Professional Development Design and Material Resource Needs: Results from a National NASA Science Mission Directorate Survey of Informal Educators

As a part of the strategy to reach the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Science Education and Public Outreach Forum Objective 1.2: Provide resources and opportunities to enable sharing of best practices relevant to SMD education and public outreach (E/PO), the Informal Education Working Group members designed a nationally-distributed online survey to answer the following questions: 1. How, when, where, and for how long do informal educators prefer to receive science, mathematics, engineering, and/or technology content professional development? 2. What are the professional development and material resources that informal educators prefer that could be provided by current and future NASA SMD Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) efforts? The results of the survey will be used to help NASA's SMD E/PO community better meet those needs and plan future opportunities for the informal education community. This survey was distributed in October and November 2013. Recommendations from the Informal Education Working Group, or the Working Group, on how E/PO professionals should use this information when planning their programs are included at http://smdepo.org/post/7213.