Modern science communication has emerged as a field of study, a body of practice and a profession. In the last 60 years, we have seen the birth of interactive science centres, university courses, the first research into science communication, and a growth in employment by research institutions, universities, museums, science centres and industry. Now Ireland has told its story.
With stories of struggle and dramatic breakthroughs, science has incredible potential to interest the public. However, as the rhetoric of outrage surrounds controversies over science policy there is an urgent need for credible, trusted voices that frame science issues in a way that resonates with a diverse public. A network of informal educators, park rangers, museum docents and designers, and zoo and aquarium interpreters are prepared to do so during millions of visits a year; just where science stories are most meaningfully told—in the places where members of the public are open to learning
Gathering evidence for the long-term impact of programs for youth on their involvement in STEM studies and careers continues to be a challenge, especially for program interventions happening in earlier stages of development (e.g., elementary, middle, high-school years. Work that focuses on mechanisms for mitigating these challenges is important. The conference and associated activities aim to build a research action agenda that is rooted in practice to support better understanding of the long-term impacts of informal STEM programs for girls provided by cultural institutions, along with methods and approaches for measuring them. The project team will use a collaborative co-design approach to establish a STEM for Girls Research Alliance. The Alliance will include three levels of participants, with different levels of commitment: a core planning group (CPG) of 8-10 people, approximately 20-25 participating members (PM) and 50-60 interested stakeholder group representatives (SGR). The project team will utilize face-to-face meetings, digital engagement strategies, and surveys to develop the agenda and solicit multiple rounds of feedback and input. The CPG, consisting of leaders and representatives from state-based STEM for Girls organizations that are part of the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) and members of the New York State STEAM for Girls Collaborative, will be responsible for setting priorities and guiding the action agenda. The PM will include representatives (educators and researchers) from informal STEM programs at cultural institutions that participate in the state-based collaboratives. The PM will be regularly consulted on important aspects of the action agenda that relate to their work. Finally, the SGR will include representatives from several audiences that are being served by or work with the participating members: girls and young women, parents, educators, funders, researchers and employers. The SG will be engaged via focus groups virtually or at national meetings to which these individuals attend.
To support broader involvement of professionals working in this sector, a comprehensive digital engagement plan using web and social media networks will be developed. The plan will utilize a consistent hashtag, #STEMeffect, allowing participants to follow the conversation across social media platforms. Social media platforms to be utilized will include Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Snapchat and others. More than 60,000 people will be engaged via the networks of the NY STEAM Collaborative, NGCP, WSKG Public Media and project partners. A robust research action plan will position researchers to further explore the role of informal STEM education experiences in shaping the career choices of girls and identify where there are breaks in the hoped-for pathways to STEM college and careers. It also will benefit informal STEM organizations by yielding information that will help them to fine-tune their programs for girls and young women. Ultimately, contributions to the knowledge base will result in broadened participation of girls and women in STEM programs and careers. This work is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program as part of its strategy to enhance learning in informal environments and support innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of settings.
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:
Lynda KennedyAlicia SantiagoBabette Moeller
Research tells us that media -- be it on television or film or in the form of radio podcasts -- are the most widely utilized and trusted sources for public science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning. Media narratives can shape opinions and knowledge about STEM as well as either reduce or enhance cultural biases and perceptions of STEM. However, little is known about the process by which STEM media professionals develop and assess mastery of "STEM Media," or to what extent evidence-based communication strategies and data-supported effective practices are considered and used by creators of STEM media. This conference proposal will bring together STEM professionals and media creators to determine how STEM media makers develop and assess expertise in STEM media making and articulate best practices. The goal is to promote cross-industry collaboration between media producers, STEM professionals and communication researchers in crafting evidence-based media for the public. The project will also create a 2-year STEM Media Fellows program as well as expand the Science of Communication Strand at two Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festivals (JHWFF) and at the Science Media Awards and Summit in the Hub (SMASH) conference in 2018. The work will be led by Jackson Hole WILD, a nonprofit professional organization, in partnership with Colorado Mesa University.
The project will employ three strategies to advance effective STEM media production and product effectiveness. First, an initiative to provide professional development in Communication Science will be part of the 2017 and 2018 Jackson Hole WILD conferences to increase the attending STEM media professionals' understanding of evidence-based practices. The content will be presented through structured sessions at the conferences with recordings of the sessions made available online as well as through partner organizations. Second, the STEM Media Fellows program will recruit emerging STEM professionals who are interested in media making. The goals of the STEM Media Fellows program are to prepare these diverse STEM professionals with knowledge and skills for media development, and form collaborations among the STEM professionals and media creators. Third, in collaboration with Colorado Mesa University, the project will conduct a Delphi study to determine how mastery of STEM media making is acquired and assessed. The Delphi study will involve gathering perceptions and experiences from the world's leading STEM communicators and media makers regarding how they learned to be professionals and how they would determine the level of expertise of other STEM media makers. The results of the Delphi study will synthesize models and identify best practices that could be used to inform the STEM media industry efforts to align media production with evidence-based practices. These results will be disseminated through appropriate peer-reviewed journals, industry associations, and other outlets of research on informal science education. 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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ru MahoneyLouis NadelsonLisa Samford
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. The project will bring together science museum visitor experience developers, visitor studies staff, indoor location technology developers, cyber-learning researchers, and STEM informal learning specialists for a two day conference, COMPASS (Conference on Mobile Position Awareness Systems and Solutions), to address the achievements and potential of indoor location aware mobile (ILAM) technology in science museums. The pre-conference work, the conference itself, and a subsequent e-publication will provide multiple, informed perspectives and knowledge around ILAM for science museums to develop apps for visitors' own smartphones to enhance and personalize the visitor experience and to experiment with new kinds of inquiry-based learning. The goals of the conference are to form an integrated vision by consolidating expertise from disparate disciplines connected to ILAM tech development, to transform visitor mobile tools to provide more innovative forms of interaction and personalization, and to open new avenues for visitor research with automated data collection and analysis.
The COMPASS conference will bring together 80 participants for two days in September 2018 at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA. The first dissemination will take place in a presentation at the ASTC conference the following month in October 2018. A webinar sharing insights from COMPASS and inviting others to engage will be held in March 2019 hosted by ASTC and accessible by ASTC members and non-members alike. A companion COMPASS e-publication will be released for free download, also in March 2019, with summaries of conference proceedings, key issues identified, case histories of ILAM in museums, white papers and other resources. Conference outcomes include establishing a community of practice or special interest group and establishing common goals for future collaborative work. By gathering a diverse range of perspectives and expertise to share research and evidence based findings, COMPASS include collective problem solving and an informed cross disciplinary approach to planning and implementing ILAM technology in the museum environment. The conference will explicitly address the benefits and quality of open source code and protocols and how techniques could be shared among institutions. As professional experience with deploying ILAM apps grows, this tool could be used to increase accessibility for diverse visitor populations, put in use at smaller and medium sized science centers, and applied to a variety of research studies, increasing the impact for funders and benefiting the science center community at large.