Search Resource Library (Repository)

Despite evidence that shows Black students' positive attitudes towards math at young ages, many of these students become less interested in math due to both the pedagogy and content to which they are exposed, as well as the dominant meta-narrative of a limited conception of their ability and interest as learners. This project seeks to broaden the mathematical imagination and...

The Arctic is warming four times faster as a result of climate change than any other region, but the impacts of this warming are not well known beyond the local communities in the region. The Alaska Pacific University (APU) will organize a one-year planning project to further develop relationships with four Indigenous communities along the Alaskan Yukon River who are...

We are often told that science is trustworthy because scientists focus on how to answer a question without getting to decide what that answer will be. For instance, a psychological scientist might carefully design a study to compare strict and lenient teaching styles, opening up the possibility that the answer could be unexpected, or even disappointing. Unlike scientists, however, the...

This document presents the final evaluation report for the NSF-funded AISL project: "Multimodal Visitor Analytics: Investigating Naturalistic Engagement with Interactive Tabletop Science Exhibits." The external evaluation for this project, led by Dr. Cathy Ringstaff at WestEd, was a mixed-methods study that used a developmental approach. Specifically, the evaluators worked closely with the researchers as thought partners, rather than as an external...

The National Academy of Sciences, in partnership with the Nobel Foundation will host the second Nobel Prize Summit: Truth, Trust and Hope on May 24-26, 2023. This will be a hybrid meeting, with in-person component held in Washington, DC. The second Nobel Prize Summit will explore misinformation and disinformation in the context of the broader information ecosystem looking at the...

This is a compilation of front-end, formative, and a partial summative evaluations, and an exploratory study using the xMacroscope, a data visualization technology developed for generating data from an exhibit using data captured from visitor actions. The studies were interrupted by the pandemic, and the summative study was unable to be completed. The project was an Innovations in Development AISL...

Project website for the Future Worlds game-based learning environment for environmental sustainability education in science museums and classrooms.  ...

Recent years have seen growing interest in modeling visitor engagement in museums with multimodal learning analytics. In parallel, there has also been growing concern about issues of fairness and encoded bias in machine learning models. In this paper, we investigate bias detection and mitigation techniques to address issues of algorithmic fairness in multimodal models of museum visitor visual attention. We...

Modeling visitor engagement is a key challenge in informal learning environments, such as museums and science centers. Devising predictive models of visitor engagement that accurately forecast salient features of visitor behavior, such as dwell time, holds significant potential for enabling adaptive learning environments and visitor analytics for museums and science centers. In this paper, we introduce a multimodal early prediction...

The executive summary of the Formative Research Report for the project: Fostering Joint Parent/Child Engagement in Preschool Computational Thinking by Leveraging Digital Media, Mobile Technology, and Library Settings in Rural Communities. This project will teach foundational computational thinking (CT) concepts to preschoolers by creating a mobile app to guide families through sequenced sets of videos and hands-on activities, building on the...

This is the formative research report for the project: Fostering Joint Parent/Child Engagement in Preschool Computational Thinking by Leveraging Digital Media, Mobile Technology, and Library Settings in Rural Communities This project will teach foundational computational thinking (CT) concepts to preschoolers by creating a mobile app to guide families through sequenced sets of videos and hands-on activities, building on the popular PBS...

This project will teach foundational computational thinking (CT) concepts to preschoolers by creating a mobile app to guide families through sequenced sets of videos and hands-on activities, building on the popular PBS KIDS series Work It Out Wombats!  To support families at home it will also develop a new library engagement model to build librarians' computational thinking content knowledge and self-efficacy...

This is an overview of research to measure STEM Engagement and Advocacy of Older Adults (50+).  This work explored findings from Design Challenges hosted for older adult learners and also resulted in survey instruments to be used for this population. It also outlines constructs that were developed to inform the research.  ...

Informal STEM learning experiences (ISLEs), such as participating in science, computing, and engineering clubs and camps, have been associated with the development of youth’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics interests and career aspirations. However, research on ISLEs predominantly focuses on institutional settings such as museums and science centers, which are often discursively inaccessible to youth who identify with minoritized demographic...

National Federation of the Blind (NFB) Engineering Quotient (EQ) for Teachers is a free, online curriculum and collection of resources for educators who want to teach NFB EQ, the National Federation of the Blind’s week-long engineering program designed for blind and low-vision youth. The curriculum consists of full lesson plans, files for the production of tactile graphics, Braille-ready files, and other...

The Kaulele Kapa Exhibit was created to explore the effectiveness of a Hawaiian culture-based framework and approach in increasing learner engagement and depth of knowledge in STEM among Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (NHPI) learners. The exhibit utilized hands-on and interactive activities, coupled with scientific and cultural information, to create relevant learning experiences for these communities.  To determine the effectiveness, exhibit attendees...

There is growing interest in stories as potentially powerful tools for science learning. In this mini-review article, we discuss theory and evidence indicating that, especially for young children, listening to and sharing stories with adult caregivers at home can make scientific ideas and inquiry practices meaningful and accessible. We review recent research offering evidence that stories presented in books can...

The STEM Excellence and Leadership project (Assouline et al., 2017) was funded by the National Science Foundation from 2017 to 2023 (Award #1713123). The project was organized around a research-practice partnership (RPP) between The University of Iowa College of Education Belin-Blank Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development (B-BC) and 11 original partner districts.  This report provides an overview of...

The STEM Excellence and Leadership project is an NSF-funded Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) Research in Service to Practice project of the University of Iowa’s Belin-Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development (B-BC). This project addressed the need to provide economically-disadvantaged rural-students with informal STEM learning opportunities that place high-potential students on path for developing STEM expertise and...

The Citizen Science, Civics, and Resilient Communities (CSCRC) project was a three-year project funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Environmental Literacy Program (NA18SEC0080008) and by the Museum of Science, Boston (MOS), in collaboration with Arizona State University, SciStarter, Northeastern University, and the National Informal STEM Education Network. The goal of the Environmental Literacy Program is to support...

The project team published a research synopsis article with Futurum Science Careers in Feb 2023 called “How Can Place Attachment Improve Scientific Literacy?” The target audience for the article is K-12 educators in the US and UK. ...

Research on citizen science programmes has highlighted that they can foster science content and knowledge gain, enhance pro-environmental behaviour and cultivate civic action among participants. Especially in the case of place-based citizen science, which requires hands-on repeated activity in an out-of-door setting through a scientific lens, evidence suggests that some of these outcomes may be linked to the unique people–place...

A key broadening participation challenge for science communication is to reach non-traditional audiences beyond those already interested in science. In this study we test a “Guerilla Science” approach that blends elements of access, by removing barriers to participation, with those of inclusion, by designing participant-centered activities, for reaching an art-interested adult audience at the FIGMENT art festival in New York City. Our...

In Spring 2022, Monterey Bay Aquarium opened its new exhibition, Into the Deep (En lo Profundo). The 7,000+ square-foot exhibition showcases characteristics of the deep sea and the animals that live there. The exhibition also highlights the deep-sea research being carried out by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), as well as the effect of plastics on deep-sea life....

Dedicated science learning spaces primarily attract audiences who seek out science learning experiences. This self-selection represents a major challenge for broadening participation. We examined an approach to reaching audiences who may not ordinarily engage with science. Termed Guerilla Science, this approach blends elements of access, by removing barriers to participation by embedding science into unexpected places, with those of inclusion,...