Computational Thinking (CT) is a relatively new educational focus and a clear need for learners as a 21st century skill. This proposal tackles this challenging new area for young learners, an area greatly in need of research and learning materials. The Principal Investigators will develop and implement integrated STEM+C museum exhibits and integrate CT in their existing engineering design based PictureSTEM curriculum for K-2 students. They will also pilot assessments of the CT components of the PictureSTEM curriculum. This work will make a unique contribution to the available STEM+C learning materials and assessments. There are few such materials for the kindergarten to second grade (K-2) population they will work with. They will research the effects of the curriculum and the exhibits with a mixed methods approach. First, they will collect observational data and conduct case studies to discover the important elements of an integrated STEM+C experience in both the formal in-school setting with the curriculum and in the informal out-of-school setting with families interacting with the museum exhibits. This work will provide a novel way to understand the important question of how in- and out-of-school experiences contribute to the development of STEM and CT thinking and learning. Finally, they will collect data from all participants to discover the ways that their activities lead to increases in STEM+C knowledge and interest.
The Principal Investigators will build on an integrated STEM curriculum by integrating CT and develop integrated museum exhibits. They base both activities on engineering design implemented through challenge based programming activities. They will research and/or develop assessments of both STEM+C integrated thinking and CT. Their research strategy combines Design Based Research and quantitative assessment of the effectiveness of the materials for learning CT. In the first two years of their study, they will engage in iterations on the design of the curriculum and the exhibits based on observation and case-study data. There will be 16 cases that draw from each grade level and involve data collection for the case student in both schools and museums. They will also use this work to illuminate what integrated STEM+C thinking and learning looks like across formal and informal learning environments. Based in some part on what they discover in this first phase, they will conduct the quantitative assessments with all (or at least most) students participating in the study
The art/science nexus has historically been approached through a challenge of aesthetics versus mathematics, and processes of knowledge production. Notably absent in this debate are the social sciences that explore human experience and perception. In particular, what has not been addressed clearly in the literature is how reasoning about the human experience can be provoked when people encounter content that does not assert itself as neatly defined in either an art or science discourse. By reflecting on one case study of a public art/science installation, we explore new fields of knowledge
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John FraserFiona MacDonaldNezam Ardalan
In order to improve science, technology, mathematics, and engineering (STEM) learning, it is crucial to better understand the informal experiences that young children have that prepare them for formal science education. Young children are naturally curious about the world around them, and research in developmental psychology shows that families often support children in exploring and seeking explanations for scientific phenomena. It is less clear how to link children's natural curiosity and everyday parent-child interaction with more formal STEM learning. This collaborative project will team researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of Texas, and Brown University with informal learning practitioners at the Children's Discovery Museum, The Thinkery, and the Providence Children's Museum in order to investigate how family interaction relates to children's causal learning, as well as how modifications to museum exhibit design and facilitation by museum staff influence families' styles of interaction and increase children's causal learning. This project is funded by the Research on Education and Learning (REAL) program which supports fundamental research by investigators from a range of disciplines in order to deepen what is known about STEM learning.
The project team will examine how ethnically and linguistically diverse samples of parents and children engage in collaborative scientific learning in three children's museums across the U.S. The research will combine observational studies of parent-child interaction in a real-world setting with experimental measures of children's causal learning. The investigators will examine how children explore and derive explanations for museum exhibits about mechanical gear function and fluid dynamics. In this way, the researchers will investigate the relation between styles of parent-child interaction and children's causal learning. The team will also investigate novel ways of presenting material within the exhibits to facilitate exploration and explanation. They will explore how signage, conversations with museum staff, parents' attitudes towards learning in museum settings, and parents' own prior knowledge about the exhibits can influence the parent-child interaction and subsequent causal learning. The project will advance the basic research goal of advancing what is known about what affects children's science content learning. It will also advance the practice-oriented goal of developing new strategies for the design of science museum exhibits and make recommendations for how parents can better talk to their children about scientific phenomena.
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Libraries across the country have been reimagining their community role and leveraging their resources and public trust to strengthen community-based learning and foster critical thinking, problem solving, and engagement in STEM. What started some years ago as independent experiments has become a national movement. The Space Science Institute's National Center for Interactive Learning (NCIL), in partnership with the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), received funding from the National Science Foundation for the first-ever Public Libraries & STEM conference, at the Sheraton Denver Downtown
National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded an Informal Science Education (ISE) grant, since renamed Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) to a group of institutions led by two of the University of California, Davis’s centers: the Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) and the W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in Earth Sciences (KeckCAVES). Additional partner institutions were the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center (ECHO), Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) at the University of California, Berkeley, and Audience Viewpoints Consulting (AVC). The summative evaluation study was
Since its completion in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge has become one of the world’s most recognized landmarks as both an iconic public works accomplishment and a popular tourist destination. In 2008, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $3 million grant to the Golden Gate Bridge Highway & Transportation District to leverage this status in developing informal education resources to interpret the science, engineering and history of the bridge. Through this initiative the Golden Gate Bridge would become a model for other public works venues for providing informal science education and
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
The iSaveSpecies project, created by Project Dragonfly at Miami University and a consortium of zoos and aquariums, designed and implemented a socially-networked exhibit system to engage family visitors to zoos and aquariums in inquiry and conservation. The first wave of the iSaveSpecies exhibit stations focused on Great Apes, allowing families to conduct research on captive ape populations and to help save wild apes by joining the work of experienced field conservationists. The Pittsburgh Zoo incorporated three touchscreen-based research and action kiosks in or near their gorilla exhibit.
The iSaveSpecies project, created by Project Dragonfly at Miami University and a consortium of zoos and aquariums, designed and implemented a socially-networked exhibit system to engage family visitors to zoos and aquariums in inquiry and conservation. The first wave of the iSaveSpecies exhibit stations focused on Great Apes, allowing families to conduct research on captive ape populations and to help save wild apes by joining the work of experienced field conservationists. The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo incorporated three touchscreen-based research and action kiosks in or near their orangutan
The iSaveSpecies project, created by Project Dragonfly at Miami University and a consortium of zoos and aquariums, designed and implemented a socially-networked exhibit system to engage family visitors to zoos and aquariums in inquiry and conservation. The first wave of the iSaveSpecies exhibit stations focused on Great Apes, allowing families to conduct research on captive ape populations and to help save wild apes by joining the work of experienced field conservationists. The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium incorporated three touchscreen-based research and action kiosks in or near their ape and
The iSaveSpecies project, created by Project Dragonfly at Miami University and a consortium of zoos and aquariums, designed and implemented a socially-networked exhibit system to engage family visitors to zoos and aquariums in inquiry and conservation. The first wave of the iSaveSpecies exhibit stations focused on Great Apes, allowing families to conduct research on captive ape populations and to help save wild apes by joining the work of experienced field conservationists. The Atlanta Zoo incorporated three touchscreen-based research and action kiosks in or near their ape exhibit.
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