Research suggests that when both science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and social-emotional development (SED) are supported in afterschool, summer, and other informal settings, young people can better develop skills for the future such as leadership, decision-making, and relationship-building so they could have successful careers/participation in STEM. However, researchers and practitioners working in the out-of-school time (OST) sector often do so without connections across these fields. The appeal for more integration of STEM and SED in OST program delivery and data collection has remained abstract and aspirational. This Literature Review and Synthesis project is the next step needed to move the OST field toward the intentional, explicit, and evidence-based integration of STEM and SED in research and practice. The project will create shared understanding necessary to improve program content, staff training, and evaluation. This synthesis will support future research on unified STEM+SED that can lead to more effective, equitable, and developmentally appropriate programming. Improved programming will contribute to talent development, address STEM workforce needs, and promote socioeconomic mobility to benefit children, youth, educators, and society. 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 project will systematically examine what domains and skills at the interface of STEM+SED are most researched among K-12 youth in informal STEM learning environments, compared to formal STEM educational environments. The team will further explore how gender, race, and other intersectional forms of equity can be added to the STEM+SED equation. The project team will search and appraise empirical and gray literature (2001-2020) to identify the most commonly researched domains and skills at the interface of STEM+SED in informal environments serving K-12 youth. The review and synthesis process will include four steps: search, appraisal, synthesis, and analysis. The search will begin with STEM+SED skills in four foundational domains (agency, belonging, engagement, and reflection) identified previously with experts from the fields of STEM and SED. The search will include all existing, eligible references from formal K-12 settings to contrast commonly studied domains and skills (e.g., perseverance, self-regulation, teamwork, complex problem-solving, self-awareness) in formal versus informal learning environments. The study approach will then compare these domains and skills by the demographics variables noted above. Following the creation of a strong catalog of evidence, information will be synthesized using three “pillars” for building coherence in STEM+SED integration: phenomenon (the knowing), implementation (the doing) and assessment (the result). These pillars will be used to organize and critically analyze the literature. Building conceptual coherence through a systematic review and synthesis of literature from the fields of STEM and SED will lead to greater understanding of STEM+SED in OST practice, highlight the most important content and skills to learn in informal environments, and identify when and how youth should learn specific content and skills at the interface of STEM+SED. Applying coherence to the integration of STEM+SED ensures that the principles and practices are layered carefully, in ways that avoid superficial checklists or duplication of effort and build meaningfully upon young people’s knowledge and skills. The long-term goal is to broker connections and alignment of STEM+SED across schools and OST programs. Recommendations and a roadmap to guide equitable, effective STEM+SED research, practice, and policy will result from this research.
For many youth, gaining access to quality STEM (science, technology, engineering mathematics) experiences is a challenge. Inequity and underrepresentation of youth of color in STEM persist. The makerspace movement holds great promise in broadening participation in STEM among youth from underrepresented communities. Makerspaces are defined as collaborative workspaces inside a library, school, or other community location designed for creating, learning, exploring, and sharing with high- to low-tech tools. Despite the availability of making programs focused on STEM activities targeted towards youth of color, the field has few models for designing these programs in ways that build upon youths’ cultural assets and desires for making. Working collaboratively with youth, families, and maker educators in Lansing, Michigan, and Greensboro, North Carolina, this project aims to deepen the field’s understanding about the rich and deep ingenuity in STEM-based making that youth from underrepresented communities can engage. These insights will be leveraged towards advancing community-based maker programming across four community-based makerspaces. The project will also build capacity among STEM-oriented maker educators, researchers, and youth. This model is important because the voices and perspectives of families and communities have been largely absent from the formative knowledge and theory-building processes of the field of makerspace education.
This project will build new knowledge about how and why youth and families make at home, in communities, and in STEM-based maker programs. Collaborators for the project include the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and four STEM- and youth-oriented making spaces in Lansing, Michigan, and Greensboro, North Carolina. This project will take place in two phases, exploring two main research questions: 1) What are the learning results of making at home and in the community? And 2) How do youth organize community resources for sustained STEM making, and what facilitates or hinders such organization? Phase one investigates the community resources (people, tools, materials, knowledge, data, and spaces) youth leverage towards making and how they do so across time. The project will study how youth connect these resources to STEM-rich making and what youth and families learn in the process. In phase two, design-based research will be used to apply phase one insights to the design of community-based STEM-rich maker programs in four maker clubs in Michigan and North Carolina. This work will develop an understanding of youths’ family and community-based STEM-based making practices, including the community resources (people, tools, materials, knowledge, data, and spaces) that youth leverage.
This Research in Service to Practice project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
Increasing greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in science not only presents a social justice goal, but is also vital to the financial and social success of the nation. The stereotype of the older white male scientist has obscured the contributions of women and people of color. This project seeks to remedy these perceptions which are barriers to entry into STEM fields. The project will create a large-scale hub for STEM themed video content on YouTube and other social media platforms, featuring 100+ original STEM videos produced by PBS partners. This hub and accompanying research seeks to identify the characteristics of online STEM content that attract (or fail to attract) underrepresented groups, specifically Black and Hispanic communities as well as women of all races. The objectives of this project are to 1) provide a unified online science-themed hub, PBS Terra, on YouTube and other platforms for hosting, sharing, and distributing digital STEM series from diverse producers from across the PBS system; 2) conduct surveys and focus groups to examine and understand the needs and expectations of women, Black and Hispanic communities and their consumption of STEM video content online and 3) test hypotheses about the communicative strategies of STEM videos that feature Black and Hispanic female scientists. Project collaborators include PBS, researchers at the University of Utah and the University of Georgia, and consultants and advisors with expertise in broadening participation and inclusion in STEM.
Little is known about how or why adult Americans seek science content on YouTube, especially the motivations of adults from underrepresented minorities and females. The key research questions in this project are: 1) Why do Black and Hispanic audiences and women of all races seek science video content online? 2) How does showing Black and Hispanic female scientists in science video content on YouTube impact viewers’ identification with and sense of belonging in STEM? 3) How does the use of humor by Black and Hispanic scientists in YouTube science content affect viewers’ perceptions of the communicator and their engagement with STEM content? 4) How does the appearance and manner of dress of Black and Hispanic scientists in YouTube science content affect viewers’ perceptions in the aforementioned areas? A nationally representative baseline survey will be conducted. A probability sample of 2000 respondents will be obtained including oversampling of Black and Hispanic audiences. To complement findings from the survey, focus groups will be conducted in eight different regions of the country to learn why these targeted audiences do or do not seek science content on YouTube and what motivates them to share the content with their social media network. In addition, an experiment embedded in an online survey will test the hypothesis that greater on-screen representation of women and scientists of color will broaden existing perceptions about scientists. The experiment will consist of a 3 (scientist’s race: Black/Hispanic/White) × 2 (science issue: controversial/non-controversial) × 2 (style: casual/professional) between-subjects design. Survey participants will be randomly assigned to the experimental conditions. These factors (science issue and host appearance) can be altered by content producers to better reach and engage the targeted audiences. The project not only investigates theoretical questions at the intersection of STEM stereotypes and race, but findings related to these experimental conditions will offer practical insight into strategies that can be used by science communication practitioners.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Adam DylewskiSara YeoMichael Cacciatore
This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).
Research shows that Black girls and women, regardless of their academic achievements and STEM interests, often encounter academic under-preparation, social isolation, exclusion, and race-gender discrimination that negatively impacts their ongoing engagement and retention in STEM. This project will provide innovative, culturally relevant learning environments to middle and high school Black girls to counter these negative trends. Using hands-on coding and robotics activities, project participants will develop positive attitudes toward science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The project emphasizes peer-mentoring by providing opportunities for Black female high school (assistant coaches) and Black college students (coaches) to serve as counselors and mentors to participants. Additionally, engineers, scientists, and executives from STEM industries will serve as mentors and share their experiences to broaden participants’ STEM career aspirations. The project is a three-year collaborative effort between the University of California Davis C-STEM Center, the Umoja Community Education Foundation, and the 66 affiliated California community colleges, industry partners, and school districts in California. Over three years, nearly 2,000 females will participate in the project.
Learning environments for Black girls and women led by other Black girls and women are referred to as “counterspaces” where they are free to engage in STEM in ways that value their identities while promoting STEM engagement, interests, and career aspirations. The project’s curriculum will follow a research-based, culturally relevant multi-tiered mentoring approach. The curriculum is designed to develop participants’ STEM content knowledge, critical thinking, and logical reasoning capabilities through meaningful connections to real-life applications using hands-on coding and robotics. A mixed-method longitudinal study will examine the impact on participants’ STEM outcomes, emphasizing contributing new knowledge on the viability of multi-tiered, culturally relevant mentoring for increasing equity in informal STEM learning (ISL). The program's effectiveness will be evaluated using longitudinal assessments of mathematics standards, computer science and robotics conceptual knowledge, logical and critical thinking skills, STEM school achievements, interests and attitudes toward STEM subjects, advanced STEM course-taking, involvement in other ISL opportunities, and leadership in STEM in one’s school/university and community. The project will test a locally based informal learning model with projects hosted by other K-12 and college partners.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning 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.
Quantum information science (QIS) is an emergent cross-disciplinary field at the interface of physics, computer science, materials science, and engineering. Yet, there are few educational programs that encourage young people to explore QIS and understand its applications and societal benefits. Such programs are critical for supporting the growth of a quantum-ready workforce. Building intuition is a foundational first step but this is challenging because quantum effects are neither visible to the naked eye, nor experienced in everyday life. This project will create a suite of accessible, engaging digital games for middle schoolers, and study their effectiveness in cultivating intuition around QIS. Relating QIS concepts to common game mechanics is designed to increase students’ confidence in their QIS knowledge, reduce their fear of tackling such a subject, and consider pursuing a career in this field or another STEM area. The game-driven design appeals to a broad population beyond the age groups studied. Moreover, the deliverables will be freely available online, which allows anyone with a phone or computer and internet access a way to learn about QIS in an engaging, play-based environment. The program will partner with teacher organizations and other community groups to share the games, maximizing the project’s impact.
The project is guided by the QIS Key Concepts developed in 2020, as well as research and best practices on gamification of learning. The games will be designed for 6th-8th grade students in an informal setting, focusing on the concepts of probability, superposition, and role of measurement. A game world titled "Quander" will include videos that explicitly tie game experiences to QIS concepts and applications. The project will evaluate students' understanding after playing the games and watching the videos, how they engage with aspects of the games, and how the game impacted their interest in QIS. The project data will advance understanding of how to facilitate QIS informal learning experiences in ways that engage young audiences in QIS and similar abstract emerging areas of technology where current research is scant. This project represents one of the first efforts to teach QIS concepts in ways that connect directly to young learners’ play-based experiences. Data gathered from the project will help future program designers understand the ability of young learners to reason about QIS concepts such as measurement, superposition and probabilities in game contexts, providing insights to the ages at which students are ready for more technical content.
Black Girls Create (BGC) is a program that uses maker pedagogy, social history (i.e., Black women’s contributions in STEM), culturally responsive pedagogy, and mentoring to engage Black girls in STEM. For the project, culturally responsive making is operationally defined as the use of cultural knowledge and maker technologies to create, design, and produce artifacts that are related to a particular concept, theme, or person. The project will conduct a feasibility research study that investigates how engagement in BGC affects participants' STEM interest, STEM confidence, and racial and gender identities. In the project, participants will discover how Black women have made an impact in STEM fields and will learn how to digitally create cultural artifacts/wearable art related to their discoveries. Approximately 120 middle school girls in grades 6-8 (8 groups of 15 participants each) from underserved neighborhoods will be recruited for participation in this two-year study. Each group will meet for 3 hours per week over an 8-week period. Instructional materials from this research will be made freely available online so that they can be adapted and used at other formal and informal educational institutions that seek to garner interest and access to STEM learning for Black girls and women.
A pre- and post-test, quasi-experimental design will be used to research the program’s influence on participants’ self-efficacy, racial identity, and gender identity. Lagged regression models that control for students’ age, race/ethnicity, and pre-survey scores will be used to examine growth in each of the four outcomes. Once all of the participants in the groups have completed BGC, data from all groups will be combined to increase power and thereby detect statistically meaningful differences in pre- and post-survey scores. In addition, variables representing attendance and program engagement will be entered into the model to examine whether students who are highly engaged in BGC programming exhibit more growth in the four outcomes. Qualitative data will be derived from students' journal entries as well as focus group interviews. Weekly journals will be used to gather data about the context and experiences of participants as they unfold throughout the program. Semi-structured focus groups will center around the usefulness of skills and knowledge gained from the program activities, significant experiences with peers and program staff, the opportunity to learn about Black women STEM progenitors, and learning how to make digitally fabricated artifacts. NVIVO, a computer software program, will be used as a tool to support the analysis of the rich, text-based information resulting from the journals and focus group narratives.
This feasibilty research project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
Millions of Latinx youth, aged 14 to 18, work formal or informal jobs to provide income for themselves or their families. In the context of these workplaces, Latinx youth demonstrate numerous skills that are essential to industrial engineering, such as minimizing workplace injuries or optimizing processes to maximize efficiency. However, their workplace ingenuity and skills are often underrecognized by educational systems. To counter this lack of recognition, the purpose of this project is to iteratively develop and research an out-of-school engineering program for working Latinx youth. This program is designed to recognize and build from youths’ workplace experiences by connecting them with industrial engineering concepts and practices, such as those used to promote worker safety. This program is also designed for youth to articulate transformational visions of industrial engineering, which expand current goals, values, and methods commonly embraced within this discipline. This year-long program will be facilitated by educators of existing out-of-school programs (e.g., Mathematics, Engineering, and Science Achievement), in partnership with undergraduate mentors from the Society for Professional Hispanic Engineers and other local organizations that serve Latinx youth (e.g., Latinos in Action). Approximately 220 youth are expected to participate in the programming. Researchers will explore whether and how youth participants develop identities in engineering, as well as how the educators and mentors understand and enact assets-based, out-of-school engineering education grounded in youths’ experiences. Researchers will also identify the individual, institutional, and systemic factors that support or inhibit sustained implementation of the program over time in different sites and contexts. This project will result in a set of empirically tested, bilingual program materials that will be disseminated widely to professional organizations dedicated to out-of-school programming and to serving Latinx youth.
This project will result in a localizable, transferable, and sustainable model for an out-of-school time program that recognizes and amplifies Latinx youths’ workplace funds of knowledge and leverages them toward youth-driven visions and applications of engineering. This program, which will connect with other people and sites in youths’ learning ecosystems, is grounded in principles of translanguaging, transformational mentorship, and educational dignity and recognition. In partnership with youth participants, researchers will use a social design experiment to explore the following research questions: What are the engineering identity trajectories of working high school youth, and how do specific moments of identity negotiation and recognition relate to broader patterns across program sessions and identity trajectories for individual participants over time? To answer these questions, a pre-, mid- and post-program Engineering Identity Scale; recordings of program implementations; interviews; and youth artifacts will be analyzed using various methods such as critical multimodal discourse analysis. After implementations of the program across multiple sites, researchers will use design-based implementation research to answer the following questions: How do educators and mentors understand and enact assets-based pedagogies designed to foster recognition across sites? What institutional and systemic features (designed or naturalistic) support or inhibit productive adaptations and implementations of the program? These questions will be answered using constant comparative analyses of data sources such as interviews with the program educators and mentors, observations of program implementations, observations of professional development sessions, and public documents. Culturally responsive, educative evaluation will be used to iteratively improve the program. The resulting research and program materials will be disseminated widely through professional organizations dedicated to Latinx youth, engineering education, and out-of-school learning.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
DATE:
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Amy Wilson-LopezAlfonso Torres-RuaMarisela Martinez-ColaColby Tofel-GrehlAlfonso Torres-Rua
This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).
Math is everywhere in the world, but youth may see math as disconnected from their everyday experiences and wonder how math is relevant to their lives. There is evidence that informal math done by children is highly effective, involving efficiency, flexibility, and socializing. Yet, more is needed to understand how educators can support math engagement outside of school, and the role these out-of-school experiences can play relative to the classroom and lifelong STEM learning. This Innovations and Development Project seeks to conduct research on a location-based mobile app for informal mathematics learning. This research takes place at 9 informal learning sites and involves iteratively designing an app in which learners can view and contribute to an interactive map of math walk “stops” at these sites. Learners will be able to select locations and watch short videos or view pictures with text that describe how mathematical principles are present in their surroundings. For example, learners could use the app to discover how a painting by a local Latino artist uses ratio and scale, or how a ramp in downtown was designed with a specific slope to accommodate wheelchairs. Research studies will examine the affordances of augmented reality (AR) overlays where learners can hold up the camera of their mobile device, and see mathematical representations (e.g., lines, squares) layered over real-world objects in their camera feed. Research studies will also examine the impact of having learners create their own math walk stops at local informal learning sites, uploading pictures, descriptions, and linking audio they narrate, where they make observations about how math appears in their surroundings and pose interesting questions about STEM ideas and connections they wonder about.
This project draws on research on informal math learning, problem-posing, and culturally-sustaining pedagogies to conduct cycles of participatory design-based research on technology-supported math walks. The research questions are: How does posing mathematical scenarios in community-imbedded math walks impact learners’ attitudes about mathematics? How can experiencing AR overlays on real world objects highlight mathematical principles and allow learners to see math in the world around them? How can learners and informal educators be engaged as disseminators of content they create and as reviewers of mathematical content created by others? To answer these questions, five studies will be conducted where learners create math walk stops: without technology (Study 1), with a prototype version of the app (Study 2), and with or without AR overlays (Study 3). Studies will also compare children's experiences receiving math walk stops vs. creating their own stops (Study 4) and explore learners reviewing math walk stops made by their peers (Study 5). Using a community ethnography approach with qualitative and quantitative process data of how youth engage with the app and with each other, the project will determine how the development of math interest can be facilitated, how learner-driven problem generation can be scaffolded, and under what circumstances app-based math walks are most effective. The results will contribute to research on the development of interest, problem-posing, informal mathematics learning, and digital supports for STEM learning such as AR. This project will promote innovation and have strategic impact through a digital infrastructure that could be scaled up to support STEM walks anywhere in the world, while also building a local STEM learning ecosystem among informal learning sites focused on informal mathematics. This project is a partnership between Southern Methodist University, a nonprofit, talkSTEM that facilitates the creation of community math walks, and 9 informal learning providers. The project will directly serve approximately 500 grades 4-8 learners and 30-60 informal educators. The project will build capacity at 9 informal learning sites, which serve hundreds of thousands of students per year in their programming.
This Innovations in Development project is supported by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
Informal STEM education spaces like museums can intentionally serve surrounding communities and support sustainable and accessible engagement. Building from this base, the project takes a stance that the intersection of the museum, home/family life and the youth’s internal practices and disciplinary sense of self are rooted in history and culture. Thus, this CAREER work builds on the following principles: Black families and youth have rightful presence in STEM and in STEM learning environments; Black families are valuable learning partners; and Black youths need counterspaces to explore STEM as one mechanism for creating future disciplinary agency. In partnership with the Henry Ford Museum and the Detroit-Area Pre-College Engineering Program, the project seeks to (a) expand the field's understanding of how Black youth engineer and innovate; (b) investigate the influence of a culturally relevant curriculum on their engineering practices and identity, knowledge, and confidence; and (c) describe the ways Black families and museums support youth in engineering learning experiences. The work will center on the 20-hour “Innovate” curriculum which was designed by the museum to bridge design, innovation, and creation practices with the artifacts of innovators throughout time. The project comprises six weekend “Innovate” sessions and an at-home innovation experience plus participation in an annual Invention Convention. By focusing on these aims, this research responds to the goals of the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning opportunities for the public in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening engagement in STEM learning experiences and advancing innovative research on STEM learning in informal environments.
The main research questions of this multiphase CAREER award are: (1) What practices do Black youths and families engage in as they address engineering, design, and innovation challenges? (2) In what ways does a culturally relevant museum-based innovation program influence the design and innovation practices and assessment performance of Black youths and families as they engage in engineering, design, and innovation across learning settings? (3) How does teaching innovation, design, and engineering through historical re-telling and reconstruction influence a youth’s perception of their own identities, abilities, and practices? and (4) How do Black families engage with informal STEM learning settings and what resources best support their engineering, design, and innovation exploration? Youth in sixth grade are the focus of the research. The work is guided by ecological systems, sociocultural learning, culturally relevant pedagogy, and community cultural wealth theories. During phase one, the focus will be to refine the curriculum and logistics of the study implementation. The investigator will enhance the curriculum to include narratives of Black innovators and engineers. Fifteen families will be recruited to participate in the program enhancement pilot and initial research cycle for phase two. In phase three another cohort of families will be recruited to participate. Survey research, narrative inquiry and digital ethnography will comprise the approaches to explore the research questions. The evaluation has a two-pronged focus: to assess (1) how well the enhanced Innovate curriculum and museum/home learning experience supports Black families’ participation and (2) how well the separate phases of the study connect and operate together to meet the research aims. The study’s findings can help families and informal practitioners leverage evidence-based approaches to support Black youth in making connections between history and out-of-school contexts to model and develop their innovative engineering practices. Additionally, this work has implications for Black undergraduate students who will develop skills through their mentorship and researcher roles, studying cultural practices and learning experiences. The research study and findings can inform the design of future museum/home learning programs and research opportunities for Black learners in informal learning spaces.
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.
Access to STEM information is unequal, with rural and poor communities often receiving the fewest public education science and science literacy opportunities. Rural areas also face unique STEM teaching and technology integration challenges. In fact, LatinX communities in rural areas are less likely to have access to educational resources and language supports available to LatinX communities in urban centers. This project will help address these inequities by engaging rural librarians, bilingual science communicators, polar scientists, and a technical team to create a series of five bilingual virtual reality (VR) experiences to enhance STEM understanding and appreciation. Project researchers will create a new channel for disseminating polar science, working first with rural Latinx communities in Wisconsin to create a new network between rural communities and university researchers. Involving rural librarians in the co-design of instruction process will produce new ways for rural libraries to engage their local communities and their growing Latinx populations with polar science learning experiences. Each of the five VR experiences will focus on a different area of research, using the captivating Arctic and Antarctic environments as a central theme to convey science. VR is a particularly powerful and apt approach, making it possible to visit places that most cannot experience first-hand while also learning about the wide range of significant research taking place in polar regions. After design, prototyping and testing are finished, the VR experiences will be freely available for use nationally in both rural and urban settings. Public engagement with science creates a multitude of mutual benefits that result from a better-informed society. These benefits include greater trust and more reasoned scrutiny of science along with increased interest in STEM careers, many of which have higher earning potential. The project team will partner with 51 rural libraries which are valued community outlets valuable outlets to improve science literacy and public engagement with science. The effects of this project will be seen with thousands of community members who take part in the testing of prototype VR experiences during development and scaled engagement through ongoing library programs utilizing the final VR experiences for years to come.
This project will create new informal STEM learning assessment techniques through combining prior efforts in the areas of educational data mining for stealth assessment and viewpoint similarity metrics through monitoring gaze direction. Results of the project contribute to the field of educational data mining (EDM), focusing on adopting its methods for VR learning experiences. EDM is a process of using fine grained interaction data from a digital system to support educationally relevant conclusions and has been applied extensively to intelligent tutors and more recently, educational videogames. This project will continue building on existing approaches by expanding to include the unique affordances of VR learning media, specifically gaze. The project will focus on predicting user quitting as well as assessing key learning goals within each experience and triangulate these predictive models with user observations and post-experience surveys. The eventual application of this foundational research would address the problem in assessing a learner using measures external to the experience itself (i.e., surveys) and instead provide new methods that instrument learners using only data generated by their actions within the learning context. These techniques will provide a new means for evaluating informal learning in immersive technology settings without need for explicit tagging. The findings from this project will enable a greater understanding of the relationship between a user’s experience and their learning outcomes, which may prove integral in the creation of educational interventions using VR technology.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments. This project is also supported by the Office of Polar Programs.
Informal STEM learning environments, programs, and policies can be designed to support and promote neurodiversity through inclusive practices. This project will explore the benefits of informal STEM learning for K-12 neurodiverse learners through a systematic review and meta-analysis of extant literature and research grounded in the theory of social model of ability. This framework is an asset-based approach and aims to promote social, cognitive, and physical inclusion, leading to positive outcomes. Using various quantitative and qualitative methodologies, this project endeavors to collect and synthesize the evidence for supporting and enhancing accessibility and inclusiveness in informal STEM learning for K-12 neurodiverse learners. It will explore key features of informal STEM learning and effective, evidence-based strategies to effectively engage children and youth with neurological conditions such as autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, and dyspraxia, in informal STEM learning environments. The findings of this complex synthesis will provide a timely contribution to deeper understanding of supports for neurodiversity while also highlighting areas that inform further research, shifts in practice, and policy.
The systematic review will occur over a two-year period. It will focus on identifying program elements that promote inclusion of children and youth with neurodevelopmental disabilities in informal STEM learning contexts. Specifically, the review will explore two overarching research questions and several sub-research questions:
RQ1. What program elements (teaching and learning variables) in informal STEM learning settings facilitate inclusion of K-12 neurodiverse STEM learners? Sub-RQ1a: What are the overlapping and discrete characteristics of the program elements that facilitate social, cognitive, and physical inclusion?
Sub-RQ1b: In what ways do the program elements that facilitate inclusion vary by informal STEM learning setting?
RQ2: What program elements (teaching and learning variables) in informal STEM learning settings are correlated with benefits for K-12 neurodiverse STEM learners? Sub-RQ2a: What are the overlapping and discrete characteristics of the program elements that correlate with increased STEM identity, self- efficacy, interest in STEM, or STEM learning?
Sub-RQ2b: In what ways do the program elements that correlate with positive results for students vary by informal STEM learning setting? The research synthesis will consider several different types of studies, including research and evaluation; experimental and quasi-experimental designs; quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods; and implementation studies.
The research team will (a) review all analyses and organize findings to illustrate patterns, factors, and relationships, (b) identify key distinctions and nuances derived from the contexts represented in the literature, and (c) revisit and confirm the strength of evidence for making overall assertions of what works, why, and with whom. The findings will be disseminated in practice briefs, journal articles, the AISL resource center, as well as presentations and materials for researchers, practitioners, and informal STEM leaders. Ultimately, this work will result in a comprehensive synthesis of effective informal STEM learning practices for neurodiverse K-12 learners and identify opportunities for further research and development.
This literature review and meta-analysis 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.
The AI behind Virtual Humans Exhibit aims to communicate to the public about the capabilities and impact of artificial intelligence (AI) through AI technologies used in Virtual Humans including facial recognition and natural language processing. AI has and will continue to profoundly impact society in the United States and around the globe. It is important to prepare the nation’s youth and the future workforce with fundamental knowledge of AI. Informal settings, such as museums, offer open and flexible opportunities in helping youth and the general public learn about AI. Virtual Humans provide an ideal vehicle to illustrate many fields of AI, as AI is arguably the science of building intelligence that thinks and acts like humans. Led by a multidisciplinary team of researchers with expertise in AI, learning design, and assessment from the Institute for Creative Technologies at University of Southern California and the Lawrence Hall of Science at University of California, Berkeley, this project will develop a Virtual Human exhibit to engage visitors through structured conversations with a Virtual Human, while showcasing how AI drives the Virtual Human’s behavior behind the scenes. The exhibit will include collaborative learning experiences for visitors such as parent-child, siblings and peers to explore what AI is and is not, what AI is and is not capable of, and what impact it will have on their lives.
The project will investigate three research questions: (1) How can a museum exhibit be designed to engage visitor dyads in collaborative learning about AI? (2) How can complex AI concepts underlying the Virtual Human be communicated in a way that is understandable by the general public? And (3) How does and to what extent the Virtual Human exhibit increase knowledge and reduce misconceptions about AI?
The project leverages existing conversational Virtual Human technology developed through decades of collaborative research in AI, including machine vision, natural language processing, automated reasoning, character animation, and machine learning. Set in the informal setting of a museum, the exhibit will be designed following evidence-based research in Computer Supported Collaborative Learning. The project team will use a mixed methods design, drawing on design-based research methodologies and experimental studies. The research team will conduct analysis of visitor observations and interviews for iterative formative improvement. Randomized experimental studies will be conducted in both lab and naturalistic environments to gauge visitor knowledge about AI. Quasi-experimental analyses will be performed to study the relationship between engagement with exhibit features and AI knowledge. The project will produce an interactive exhibit with a Virtual Human installed at the Lawrence Hall of Science and other participating museums, and instruments to measure AI learning. The project will also produce a website where visitors can experience parts of the exhibit online and continue more in-depth learning about AI and the Virtual Human technology. The project holds the potential for producing theoretical and practical advances in helping the general public develop an understanding of AI capability and ethics, advancing knowledge in the process through which young learners develop knowledge about AI, and formulating design principles for creating collaborative learning experiences in informal settings. The results will be disseminated through conference presentations, scholarly publications, and social media. The Virtual Human exhibit will be designed for dissemination and made available for installations at informal science education communities.