Discover NASA is the Discovery Museum’s endeavor to engage students in grades K through 12 as well as members of the general public in innovative space science and STEM-focused learning through the implementation of two modules: upgrades to the Challenger Learning Center, and the creation of K through 12 amateur rocketry and spacecraft design programming. The programming will be piloted at the Discovery Museum and Planetarium, and at the Inter-district Discovery Magnet School and the Fairchild-Wheeler Multi-Magnet High School, with an additional strategic partnership with the University of Bridgeport, which will provide faculty mentors to high school seniors participating in the rocketry program. Through these two modules, the Discovery Museum and Planetarium aims to foster an early interest in STEM, increase public awareness about NASA, promote workforce development, and stimulate an interest in the future of human space exploration. Both modules emphasize design methodologies and integration of more advanced space science into the STEM curriculum currently offered by Discovery Museum to visitors and public schools. The Challenger Learning Center upgrades will enable the Museum to deliver simulated human exploration experiences related to exploration of the space environment in Low Earth Orbit and simulated human exploration of Moon, Mars, and beyond, which will increase public and student awareness about NASA and the future of human space exploration. The development of an amateur rocketry and spacecraft development incubator for education, the general public, and commercial space will stimulate the development of key STEM concepts.
Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) Howard B. Owens Science Center (HBOSC) will infuse NASA Earth, Heliophysics, and Planetary mission science data into onsite formal and informal curriculum programs to expand scientific understanding of the Earth, Sun, and the universe. The goal of the project is to develop a pipeline of programs for grades 3-8 to enhance teacher and student understanding of NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Earth, Planetary, and Heliophysics science and promote STEM careers and understanding of NASA career pathways using the HBOSC Planetarium, Challenger Center and classrooms. During the school year, PGCPS students in Grades 3 through 8 will experience field trip opportunities that will feature NASA Sun-Earth connection, comparative planetology, Kepler Exoplanet data, and NASA Space Weather Action Center data. PGCPS Grade 3 through 8 teachers will receive summer, day, and evening professional development in comparable earth and space science content both engaging the HBOSC Planetarium and Challenger facility and its resources. The students and teachers in four PGCPS academies (Grades 3 through 8) will serve as a pilot group for broader expansion of the program district-wide. ESPSI will provide opportunities for county-wide participation through community outreach programs that will promote NASA Earth, Heliophysics, and Planetary mission data. Community outreach will be offered through piloting the Maryland Science Center outreach program to four of PGCPS southern located schools and monthly evening planetarium shows along with quarterly family science nights that will include guest speakers and hands-on exhibits from the local science community and Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).
Pipeline for Remote Sensing Education and Application (PRSEA), will increase awareness, knowledge and understanding of remote sensing technologies and associated disciplines, and their relevance to NASA, through a combination of activities that build a “pipeline” to STEM and remote sensing careers, for a continuum of audiences from third grade through adulthood. This program will be led by Pacific Science Center. The first objective is to engage 50 teens from groups underrepresented in STEM fields in a four-year career ladder program; participants will increase knowledge and understanding of remote sensing as well as educational pathways that lead to careers in remote sensing fields at NASA and other relevant organizations. The second objective is to serve 2,000 children in grades 3-5, in a remote sensing-based out-of school time outreach program that will increase the participant’s content knowledge of remote sensing concepts and applications and awareness and interest in remote sensing disciplines. PRSEA’s third objective is to engage 180 youth, grades 6-8, in remote sensing-themed summer intensive programs through which youth will increase knowledge of remote sensing concepts and applications and increase awareness and interest in educational and career pathways associated with remote sensing and NASA’s role in this field. The final objective is to engage 10,000 visitors of all ages with a remote sensing-themed Discovery Cart on Pacific Science Center’s exhibit floor. By engaging in cart activities, we anticipate visitors will increase their level of awareness and interest in the topic of remote sensing and NASA’s role in contributing to this field.
Nationally, there is tremendous interest in enhancing participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Providing rich opportunities for engagement in science and engineering practices may be key to developing a much larger cadre of young people who grow up interested in and pursue future STEM education and career options. One particularly powerful way to engage children in such exploration and playful experimentation may be through learning experiences that call for tinkering with real objects and tools to make and remake things. Tinkering is an important target for research and educational practice for at least two reasons: (1) tinkering experiences are frequently social, involving children interacting with educators and family members who can support STEM-relevant tinkering in various ways and (2) tinkering is more open-ended than many other kinds of building experiences (e.g., puzzles, making a model airplane), because it is the participants' own unique questions and objectives that guide the activity. Thus, tinkering provides a highly accessible point of entry into early STEM learning for children and families who do not all share the same backgrounds, circumstances, interests, and expertise. This Research-in-Service to Practice 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. The project will take place in the Tinkering Lab exhibit at Chicago Children's Museum. The research will investigate how reflective interactions between parents and children (ages 6-8) during tinkering activities ultimately impact child engagement in STEM. Design-based research (DBR) is well-suited to the iterative and contextually-rich process of tinkering. Using a DBR approach, researchers and museum facilitators will be trained to prompt variations of simple reflection strategies at different time points between family members as a way to strengthen children's engagement with, and memory of these shared tinkering events. Through progressive refinement, each cycle of testing will lead to new hypotheses that can be tested in the subsequent round of observations. The operationalization of study constructs and their measurement will come organically from families' activities in the Tinkering Lab and will be developed in consultation with members of the advisory board. Data collection strategies will include observation and interviews; a series of coding schemes will be used to make sense of the data. The research will result in theoretical and practical understanding of ways to enhance STEM engagement and learning by young children and their families through tinkering. A diverse group of at least 350 children and their families will be involved. The project will provide much needed empirical results on how to promote STEM engagement and learning in informal science education settings. It will yield useful information and resources for informal science learning practitioners, parents, and other educators who look to advance STEM learning opportunities for children. This research is being conducted through a partnership between researchers at Loyola University of Chicago and Northwestern University and museum staff and educators at the Chicago Children's Museum.
Approximately 8.4 million children in the United States participate annually in out-of-school time (OST) programs with a science component. These programs have been shown to have a wide range of impacts on scientific literacy, school achievement, and career interest. Because such programs take place outside of home and school, they offer participants learning flexibility and a sense of agency that otherwise do not exist in traditional science learning contexts. However, current research on OST is largely limited to evaluation-level data that has not been synthesized, making it difficult to draw definite conclusions. As seen in other fields, a larger evidence base is needed for the OST field to grow or else non-evidence-based policies will be imposed upon the field by outside forces. The project team will conduct an experimental, longitudinal research project to address these issues. This Research-in-Service to Practice 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. The study uses a sophisticated design with a wide variety of measures to follow three cohorts of adolescent youth (~200) over a 4-year period to address the primary research question: How does participation of adolescent youth from traditionally underrepresented groups in a well-established, out-of-school time science program affect their career choices and attitudes towards science as they mature into early adulthood? While each measure is rooted in established literature and methodology, putting it all together using a comprehensive, complementary approach has not yet been done in the OST field. The research studies will be looking at a number of variables in order to measure program impact including: demographic and experiential background of program participants, STEM attitudes, career interest/choices, scientific engagement, and participation. Data will be collected via survey, observation, interviews, and document review. The program practitioners will contribute diary and field note data to the study. This project will provide STEM education practitioners with the evidence-based information they need to develop better programs for underrepresented minority (URM) youth so program and policy decisions are not made in a vacuum. Operationally, findings will have an impact on OST and URM science education researchers by generating new research methodology and techniques. Tactically, it will benefit greater URM communities by investigating how OST programs can support science learning and scientific interest among their adolescent youth. Strategically, the study impacts the nation by providing evidence about the validity of OST programs as a critical partner to address the issue of URM involvement in the STEM workforce. Also, the corpus of raw data will be made public, providing a large and varied data set for others to explore. This research is being conducted by the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, and the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. This research project leverages ongoing longitudinal research to investigate whether, and if so how, youth from ages 10 to 15 in a diverse, under-resourced urban community become interested and engaged in STEM. The project addresses a global issue; fewer youth choose to major in scientific fields or take science coursework at high school or university levels. These declining numbers result in fewer STEM professionals and fewer scientifically literate citizens who are able to function successfully in an increasingly scientific and technological society. These declines are observed for youth as a whole, but are most pronounced for girls and particular non-white ethnic minorities. Data collected from youth in this community of study, including non-white ethnic minorities, mirrors this decline. NSF funding will support a five-year systematic and systemic process in which project researchers work collaboratively with existing informal and formal educational partners (e.g., museums, libraries, afterschool providers, schools) to develop sets of customized, connected, and coordinated learning interventions, in and out of school, for youth with different backgrounds, needs, and interests, all with the goal of averting or dampening this decline of STEM interest and participation during early adolescence. In addition to new research and community STEM networks, this project will result in a Community Toolkit that includes research instruments and documentation of network-building strategies for use by other researchers and practitioners nationally and internationally. This mixed methods exploratory study has two distinct but interrelated populations - youth and educators from across informal and formal institutions. To develop a clearer understanding of the factors that influence youths' STEM interest development over time, particularly among three youth STEM Interest Profiles identified in a secondary analysis (1-Dislike Math, 2-Like all STEM, 3-Dislike all STEM), the design combines surveys with in-depth interviews and observations. To study educators and institutions, researchers will combine interviews, focus groups, and observations to better understand factors that influence community-wide, data-driven approaches to supporting youth interest development. Research will be conducted in three phases with the goal of community-level change in youth STEM interest and participation. In Phase 1 (Years 1 & 2) four educational partners will develop interventions for a 6th and 7th grade youth cohort that will be iteratively refined through a design-based approach. Educational partners and researchers will meet to review and discuss interest and participation data and use these data to select content, as well as plan activities and strategies within their programs (using a simplified form of conjecture mapping). By Phase 2 (Years 3 & 4) four additional partners will be included, more closely modeling the complex system of the community. With support from researchers support and existing partners, new educational partners will similarly review and discuss data, using these to select content, as well as plan activities consistent with program goals and strategies. Additional interventions will be implemented by the new partners and further assessed and refined with a new 6th and 7th grade cohort, along with the existing interventions of the first four partners. In Phase 3 (Year 5) data will be collected on pre-post community-level changes in STEM interest and participation and the perceived effectiveness of this approach for youth. These data will inform future studies.
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. This study will contribute to these goals by providing empirical evidence about how and under what circumstances science museums, science centers, and other designed settings for informal science education (ISE) can change so that they will reach more diverse audiences with the full range of their educational activities. This study will deepen understanding of equity norms and practices at ISE organizations, as well as the internal and contextual factors that shape them. The project builds on a unique opportunity provided by the widely known and critically acclaimed exhibition "RACE: Are We So Different?" After traveling to dozens of museums and science centers, and being seen by over three million people, RACE is returning home to the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) where it was created. Strand 1 of this study will examine the processes underlying organizational change at SMM as it attempts to use RACE to leverage organization-wide change. In Strand 2, the project team will compare the experiences of ISE organizations around the country that hosted RACE, focusing on the conditions that influence reflection and lead to (or prevent) lasting impact. These two studies will inform the design of Strand 3: a national survey on equity norms and practices, and the potential for equity-related change, in designed settings for ISE. Four research questions guide all project activities: 1)How can such Informal Science Education organizations leverage an unusual event, such as a traveling exhibition, to catalyze and sustain change in their equity-related norms and practices? 2) How and when does the deep reflection required to change entrenched norms and practices manifest itself in ISE organizations that attempt to change their equity norms and practices? 3) What contextual factors support or oppose the achievement and maintenance of organization-wide changes in equity norms and practices? 4) How common are these supportive and opposing conditions in the institutional field of museums and science centers, and how prevalent are different norms and practices related to equity?
The range of contemporary "emerging" technologies with far-reaching implications for society (economic, social, ethical, etc.) is vast, encompassing such areas as bioengineering, robotics and artificial intelligence, genetics, neuro and cognitive sciences, and synthetic biology. The pace of development of these technologies is in full gear, where the need for public understanding, engagement and active participation in decision-making is great. The primary goal of this four-year project is to create, distribute and study a set of three integrated activities that involve current and enduring science-in-society themes, building on these themes as first presented in Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, which will be celebrating in 2018 the 200th anniversary of its publication in 1818. The three public deliverables are: 1) an online digital museum with active co-creation and curation of its content by the public; 2) activities kits for table-top programming; and 3) a set of Making activities. The project will also produce professional development deliverables: workshops and associated materials to increase practitioners' capacity to engage multiple and diverse publics in science-in-society issues. The initiative 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. This project by Arizona State University and their museum and library collaborators around the country will examine the hypothesis that exposing publics to opportunities for interactive, creative, and extensive engagement within an integrated transmedia environment will foster their interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), develop their 21st century skills with digital tools, and increase their understanding, ability, and feelings of efficacy around issues in science-in-society. These three distinct yet interlocking modes of interaction provide opportunities for qualitative and quantitative, mixed-methods research on the potential of transmedia environments to increase the ability of publics to work individually and collectively to become interested in and involved with science-in-society issues.
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.
The American Museum of Natural History requests SEPA support for a five-year development and implementation project entitled "Human Health and 'Human Bulletins': Scientists and Teens Explore Health Sciences in the Museum and World At Large." The program has three complementary components: (1) the development of 7 new productions for the Museum's digital media/documentary exhibition program, Human Bulletins http://sciencebulletins.amnh.org) featuring the newest health-related research; (2) a mini-course, entitled Hot Topics in Health Research NOW, an intensive after school program covering genetics, epidemiology, human health and human evolution, including a section on ethics in research; and (3) A "drop-in" Human Bulletins Science Club, where students meet monthly to watch a Human Bulletin visual news program, engage in informal discussions with significant researchers in the fields of evolutionary science and human health. The main goals of this project are: (1) to inform young people about emerging health-related research by using the Human Bulletins as core content for programming and points of engagement; (2) to promote a life-long interest in science among participants by teaching them how health-related science research could potentially affect them or their families; (3) to empower teens to critically assess the science presented to them in the Museum and in the world at large by teaching them to break down the "information bytes" of the Human Bulletins and to analyze how stories are presented visually and how to find answers to questions raised by the Bulletins; (4) for the young people in the program to see themselves as participants in the Museum by developing "mentor" relationships with Museum staff. This will allow students to see AMNH as an enduring institution to be used as a resource throughout their education and careers; and (5) to give students the means to envision themselves with future careers in science, research and in museums (thus fostering new generation of culturally-diverse, culturally enriched scientific leaders) by introducing them to scientists in an informal setting where there are no consequences for making mistakes or asking questions. The students will be given "behind the scenes" looks at new career options through the scientists featured in the Bulletins and the NIH funded researchers on the Advisory Board presenting at the informal sessions. Ultimately, the project aims to give students to critically process the information they receive about public health, see the relevance of human health science to their lives and pursue careers in health science. All of these skills are measurable through formative and summative evaluation. This project will teach young people to understand information about public health that is presented to them through visual and popular media as well as through formal scientific texts. It will also teach them to think about how human health sciences impact their lives and how the decisions they make impact larger human health. Finally, the program will also encourage students to pursue careers and further information about public health.
The integration of research with education and outreach is an essential aspect of our Center's mission. In order to assure the most effective use of our expertise and resources, we have developed a multi-faceted approach with activities that focus on coherent themes that address our three primary audiences: research community, our neighborhood, and the general public. These activities include research internships, enrichment programs for students & teachers, and informal science opportunities.