The number of Latinos and Native Americans represented in library and information science professions is extremely low. The University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science will address this inequity in its Connected Learning in Digital Heritage Curation project, which focuses on archives and special collections, medical librarianship, and public librarianship. The project will educate 24 culturally competent master’s degree students to serve Latino and Native American communities in the digital world. Students will gain hands-on experience working as graduate assistants with project partners: the University of Arizona Libraries, Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Health Sciences Library, Pima County Public Library, Arizona Historical Society, Arizona State Museum, Labriola National American Indian Data Center, American Indian Film Gallery, Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research and the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records.
The Detroit Zoo will develop an innovative partnership to help underrepresented students achieve success in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) higher education and careers. The “Learning Classroom—Community of Practice” project will bring together the zoo’s informal educators and STEM content experts with partners at the Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program and Oakland University’s School of Education and Human Services in four workshops designed to create a shared language, vision and values around program development and implementation. The group will develop methods for addressing developmental needs of youth while providing science education relating to wildlife conservation and environmental stewardship. They will also build a process for bringing new members into the collaborative with the ultimate goal of delivering large and sustained STEM projects in the metropolitan Detroit area. While focusing on creating a positive impact on STEM achievement and success in Detroit area youth, the project will identify aspects of the process that can be replicable in other regions.
The State University of New York (SUNY) and the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) are collaborating to implement the SUNY/NYAS STEM Mentoring Program, a full scale development project designed to improve the science and math literacy of middle school youth. Building upon lessons learned through the implementation of national initiatives such as NSF's Graduate STEM Fellows in K-12 Education (GK-12) Program, university initiatives such as the UTeach model, and locally-run programs, this project's goals are to: 1) increase access to high quality, hands-on STEM programs in informal environments, 2) improve teaching and outreach skills of scientists in training (graduate and postdoctoral fellows), and 3) test hypotheses around scalable program elements. Together, SUNY and NYAS propose to carry out a comprehensive, systemic science education initiative to recruit graduate students and postdoctoral fellows studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines at colleges and universities statewide to serve as mentors in afterschool programs. SUNY campuses will partner with a community-based organization (CBO) to place mentors in afterschool programs serving middle school students in high-need, low-resource urban and rural communities. Project deliverables include a three-credit online graduate course for mentor training, six pilot sites, a best practices guide, and a model for national dissemination. The online course will prepare graduate and postdoctoral fellows to spend 12-15 weeks in afterschool programs, introducing students to life science, earth science, mathematics and engineering using curriculum modules that are aligned with the New York State standards. The project design includes three pre-selected sites (College of Nanoscale Science & Engineering at the University of Albany, SUNY Institute of Technology, and SUNY Downstate Medical Center) and three future sites to be selected through a competitive process, each of which will be paired with a CBO to create a locally designed STEM mentoring program. As a result, a minimum of 192 mentors will provide informal STEM education to 2,880 middle school students throughout New York State. The comprehensive, mixed-methods evaluation will address the following questions: 1) Does student participation in an afterschool model of informal education lead to an increase in STEM content knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and interest in pursuing further STEM education and career pathways? 2) Do young scientists who participate in the program develop effective teaching and mentoring skills, and develop interest in teaching or mentoring career options that result in STEM retention? 3) What are the attributes of an effective STEM afterschool program and the elements of local adaptation and innovation that are necessary to achieve a successful scale-up to geographically diverse locations? 4) What is the role of the afterschool model in delivering informal STEM education? This innovative model includes a commitment to scale across the 64 SUNY campuses and 122 Councils of the Girl Scouts of the USA, use an online platform to deliver training, and place scientists-in-training in informal learning environments. It is hypothesized that as a result of greater access to STEM education in an informal setting, participating middle school youth will develop increased levels of STEM content knowledge, self-efficacy, confidence in STEM learning, and interest in STEM careers. Scientist mentors will: 1) gain an understanding of the context and characteristics of informal science education, 2) develop skills in mentoring and interpersonal communication, 3) learn and apply best practices of inquiry instruction, and 4) potentially develop interest in teaching as a viable career option. It is anticipated that the project will add to the research literature in several areas such as the effectiveness of incentives for graduate students; the design of mentor support systems; and the structure of pilot site programs in local communities. Findings and materials from this project will be disseminated through presentations at local, regional, and national conferences, publications in peer-reviewed journals focused on informal science education, and briefings sent to more than 25,000 NYAS members around the world.
Effective communication of science to the public by scientists is a desired and sought after attribute. This project which is working with graduate and undergraduate students in Physics will determine what interventions are best in assessing communication and attitudinal capacities in this cadre. Further, the project will determine what strategies are best at remediation. Finally, the successes will be generalized with regard to interventions and remediation to other Physics programs across the country and perhaps to other disciplines in the STEM fields. There are a variety of factors that contribute to effective communications with public audiences. Some of those factors include audience characteristics and teacher/mentor capabilities. This project will ascertain the issues in the latter teacher/mentor capacities. They will assess the mentor's baseline skills regarding communication, teaching and emergent attitudes. These are considered separately as each contributes uniquely to the effectiveness of communication. In the communications skills section, the objective will be to determine initially if the mentors are using any one of the following models: deficit, meaning the mentor is the expert and the participants are not informed; dialogue, where there is more back and forth between mentor and participant; and finally participatory interactions, where there is full integration of participant and mentor ideas. Once the baseline is established, the investigators will introduce mechanisms for remedial intervention with the student mentors to determine if and what types of changes can be made to improve communication directed toward public understanding of STEM concepts and ideas. Finally, the researchers will seek to determine if these interventions have affects beyond the immediate challenges such as career discussions, participation in classes and/or written products.
Project TRUE (Teens Researching Urban Ecology) was a summer research experience for New York City youth that focused on strengthening their STEM interest, skills, and ultimately, increasing diversity in STEM fields. Through a partnership between an informal science institution (the Wildlife Conservation Society) and a university (Fordham University), 200 high school students conducted urban ecology research at one of four zoos in New York City under the guidance of STEM mentors. A unique feature of Project TRUE was its near-peer mentorship model, in which university professors mentored graduate urban ecology students, who mentored undergraduate students, who mentored high school students Science research projects focused on urban ecology topics, with high school students identifying their own research questions that were nested within the undergraduate mentor’s larger research question, thereby establishing a sense of ownership. Youth collected and analyzed their own data and the experience culminated in the creation of research posters, with teams presenting their posters to the public at a student science symposium.
This project was 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. We studied the impacts of two key parts of the program – conducting authentic science research and near-peer mentorship – on the STEM trajectories of almost 200 high school students who participated in the program from 2015 to 2018. The research explored short-term outcomes immediately after the program and followed up with students multiple years after participation to understand the medium-term impacts of the experience during and after the transition from high school to college.
The Badges for College Credit project designs and researches: (1) a digital badge system that leads to college credit as the context for investigating how to integrate badges with learning programs; (2) how to assess learning associated with badges; and (3) how badges facilitate learning pathways and contribute to science identity formation. The project is one of the first efforts to develop a system to associate informal science learning with college credit. The project will partner with three regional informal science institutions, the Pacific Science Center, the Future of Flight, and the Seattle of Aquarium, that will facilitate activities for participants that are linked to informal science learning and earning badges. The project uses the iRemix platform, a social learning platform, as a delivery system to direct participants to materials, resources, and activities that support the learning goals of the project. Badges earned within the system can be exported to the Mozilla Open Badges platform. Participants can earn three types of badges, automatic (based on participation), community (based on contributions to building the online community), and skill (based on mastery of science and communication) badges. Using a learning ecologies framework, the project will investigate multiple influences on how and why youth participate in science learning and making decisions. Project research uses a qualitative and quantitative approach, including observations, interviews, case studies, surveys, and learning analytics data, and data analytics. Project evaluation will focus on the nature and function of the collaboration, and on the scale-up aspects of the innovation and expansion, by: (1) analyzing and documenting effective procedures,and optimal contexts for the dissemination of the model and (2) by analyzing the collaboration between informal science organizations and higher education.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Carrie TzouKaren LennonAmanda GoertzGray Kochlar-Lindgren
This award continues funding of a Center to conduct research and education on the interactions of nanomaterials with living systems and with the abiotic environment. The goals of this Center are to develop a predictive understanding of biological and ecological toxicology for nanomaterials, and of their transport and transformation in the environment. This Center engages a highly interdisciplinary, multi-institutional team in an integrated research program to determine how the physical and chemical properties of nanomaterials determine their environmental impacts from the cellular scale to that of entire ecosystems. The research approach promises to be transformative to the science of ecotoxicology by combining high throughput screening assays with computational and physiological modeling to predict impacts at higher levels of biological organization. The Center will unite the fields of engineering, chemistry, physics, materials science, cell biology, ecology, toxicology, computer modeling, and risk assessment to establish the foundations of a new scientific discipline: environmental nanotoxicology. Research on nanomaterials and development of nanotechnology is expanding rapidly and producing discoveries that promise to benefit the nation?s economy, and improve our ability to live sustainably on earth. There is now a critical need to reduce uncertainty about the possible negative consequences of nanomaterials in the environment, while at the same time providing guidelines for their safe design to prevent environmental and toxicological hazards. This Center addresses this societal need by developing a scientific framework of risk prediction that is paradigm-shifting in its potential to keep pace with the commercial expansion of nanotechnology. Another impact of the Center will be development of human resources for the academic community, industry and government by training the next generation of nano-scale scientists, engineers, and regulators to anticipate and mitigate potential future environmental hazards of nanotechnology. Partnerships with other centers will act as powerful portals for the dissemination and integration of research findings to the scientific, educational, and industrial communities, both nationally and internationally. This Center will contribute to a network of nanotechnology centers that serve the national needs and expand representation and access to this research and knowledge network through programs directed at California colleges serving underrepresented groups. Outreach activities, including a journalist-scientist communication program, will serve to inform both experts and the public at large about the safety issues surrounding nanotechnology and how to safely produce, use, and dispose of nanomaterials.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Andre NelYoram CohenHilary GodwinArturo KellerPatricia Holden
Boston's Museum of Science (MOS), with Harvard as its university research partner, is extending, disseminating, and further evaluating their NSF-funded (DRL-0714706) Living Laboratory model of informal cognitive science education. In this model, early-childhood researchers have both conducted research in the MOS Discovery Center for young children and interacted with visitors during the museum's operating hours about what their research is finding about child development and cognition. Several methods of interacting with adult visitors were designed and evaluated, including the use of "research toys" as exhibits and interpretation materials. Summative evaluation of the original work indicated positive outcomes on all targeted audiences - adults with young children, museum educators, and researchers. The project is now broadening the implementation of the model by establishing three additional museum Hub Sites, each with university partners - Maryland Science Center (with Johns Hopkins), Madison Children's Museum (with University of Wisconsin, Madison), and Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (with Lewis & Clark College). The audiences continue to include researchers (including graduate and undergraduate students); museum educators; and adults with children visiting the museums. Deliverables consist of: (1) establishment of the Living Lab model at the Hub sites and continued improvement of the MOS site, (2) a virtual Hub portal for the four sites and others around the country, (3) tool-kit resources for both museums and scientists, and (4) professional symposia at all sites. Intended outcomes are: (1) improve museum educators' and museum visiting adults' understanding of cognitive/developmental psychology and research and its application to raising their children, (2) improve researchers' ability to communicate with the public and to conduct their research at the museums, and (3) increase interest in, knowledge about, and application of this model throughout the museum community and grow a network of such collaborations.
Research shows that participation and interest in science starts to drop as youth enter high school. This is also the point when science becomes more complex and there is increased need for content knowledge, mathematics capability, and computer or computational knowledge. Evidence suggests that youth who participate in original scientific research are more likely to enter and maintain a career in science as compared to students who do not have these experiences. We know young people get excited by space science. This project (STEM-ID) is informed by previous work in which high school students were introduced to scientific research and contributed to the search for pulsars. Students were able to develop the required science and math knowledge and computer skills that enabled them to successfully participate. STEM-ID builds on this previous work with two primary goals: the replication of the local program into a distributed program model and an investigation of the degree to which authentic research experiences build strong science identities and research self-efficacies. More specifically the project will support (a) significant geographic expansion to institutions situated in communities with diverse populations allowing substantial inclusion of under-served groups, (b) an online learning and discovery environment that will support the participation of youth throughout the country via online activities, and (c) opportunities for deeper participation in research and advancement within the research community. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program which seeks to advance new approaches to, and understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. STEM-ID will serve 2000 high school youth and 200 high school teachers in afterschool clubs with support from 30 undergraduate and graduate students and 10 college/university faculty. Exploratory educational research will determine the broad mechanisms by which online activities and in-person and online peer-mentor teacher-scientist interactions influence science identity, self-efficacy, motivation, and career intentions, as well as a focused understanding of the mechanisms that influence patterns of participation. Youth will be monitored longitudinally through the first two years of college to provide an understanding of the long-term effects of out-of-class science enrichment programs on STEM career decisions. These studies will build an understanding of the best practices for enhancing STEM persistence in college through engagement in authentic STEM programs before youth get to college. In addition to the benefits of the education research, this program may lead participants to discover dozens of new pulsars. These pulsars will be used for fundamental advances such as for testing of general relativity, constraining neutron star masses, or detecting gravitational waves. The resulting survey will also be sensitive to transient signals such as sporadic pulsars and extragalactic bursts. This project provides a potential model for youth from geographical disparate places to participate in authentic research experiences. For providers, it will offer a model for program delivery with lower costs. Findings will support greater understanding of the mechanisms for participation in STEM. This work is being led by West Virginia University and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Participating sites include California Institute of Technology, Cornell University, El Paso Community College, Howard University, Montana State University, Penn State University, Texas Tech University, University of Vermont, University of Washington, and Vanderbilt University.
A recent report by the Association for Computing Machinery estimates that by decade's end, half of all STEM jobs in the United States will be in computing. Yet, the participation of women and underrepresented groups in post-secondary computer science programs remains discouragingly and persistently low. One of the most important findings from research in computer science education is the degree to which informal experiences with computers (at many ages and in many settings) shape young people's trajectories through high school and into undergraduate degree programs. Just as early language and mathematics literacy begins at home and is reinforced throughout childhood through a variety of experiences both in school and out, for reasons of diversity and competency, formal experiences with computational literacy alone are insufficient for developing the next generation of scientists, engineers, and citizens. Thus, this CAREER program of research seeks to contribute to a conceptual and design framework to rethink computational literacy in informal environments in an effort to engage a broad and diverse audience. It builds on the concept of cultural forms to understand existing computational literacy practices across a variety of learning settings and to contribute innovative technology designs. As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in these settings. This CAREER program of research seeks to understand the role of cultural forms in informal computational learning experiences and to develop a theoretically grounded approach for designing such experiences for youth. This work starts from the premise that new forms of computational literacy will be born from existing cultural forms of literacy and numeracy (i.e., for mathematical literacy there are forms like counting songs -- "10 little ducks went out to play"). Many of these forms play out in homes between parents and children, in schools between teachers and students, and in all sorts of other place between friends and siblings. This program of study is a three-phased design and development effort focused on key research questions that include understanding (1) how cultural forms can help shape audience experiences in informal learning environments; (2) how different cultural forms interact with youth's identity-related needs and motivations; and (3) how new types of computational literacy experiences based on these forms can be created. Each phase includes inductive research that attempts to understand computational literacy as it exists in the world and a design phase guided by concrete learning objectives that address specific aspects of computational literacy. Data collection strategies will include naturalist observation, semi-structured, and in-depth interviews, and learning assessments; outcome measures will center on voluntary engagement, motivation, and persistence around the learning experiences. The contexts for research and design will be museums, homes, and afterschool programs. This research builds on a decade of experience by the PI in designing and studying computational literacy experiences across a range of learning settings including museums, homes, out-of-school programs, and classrooms. Engaging a broad and diverse audience in the future of STEM computing fields is an urgent priority of the US education system, both in schools and beyond. This project would complement substantial existing efforts to promote in-school computational literacy and, if successful, help bring about a more representative, computationally empowered citizenry. The integrated education plan supports the training and mentoring of graduate and undergraduate students in emerging research methods at the intersection of the learning sciences, computer science, and human-computer interaction. This work will also develop publically available learning experiences potentially impacting thousands of youth. These experiences will be available in museums, on the Web, and through App stores.
AccessComputing is a NSF-funded Broadening Participation in Computing alliance with the goal of increasing the participation and success of people with disabilities in computing fields. AccessComputing is in its 10th year of funding. It supports students with disabilities from across the country in reaching critical junctures toward college and careers by providing advice, resources, mentoring opportunities, professional contacts, and funding for tutoring, internships, and computing conferences. For educators and employers, it offers institutes and workshops to build awareness of universal design and accommodation strategies, and to aid in recruiting and supporting students with disabilities through the development of inclusive programs and education on promising practices.
The digital revolution has transformed how young people discover and pursue their interests; how they communicate with and learn from other people; and how they encounter and learn about the world around them. How can we identify best practices for incorporating new media technologies into learning environments in a way that resonates with youth, including their interests, goals, and the ways they use technology in their everyday lives? How do we resolve the need to document and recognize informal STEM learning and connect it to formal education contexts? What strategies can be developed for inspiring and tracking student progress towards the learning goals outlined in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)? These questions are the underlying motivation for this CAREER program of research. Digital badges represent a specific kind of networked technology and have been touted as an alternative credentialing system for recognizing and rewarding learning across domains, both inside and outside of formal education contexts. While there is considerable enthusiasm and speculation around the use of digital badges, the extent to which they succeed at empowering learners and connecting their learning across contexts remains largely untested. This project seeks to fill this gap in knowledge. The approach taken for this program of study is a three phased design-based research effort that will be focused on four objectives: (1) identifying design principles and support structures needed to develop and implement a digital badge system that recognizes informal STEM learning; (2) documenting the opportunities and challenges associated with building a digital badge ecosystem that connects informal learning contexts to formal education and employment opportunities; (3) determining whether and how digital badges support learners' STEM identities; and (4) determining whether and how digital badges help learners to connect their informal STEM learning to formal education and employment opportunities. In Phase 1, an existing prototype created in prior work at Seattle's Pacific Science Center will be developed into a fully functional digital badge system. In Phase 2, the PI will also work collaboratively with higher education stakeholders to establish formal mechanisms for recognizing Pacific Science Center badges in higher education contexts. In Phase 3, the badge ecosystem will be expanded and students' use of and engagement with badges will be tracked as they apply to and enter college. The project involves high school students participating in the Discovery Corps program at the Pacific Science Center, undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Washington, and stakeholders in the K-12 and higher education community in Seattle. Educational activities integrated with this program of research will support: (1) mentoring University of Washington students throughout the project to develop their skills as practice-oriented researchers; (2) incorporating the research processes and findings from the project into university courses aimed at developing students' understanding of the opportunities and challenges associated with using new media technologies to support learning; and (3) using the research findings to develop educational outreach initiatives to support other informal STEM learning institutions in their use of digital badges.