Understanding and Addressing the Complex STEM Learning Challenges of Adults with Type 1 Diabetes

The increasingly connected and technologically mediated world both gives learners unprecedented access to data about complex systems, and simultaneously requires increasingly sophisticated STEM reasoning skills to grapple with those complex systems. This project will develop analytical tools, simulations, and online learning materials to help adult learners make sense of the complex systems involved in Type 1 Diabetes (T1D). The project will use the context of T1D to develop a model for how people engage in complex systems sensemaking with real-world incomplete data, and will examine how learners make use of the simulation tool to develop the STEM skills of data interpretation, understanding relationships between variables, and the role of uncertainty. Lessons learned from this project will both inform the further development of supports for this specific learner community, as well as inform supports that other adult learner communities might need to learn about complex systems in their day-to-day lives.

The project will develop the sensemaking model by exploring the following research questions: (1) how people with T1D make sense of uncertain, real-time data along with dozens of other factors to help them learn the STEM knowledge and skills related to their chronic illness; (2) what features online materials need in order to best serve the STEM knowledge and skill gaps that people with T1D face when learning about their chronic illness; and (3) what ways a simulation can help people with T1D practice necessary skills and improve their understanding of the multifaceted relationship between relevant variables involved in their chronic illness. These questions will be addressed via a design-based research method, making use of survey data, focus groups, and computer log data gathered from T1D community members. The model will be used as an initial design plan for online learning materials and a simulation to help people with T1D learn about the necessary STEM knowledge and skills and then provide an opportunity to practice using that knowledge and those skills. The project will also deepen partnerships across T1D-focused non-profits and academics engaged in this work and leverage that to build and study the online instructional resources and supports. All of the materials will be made available online for free to all, including people with T1D, their caregivers, and health care professionals.

This Integrating Research and 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. This includes providing everyone multiple pathways for accessing and engaging in STEM learning experiences.

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.