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Experiential learning opportunities relevant to Quantum Information Science and Engineering (QISE) are scarce, especially for students at the associate, undergraduate and master's levels or for early/mid-career professionals seeking up-skilling. While theoretical knowledge is essential, hands-on experiences using real-world equipment and facilities play a crucial role in deepening understanding and fostering practical skills. Unfortunately, due to the complex and specialized nature...

A research-practice partnership between museum-based educators and scientists, learning researchers, and rural community members was designed to support climate change education in public settings. We consider the museum’s role in this work, tracing how the partnership built upon lessons learned from prior work, and used asset-based strategies to learn from the rural community. We present a survey of rural climate beliefs,...

The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Garden Raised Bounty (GRuB), Feed Seven Generations, Urban Indian Health Institute (UIHI), and Oregon State University were awarded a 5-year Innovations in Development grant from the National Science Foundation Advancing Informal STEM Learning (NSF-AISL) program entitled Transforming American Indian and Alaska Native STEM Learning via Indigenous Knowledge Translation, Education, and the Environment [NSF DRL #1812543]....

Through a partnership between the Public Archaeology Facility and the Department of Teaching, Learning & Education Leadership at Binghamton University, Binghamton University Community Schools, and three local, rural schools, middle school learners were engaged in an afterschool program that blended Western STEM concepts, practices, and processes emphasized in school standards with archaeological and Indigenous concepts, practices, and processes rooted in...

The paper urges critical self-reflection by those who organize participatory science projects. The paper details the development of a tool (worksheet) to help organizers understand the ways they influence the project environment and to see their blind spots and biases. The self-reflection can prepare organizers to help their project advance equity, inclusion, and scientific productivity....

This coding system was developed using categories and codes established across multiple research studies and most recently an NSF-funded evaluation of an early STEM family engagement program called Teaching Together. We provide definitions of codes to promote shared use of these or similar approaches that match early STEM activities relevant to other studies. Others are welcome to use or...

There have been calls for meeting the goals of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) through instruction and experiences in out-of-school, informal science education contexts. To maximize the effectiveness of such experiences, teachers and informal science educators must collaborate to create meaningful science learning experiences. However, in contrast to teachers, there has been little work done with informal science educators...

This poster provides an overview of FAST exhibit development. It includes a rationale for the FAST infrastructure, a summary of the table elements and templates, and tips for developing new experiences....

This website for the Flexible, Accessible Strategies for Timely (FAST) Digital Exhibit Design (FAST) project contains a free, digital toolkit that shares shares exhibit development resources for three FAST experience templates (including all hardware and interactive software specifications), each with a “sample experience” (a content package comprised of text, graphics, images, video, and audio files)....

This booklet was developed to allow museum professionals to quickly create digital tabletop interactives for educational purposes. It is an overview of the development process used at the Museum of Science, Boston, and a starting point for anyone who wants to experiment with FAST digital exhibits at their institution....

It is important to understand how different types of media resources (informational vs. modeling) influence discourse between parents and their children during subsequent play. This evaluation investigated the effect of two types of vide media resources—information-based and modeling-based—on parent-child interactions during a preschool engineering activity. This formative evaluation aimed to inform the development of family engagement programs by comparing how...

The present study was conducted to evaluate the dedicated natural science exhibit space at Creative Discovery Museum. The previous exhibit, known as Excavation Station, closed in February 2023, and the renovated UnEarthed (UE) space opened in June 2023. This study aims to clarify the effect of renovations on visitor experience. Specific evaluation questions included: 1. What kind of attention are...

This is the evaluation report for the third year of the NSF-funded WaterMarks project. It reflects a current summary of available evidence about the intended outcomes of program activities to date, as well as commentary on overall project progress and planning for the future. This report contains descriptions of embedded measures (i.e. anonymized drawings and reflections captured on a thematic...

This summary brief captures highlights from the third year of the NSF-funded WaterMarks project (September 2023 - August 2024). The technical evaluation report for this same project period can be found on the main project page. The purpose of this document is to communicate key updates (as observed by the evaluation team in early fall 2024) in a less technical...

An external evaluation examines the reach and impact of promoting STEM learning about solar eclipses through livestreams, on-demand videos, and social media platforms. The April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse broadcast from Texas and Mexico had over 49 million online views, supported by a mobile-friendly approach and culturally engaging live segments. Navigating the Path of Totality, is a NASA-Exploratorium project....

DataWorks is a unique data services provider that recruits people from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and underrepresented groups in computing to train and employ them as Data Wranglers and for task such as data annotation. Using DataWorks as a research platform, we seek to understand how individuals from minoritized communities learn data skills, tools and processes in context to gain...

Partnering with NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Swampworks (KSC), City of Orlando’s Grand Avenue neighborhood community center (City of Orlando), Florida Recreation & Park Association (FRPA), and the National Recreation and Parks Association (NRPA), Orlando Science Center (OSC) has created a broad partnership with national reach that generates, implements, and evaluates (1) a series of weekly authentic STEM engagement opportunities focused...

Background Capturing measures of students’ attitudes toward science has long been a focus within the field of science education. The resulting interest has led to the development of many instruments over the years. There is considerable disagreement about how attitudes should be measured, and especially whether students’ attitudes toward science can or should be measured unidimensionally, or whether separate attitude dimensions...

STEM education programs are often formulated with a "hands-on activities" focus across a wide array of topics from robotics to rockets to ecology. Traditionally, the impact of these programs is based on surveys of youth on program-specific experiences or the youths’ interest and impressions of science in general. In this manuscript, we offer a new approach to analyzing science programming...

Abstract The increasing use of machine learning and Large Language Models (LLMs) opens up opportunities to use these artificially intelligent algorithms in novel ways. This article proposes a methodology using LLMs to support traditional deductive coding in qualitative research. We began our analysis with three different sample texts taken from existing interviews. Next, we created a codebook and inputted the sample...

This meta-analysis explores the impact of informal science education experiences (such as after-school programs, enrichment activities, etc.) on students’ attitudes towards, and interest in, STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The research addresses two primary questions: (1) What is the overall effect size of informal science learning experiences on students’ attitudes towards and interest in STEM? (2) How do...

This study examined the dimensionality and effectiveness of the five categories Likert Scale of the framework for observing and categorizing instructional strategies (FOCIS), a survey that measures students' preference for learning activities in science instructions, developed by Tai et al. in 2012. The data included 6546 students from 3rd to 12th grade including 4 school districts. The results show that...

A key goal of the Polar Literacy project was to develop educational materials – including learning kits and videos – that address Polar Literacy Principles1 and that engage youth in participatory learning opportunities in informal education settings. The expectation is that educational materials will continue to be disseminated and used after the four-year grant period in both online and in...

In 2018, the Museum of Science, Boston (MOS) kicked off an initiative called CC-PES: Building Capacity for Co-Created Public Engagement with Science. Funded by the National Science Foundation’s Advancing Informal STEM Learning award (AISL), this project set out to test a model for bringing museums and other informal science education institutions (ISEs) together with community and civic partners to create programs...

This evaluation investigates how different types of media resources (informational vs. modeling of a parent-child play interaction) affect the types and frequency of questions parents and children ask during a play-based informal learning engineering activity. This evaluation project is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Children’s Museum Houston and the Children’s Learning Institute at UTHealth. Participants included families...