The CLASP Collaborative: How to enact community-driven design research
Presenter(s): Breanne Litts
We will organize the session like we do our CLASP Collaborative Gatherings. We will invite participants in our discussions and ask questions or contribute their own thoughts about our process, as well as to reflect on their personal and professional values. As an illustration of our practices, we will also share our practice of graphical recordings for documenting our journey as another example of reflective meaning-making and making visible research processes to community members.
Broad Implementation: Expanding a Successful Model of Fully Virtual Professional Learning for Afterschool Educators
Presenter(s): Heidi Cian
Participants will engage with story sharing and building collective understanding/strategies by: Briefly sharing a moment, tension, or decision point where they struggled to communicate the value of PL, coaching, or educator learning to a funder, evaluator, or partner. Comparing how different storytelling forms (e.g., budget narratives, evaluation reports, anecdotes, visualizations, or community voices) shaped what was understood as “impact.” Co-surfacing language, metaphors, or framing moves that helped (or hindered) communicating the value of the work to different audiences.
Building Capacity of Informal STEM Learning Providers to Engage Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Presenter(s): Monae Verbeke
This session is designed as a peer-to-peer discussion for museum and science center practitioners, researchers, and leaders. We will begin with a brief overview of the NILN project and key insights about autism inclusion training in informal STEM learning environments. Participants will then engage in whole-group conversations that invite them to share stories from their own institutions, including moments when training supported inclusive practice, moments of uncertainty or tension, and gaps where additional support is needed. The session emphasizes shared reflection, practical exchange, and relationship-building across institutions and researchers, creating space for participants to learn from one another’s experiences. Our goal will be to consider what further next steps need to be taken in this work.
Collaborative Research: Investigating the Most Impactful Culturally-responsive Informal Pedagogical Practices for STEM Afterschool Programs Engaging Marginalized Youth
Presenter(s): Cynthia, Sanchez Tapia
We will begin the session with brief participant introductions, followed by the selection of discussion topics. Together, these opening activities will take approximately one-fifth of the total session time. Depending on the number of attendees, introductions may involve a quick verbal round of names, roles, and AISL site focus areas, or a Menti Thermometer activity in which participants briefly describe their AISL site (e.g., program scope and goals), explain their role, and share key challenges.
Collaborative Research: Water in the Four Corners Region: Libraries and Exhibits Connecting and Engaging Communities with Their Water Systems
Presenter(s): Claire Ratcliffe Adams
Participants will consider what water means to them and their own personal connections to the waters where they come from through guided discussion prompts and round table written reflections. The session will be facilitated using the Conversation Guide: Our Relationship with Water that was developed during the project (see the guide here: https://wearewater.colorado.edu/media/544).
Improving Science Communication via Results-Blind Selection: Lessons from Registered Reports
Presenter(s): Christopher Trenge
Similar to the participants in the study, participants in the session will be encouraged to weigh in through a focus-group-style discussion.
Partnership Development and Planning for STEM Certification in Out-of-School Learning
Presenter(s): Sirocus Barnes
Session slides/materials: P2P3-SBarnes
In our session, we will center storytelling by highlighting the expertise, perspectives, and stories of STEM OSL professionals engaged in the project, both within the project team and through their engagement with the project needs assessment. Specifically we will share the frameworks, processes, and tools we’ve used to create a culture of intentional and reflexive collaboration among the project team. These strategies have allowed us to document our own relationships to the work of supporting Georgia’s K12 students in out-of-school settings, while remaining open to the stories shared with us by STEM OSL professionals in the process of conducting our needs assessment. As we approach the halfway point of this one-year project, we will share artifacts and products developed so far (e.g., reflection prompts, values charter, partnership agreement, Ishikawa diagram, etc.). We are very interested in learning from others within the AISL community about their experiences. Therefore, we will encourage participants to engage throughout the session by inviting conversation around the professional learning needs of STEM OSL professionals in their own communities and the strategies they have used to build trusting collaborative relationships across organizations.
Roads Taken: A Long-Term Follow-Up Study of Program Strategies and Long-term Impacts of Intensive, Multi-year, STEM Youth Programs
Presenter(s): Deborah Wasserman
Session slides/materials: P2P6-DWasserman
We will frame this discussion first with a brief introduction of what we have learned about the challenges this type of long-term follow-up research presents, specifically in the areas of finding and tracking alumni; generating and sharing conceptual models to guide follow-up research; conducting a study: inviting, Alumnae(i) tracking and data collection. Following this introduction, we will facilitate a discussion that addresses three aspects of planning for research collaboration: (If there are enough participants, we will break into smaller groups of practitioner/program leaders; organization leaders; researchers and evaluators)
Using Existing Institutional Capacity to Sustain Impact Beyond the Grant
Presenter(s): Faheemah Mustafaa
The purpose of this session is to brainstorm and share ideas for sustaining impact beyond the end of a funded project. The main goal is for participants to walk away with a list of ideas for using existing institutional resources for sustainable impact.
WaterSIMmersive: Designing and assessing a mixed-reality water sustainability educational game and museum exhibit for communities in the Desert Southwest
Presenter(s): Claire Lauer
Session slides/materials: P2P10-CLauer, P2P10-CLauer-Handout, P2P10-CLauer-Handout2
This facilitated discussion will begin with a short story-based provocation: how a single water story from one of our partner communities shifted design decisions in meaningful ways—and why our coding approach had to adapt to capture those relational signals. From there, we will offer a brief overview of our positioning theory framework and the tensions we navigate: honoring community voices, handling large qualitative datasets, negotiating institutional review constraints, and exploring whether/when AI tools can support analysis without distorting meaning. Participants will then break into small groups to discuss their own challenges with qualitative data in informal STEM education contexts. We will close by regrouping to surface shared challenges, tool needs, and emerging strategies. The emphasis will be collaborative problem-solving and exchanging methods.
Investigating Black Youths’ Engineering, Innovation, and Design Practices at the Intersection of Museum and Home/Family Learning
Presenter(s): DeLean Tolbert Smith
Session slides/materials: P2P11-DTolbertSmith
The goal of this peer to peer session is to create space for the participants to reflect on recent changes (5-6 years) and trends in family engaged research. What has changed? What works? What does the future look like?
One surprising challenge I had in my project was getting families to attend free activities at museums and responding to post session interview requests. I would like to share what I learned about engaging families and play snippets from the family podcast recordings.