and live-action videos paired with joint media engagement activities for parents and preschool children, titled "Monkeying Around". Animated videos will model for children how to direct their curiosity into a focused exploration of the problem-solving process. Live-action videos will feature real kids and their parents and will further illustrate how helpful CT can be for problem solving. With their distinctive visual humor and captivating storytelling, the videos will be designed to entice parents to watch alongside their children. This is important since parents will play an important role in guiding them in explorations that support their CT learning. To further promote joint media engagement, hands-on activities will accompany the videos. Following the creation of these resources, an experimental impact study will be conducted to capture evidence as to if and how these resources encourage the development of young children's computational thinking, and to assess parents' comfort and interest in the subject. Concurrent with this design-based research process, the project will build on the infrastructure of state systems of early education and care (which have been awarded Race to the Top grants) and local public television stations to design and develop an outreach initiative to reach parents. Additional partners--National Center for Women & Information Technology, Code in Schools, and code.org (all of whom are all dedicated to promoting CT)--will further help bring this work to a national audience.
Can parent/child engagement with digital media and hands-on activities improve children's early learning of computational thinking? To answer this question, WGBH and EDC/CCT are collaborating on a design-based research process with children and their parents to create Monkeying Around successive interactions. The overarching goal of this mixed-methods research effort is to generate evidence that supports the development of recommendations around the curricular, instructional, and contextual factors that support or impede children's acquisition of CT as a result of digital media viewing and hands-on engagement. Moving through cycles of implementation, observation, analysis, and revision over the course of three years, EDC/CCT researchers will work closely with families and WGBH's development team to determine how children learn the fundamentals of CT, how certain learning tasks can demonstrate what children understand, how to stimulate interest in hands-on activities, and the necessary scaffolds to support parental involvement in the development of children's CT. Each phase of the research will provide rich feedback to inform the next cycle of content development and will include: Phase 1: the formulation of three learning blueprints (for algorithmic thinking, sequencing, and patterns); Phase 2: the development of a cohesive set of learning tasks to provide evidence of student learning, as well as the production of a prototype of the digital media and parent/child engagement resources (algorithmic thinking); Phase 3-Part A: pilot research on the prototype, revisions, production of two additional prototypes (sequencing and patterns); Phase 3-Part B: pilot research on the three prototypes and revisions; and Phase 4: production of 27 animated and live-action videos and 18 parent/child engagement activities and a study of their impact. Through this process, the project team will build broader knowledge about how to design developmentally appropriate resources promoting CT for preschool children and will generate data on how to stimulate interest in hands-on activities and the necessary scaffolds to support parental involvement in the development of children's CT. The entire project represents an enormous opportunity for WGBH and for the informal STEM media field to learn more about how media can facilitate informal CT learning in the preschool years and ways to broaden participation by building parents' capacity to support STEM learning. 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 the Exploratorium’s Indoor Positioning System (IPS) project, we prototyped a crowd-sourced, location-tagged audio app, called Exploratorium Voices, or Open Conversation, that visitors could use on smartphones to listen to short comments from staff, experts and other visitors and to leave their own comments for others to hear. This app was developed with Roundware, an open-source framework that collects, stores, and delivers audio content, integrated with a Wi-Fi IPS that provided location data used to tag audio recordings and determine where a visitor was to play recordings left
This award supports the production of a longitudinal video documentary of the evolution of Advanced LIGO and will chronicle the most critical and exciting period in the history of gravitational wave science in the past 100 years. LIGO resumed the search for gravitational waves in 2015 with a newly upgraded detector and on September 14, 2015 detected gravitational waves for the first time, astounding not only the scientific community but the entire world. Using footage captured at critical periods between August 2015 and March 2016 during the discovery phase as well as new filming taking place over the next two years, the team will produce films which will impact at least hundreds of thousands of people and possibly many more than that. The goal is to educate, inspire, and motivate. Students at the high school and undergraduate levels may be more inspired to pursue STEM careers after watching scientific vignettes focusing on the exciting science and technology of Advanced LIGO. Scientific historians and sociologists will have the opportunity to use the hundreds of hours of available film clips as a video database to investigate in detail the discovery of gravitational waves as a case study of large scale collaborations ("Big Science"). Videos highlighting the cutting edge technological advances brought about by Advanced LIGO and their impacts on other fields of science and technology may prove effective for educating officials and policy makers on the benefits of fundamental science.
During the course of the project, a series of professionally made video shorts will be produced for the LIGO Laboratory and LSC for education and public outreach purposes through distribution on LIGO Laboratory, LSC web sites, and the LIGO YouTube Channel. Through an extensive series of film shoots, XPLR Productions will work with the LIGO Laboratory and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) to capture key moments as LIGO scientists work to achieve Advanced LIGO's design sensitivity and carry out a series of observing runs over the next two years. The team will produce a series of video shorts explaining the important scientific and technological concepts and issues of Advanced LIGO by the scientific experts who create them. In the longer term, footage will used to produce either a feature length documentary film or a twelve-part series on television entitled 'LIGO' chronicling the discovery of gravitational waves and the exploration of exotic high-energy astrophysical phenomena such as colliding black holes. Intended for broad distribution through cinema or television, 'LIGO' will bring science to life for a wide audience.
This EAGER project sought to generate early knowledge for the museum field about the capabilities and limitations of an Indoor Positioning System to: 1) automate the collection of visitor movement data for museum research, and 2) enable location-aware applications designed to support museum visitor learning. Working with Qualcomm, Inc., the Exploratorium installed and experimented with an early prototype of a whole-museum, WiFi-based IPS that acquired and processed timestamped location data (latitude/longitude) from mobile test devices, similar to cell phones. The project 1) defined IPS ground
The scandal of the “biotechnology evangelist” erupted in Korea at the beginning of the new year: a commission from Seoul National University announced that it had proof that Dr Woo Suk Hwang, considered one of the world’s foremost experts on cloning by nucleus transfer, had manipulated the data concerning experiments in human cell cloning and the creation of eleven lines of stem cells from human embryos published in two different articles in the journal Science in 2004 and 2005.
Those studying the public understanding of science and risk perception have held it clear for long: the relation between information and judgment elaboration is not a linear one at all. Among the reasons behind it, on the one hand, data never are totally “bare” and culturally neutral; on the other hand, in formulating a judgment having some value, the analytic component intertwines – sometimes unpredictably – with the cultural history and the personal elaboration of anyone of us.
This introduction presents the essays belonging to the JCOM special issue on User-led and peer-to-peer science. It also draws a first map of the main problems we need to investigate when we face this new and emerging phenomenon. Web tools are enacting and facilitating new ways for lay people to interact with scientists or to cooperate with each other, but cultural and political changes are also at play. What happens to expertise, knowledge production and relations between scientific institutions and society when lay people or non-scientists go online and engage in scientific activities? From