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This project seeks to create a coalition of geospatial innovation organizations across all sectors of society (public, private, and governmental) to explore how spatial science can be more fully represented in offerings of informal STEM education in the Greater St. Louis region. The coalition seeks to identify gaps, remove silos, and enable better collaboration, knowledge- and resource-sharing. By establishing shared...

Serendipity, or insight coupled with chance, has been identified as an essential element of scientific discovery and played a key role in the work of countless scholars and researchers. For instance, examples of serendipitous discoveries include penicillin, radioactivity, and the adhesive for Post-it Notes. Yet serendipitous moments are neither rare nor solely the domain of magnificent discoveries; they happen regularly...

Opportunities to learn about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are all around. Yet, people often assume that formal school settings are the only places to learn about the STEM disciplines. A consensus report from The National Academies, Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places and Pursuits (NRC, 2009), helped to upend this assumption and galvanized over a decade of...

In Fall 2023, the Museum of Science, Boston (MOS) received a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) titled AIM: Alliance for Immersion in Museums. This project built the foundation for a coalition of museums and media producers from across the United States, all working together to address current topics of relevance to our communities...

A quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest study (N = 108) evaluated K-2 children’s learning from three engineering-based Team Hamster! digital games and six accompanying videos. Pairs of children were assigned to one of three groups: Games Only (playing each game twice over two weeks), Games + Videos (playing the games twice and watching short, related videos), or Control (no exposure). Interviews...

Through the Climate and Rural Systems Partnership (CRSP), Carnegie Museum of Natural History partnered with a rural conservation district and learning researchers at University of Pittsburgh to build a learning network with two regional hubs. Each hub invited community organizations to join and work together to develop strategies to support productive, science- and community-based dialogue among network members and with...

Through the Climate and Rural Systems Partnership (CRSP), Carnegie Museum of Natural History partnered with a rural conservation district and learning researchers at University of Pittsburgh to build a learning network with two regional hubs. Each hub invited community organizations to join and work together to develop strategies to support productive, science- and community-based dialogue among network members and with...

Through the Climate and Rural Systems Partnership (CRSP), Carnegie Museum of Natural History partnered with a rural conservation district and learning researchers at University of Pittsburgh to build a learning network with two regional hubs. Each hub invited community organizations to join and work together to develop strategies to support productive, science- and community-based dialogue among network members and with...

Through the Climate and Rural Systems Partnership (CRSP), Carnegie Museum of Natural History partnered with a rural conservation district and learning researchers at University of Pittsburgh to build a learning network with two regional hubs. Each hub invited community organizations to join and work together to develop strategies to support productive, science- and community-based dialogue among network members and with...

Through the Climate and Rural Systems Partnership (CRSP), Carnegie Museum of Natural History partnered with a rural conservation district and learning researchers at University of Pittsburgh to build a learning network with two regional hubs. Each hub invited community organizations to join and work together to develop strategies to support productive, science- and community-based dialogue among network members and with...

Through the Climate and Rural Systems Partnership (CRSP), Carnegie Museum of Natural History partnered with a rural conservation district and learning researchers at University of Pittsburgh to build a learning network with two regional hubs. Each hub invited community organizations to join and work together to develop strategies to support productive, science- and community-based dialogue among network members and with...

Voces de Esperanza Exhibit Development Preliminary Framework: A synthesis of ambitions, theory, and evidence The goal of this study was to create an evidence-based framework of exhibit characteristics that support the logic model outcomes (see Exhibit Outcomes section of this report pages 9-10 and Appendix A). Given the project ambitions identified in the proposal, of particular interest is evidence of exhibit...

Voces de Esperanza Front-end evaluation findings The evaluation plan for Voces included a front-end study to inform project content by better understanding ways in which the topic of climate change is perceived in local (Portland Metro Area) Latine communities. To create exhibit activity content that would be perceived as relevant by local audiences, the front-end evaluation aimed to better understand how...

Voces de Esperanza Practices evaluation report for the period of March - December 2024 The objective of this evaluation is to inform and monitor the ways and extent the project practices realize intended and unanticipated outcomes as described in the project logic model that was presented in the project proposal (see Appendix A). The present report provides insight and tracks the...

Computational thinking is central to many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers of the future, yet many young children do not have opportunities to develop the computational thinking (CT) skills that lay the foundation for future STEM trajectories leading to these careers. This project will address this opportunity gap through developing and researching a story-based approach to fostering computational...

Science centers are well-positioned to support the communities that surround them through activities and programming that advance community goals. However, little is known about how science centers can act within larger networks to collectively apply innovations to meet community needs. This project will address this gap in practice by developing and researching a network, whose central hub is a science...

This project will advance practice in informal science education with a scalable and adaptable model for community-based, co-design of a future STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) Center. With a collaborative approach, the project aims to ensure that the design of the Center prioritizes fostering skills, knowledge, and interests that align with projected economic growth areas, which is needed...

The emergence of increasingly powerful AI technologies calls for the design and development of K-12 AI literacy curricula that can support students who will be entering a profoundly changed labor market. However, developing, implementing, and scaling AI literacy curricula poses significant challenges. It will be essential to develop a robust, evidence-based AI education research foundation that can inform AI literacy...

It is important to prepare the world's youth and the future workforce with fundamental knowledge of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Informal settings, such as museums, offer great opportunities in helping youth and the general public learn about AI. In this paper, we will discuss the design of a Virtual Human Exhibit that aims to communicate to the public about the capabilities...

In this paper, we describe our experience developing a framework for understanding AI systems that we use to drive the design of AI learning experiences for elementary-aged youth in an informal, free-choice environment. This framework—detect/interpret/respond (DIR)—shows promise as a flexible and age-adaptable model for youth to connect across learning experiences and work toward a coherent understanding of AI. As an...

As artificial intelligence (AI) profoundly reshapes our personal and professional lives, there are growing calls to support pre-college aged youth as they develop capacity to engage critically and productively with AI. While efforts to introduce AI concepts to pre-college aged youth have largely focused on older teens, there is growing recognition of the importance of developing AI literacy among younger...

The increasing presence and importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our society has led to calls for its inclusion at all levels of education. However, the field is only beginning to understand what how AI learning experiences may be designed to be effective and developmentally appropriate, especially for young children. One challenge children encounter is in conceptualizing the “intelligence” of...

As young people increasingly use AI in their daily lives, it is imperative to foster these learners’ AI literacy. We present Knowledge Net, a collaborative tangible tabletop museum exhibit aimed at teaching users about knowledge representations, which are central to understanding AI and understudied in AI education research. In this exhibit, we center creative making and embodied interaction by allowing...

It is essential to increase children’s understanding of artificial intelligence and machine learning as they encounter it through their daily activities. We have developed DataBites, a museum exhibit aimed at fostering middle-school-age children’s understanding of supervised machine learning. DataBites engages visitors in learning about the steps and practices of supervised machine learning, using three guiding design principles: embodied interaction, creativity,...

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has witnessed unprecedented growth in text-to-image AI tools. Yet, much remains unknown about users’ prompt journey with such tools in the wild. In this paper, we posit that designing human-centered text-to-image AI tools requires a clear understanding of how individuals intuitively approach crafting prompts, and what challenges they may encounter. To address this, we conducted semi-structured...