The Dimensions of Success observation tool, or DoS, pinpoints twelve indicators of Science Technology Enginerring and Math (STEM) program quality in out-of-school time. It was developed and studied with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF Award #1008591) by the Program in Education, Afterschool and Resiliency (PEAR), along with partners at Educational Testing Service (ETS) … Read more
The new website Enhancing Evaluation Capacity in Informal Science Education, funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and developed by SK Partners, provides resources that address the challenges of measuring learning and evaluating impacts within informal STEM experiences and settings. Their summative evaluation framework links theory, research, evaluation, and practice, and is targeted to … Read more
co-authored with Zdanna Tranby, Science Museum of Minnesota The NSF-funded Building Informal Science Education (BISE, NSF award #1010924) project brought together a team of evaluators and researchers to investigate how the rich collection of evaluation reports posted to InformalScience.org could be used to advance understanding of the trends and methods used in the evaluation of … Read more
This post was co-written by Amy Grack Nelson and Denise Deng of the Science Museum of Minnesota. As described in our previous blog posts, the Building Informal Science Education (BISE) project created a coding framework to code and synthesize evaluation reports on the previous version of InformalScience.org, which included all reports voluntarily posted through May … Read more
This post is part of a series on the Building Informal Science Education (BISE) project. See previous posts in this series. How did the Building Informal Science Education (BISE) project start to make sense of the content in over 500 evaluation reports on InformalScience.org? It all began with our coding framework. Coding categories and related … Read more
In my three previous posts, I discussed IRB issues around the definition of generalizable research and the associated issues of risk and consent. In this post, I get more practical and provide some resources to help you navigate the IRB process for your own project. I have included three kinds of resources: examples of completed … Read more
What is the state of the art in how we assess outcomes of informal STEM experiences? In early December 2013, a group of six informal STEM learning assessment projects met for a two-day, deep dive on this question at the offices of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in Palo Alto, California. The projects had … Read more
How do we know that informal STEM learning happens? Where’s the evidence to support our impact? What are the design principles underlying effective practice? What’s the best way to conceptualize, support, and measure learning in different learning environments and with different audiences? Most informal science learning projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) are … Read more
In my last post, I described the idea of an “exempt” project, that is, one that an IRB has determined does not require ongoing oversight. This post has two parts. The first contains suggestions for designing your project so that it is more likely to be exempt by minimizing risk to participants. Within the limits … Read more
Human subjects regulations are designed to protect participants in very particular settings: those in which research is taking place and in which participants may be “at risk.” Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) decide on the procedures researchers need to follow based on a set of definitions and regulations. The first of these is the definition of … Read more