The Science and Math Informal Learning Education (SMILE) pathway is serving the digital resource management needs of the informal learning community. The science and math inquiry experiences offered by science and technology centers, museums, and out-of-school programs are distinct from those found in formal classrooms. Interactive exhibits, multimedia presentations, virtual environments, hands-on activities, outdoor field guides, engineering challenges, and facilitated programs are just some of the thoughtfully designed resources used by the informal learning community to make science and math concepts come alive. With an organizational framework specifically designed for informal learning resources, the SMILE pathway is empowering educators to locate and explore high-quality education materials across multiple institutions and collections. The SMILE pathway is also expanding the participation of underrepresented groups by creating an easily accessible nexus of online materials, including those specifically added to extend the reach of effective science and math education to all communities. To promote the use of the SMILE pathway and the NSDL further, project staff are creating professional development programs and a robust online community of educators and content experts to showcase best practices tied to digital resources. Finally, to guarantee continued growth and involvement in the SMILE pathway, funding and editorial support is being provided to expansion partners, beyond the founding institutions, to add new digital resources to the NSDL.
We found that the learners seeking out resources to teach themselves to code were generally college educated women who were motived either by the desire to be able to read and understand the code written by hired developers or the desire to become developers themselves. The importance of a female-focused learning setting was mixed; while most women acknowledged a more comfortable atmosphere created by such a setting, very few cited that as a primary reason for joining the group.
All learner participants in this study persisted through the ten weeks of the Women’s Coaching and Learning
In 2016, ETR received a National Science Foundation grant to study, under Principal Investigator Louise Ann (“Lou Ann”) Lyon, PhD, a newly formed, real-world organization dedicated to helping women in the workforce learn to write computer code. This project formed a partnership between a research team with experience in computer science (CS) education and learning sciences research and a newly fashioned practitioner team focused on building a grassroots, informal, volunteer group created to help women help themselves and others learn to write computer code. This research-practitioner
Since the early 1990s, there has been a considerable increase in the number of scientific studies on science communication, and this increase has been accompanied by a diversification of the research field. This study focuses on one aspect of this development: it analyses how citation network structures within the field have developed over time, and whether science communication research shows signs of becoming a research field or a discipline in its own right. Employing a co-citation analysis of scholarly publications published between 1996 and 2015, it assesses to what extent a coherent
This commentary introduces a preliminary conceptual framework for approaching putative effects of scholarly online systems on collaboration inside and outside of academia. The first part outlines a typology of scholarly online systems (SOS), i.e., the triad of specialised portals, specialised information services and scholarly online networks which is developed on the basis of nine German examples. In its second part, the commentary argues that we know little about collaborative scholarly community building by means of SOS. The commentary closes with some remarks on further research questions
Web-based information and communication systems extend access for scientific communities to information such as publications or research data and provide the opportunity to collaborate with other scientists. Our comment gives a short sketch of the Information Service Sociology (short: FID Sociology), in which we aim at designing and developing such an information and communication infrastructure within the field of Sociology. To this end, it comprises (i) an approach for simplified publishing of open access publications, (ii) an integrated search across multiple sociological databases, and
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Johanne SchaibleSonja StrunkDavid Brodesser
This comment focuses on an early case of an open infrastructure that emerged in the 1990s in international astronomy. It targets the reasons for this infrastructure’s tremendous success and starts with a few comments on the term ‘digital infrastructure’. Subsequently, it provides a brief description of the most important components of the infrastructure in astronomy. In a third step, the use of one component — the arXiv, an open access repository for manuscripts — is analyzed. It concludes with some considerations about the success and acceptance of this infrastructure in astronomy.
Participants in this study reported a variety of resources used in the past to learn to code in Apex, including online tutorials, one-day classes sponsored by Salesforce, and meet-up groups focused on learning. They reported various difficulties in learning through these resources, including what they viewed as the gendered nature of classes where the men already seemed to know how to code—which set a fast pace for the class, difficulty in knowing “where to start” in their learning, and a lack of time to practice learning due to work and family responsibilities. The Coaching and Learning Group
Participants in this study reported a variety of resources used in the past to learn to code in Apex, including online tutorials, one-day classes sponsored by Salesforce, and meet-up groups focused on learning. They reported various difficulties in learning through these resources, including what they viewed as the gendered nature of classes where the men already seemed to know how to code—which set a fast pace for the class, difficulty in knowing “where to start” in their learning, and a lack of time to practice learning due to work and family responsibilities. The Coaching and Learning Group
Participants in this study reported a variety of resources used in the past to learn to code in Apex, including online tutorials, one-day classes sponsored by Salesforce, and meet-up groups focused on learning. They reported various difficulties in learning through these resources, including what they viewed as the gendered nature of classes where the men already seemed to know how to code—which set a fast pace for the class, difficulty in knowing “where to start” in their learning, and a lack of time to practice learning due to work and family responsibilities. The Coaching and Learning Group
Grassroots women's learn-to-code groups are springing up in many places. This infographic a study of one such group, in which more-knowledgeable "coaches" lead novice "learners" in learning software programming on the Salesforce platform. This study found that women create such groups to have supportive, non-threatening environments that nuture their learning to build confidence before entering male-dominated software development communities.
Twin Cities PBS BRAINedu: A Window into the Brain/Una ventana al cerebro, is a national English/Spanish informal education project providing culturally competent programming and media resources about the brain’s structure and function to Hispanic middle school students and their families. The project responds to the need to eliminate proven barriers to Hispanic students’ STEM/neuroscience education, increase Hispanic participation in neuroscience and mental health careers and increase Hispanic utilization of mental health resources.
The program’s goals are to engage Hispanic learners and families by
empowering informalSTEM educators to provide culturally competent activities about the brain’s structure and function;
demonstrating neuroscience and mental health career options; and
reducing mental health stigma, thus increasing help-seeking behavior.
The hypothesis underpinning BRAINedu’s four-year project plan is that participating Hispanic youth and families will be able to explain how the brain works and describe specific brain disorders; demonstrate a higher level of interest of neuroscience and mental health careers and be more willing to openly discuss and seek support for brain disorders and mental health conditions.
To achieve program goals, Twin Cities PBS (TPT) will leverage existing partnerships with Hispanic-serving youth educational organizations to provide culturally competent learning opportunities about brain health to Hispanic students and families. TPT will partner with neuroscience and mental health professionals, cultural competency experts and Hispanic-serving informal STEM educators to complete the following objectives:
Develop bilingual educational resources for multigenerational audiences;
Provide professional development around neuroscience education to informal educators, empowering them to implement programming with Hispanic youth and families, and
Develop role model video profiles of Hispanic neuroscience professionals, and help partner organizations produce autobiographical student videos.
We will employ rigorous evaluation strategies to measure the project’s impact on Hispanic participants: a) understanding of neuroscience and brain health, particularly around disorders that disproportionately affect the Hispanic community; b) motivation to pursue neuroscience or mental health career paths; and c) mental health literacy and help-seeking behavior. The project will directly reach 72 Hispanic-serving informal STEM educators and public health professionals, and 200 children and 400 parents in underserved urban, suburban and rural communities nationwide.