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Science communication that connects STEM-based professionals with various publics are often designed and implemented with a range of multiple outcomes in mind which can influence the effectiveness of engagement efforts. Scientists, science communicators, and STEM professionals can be more effective at engaging diverse audiences if they align their engagement strategies with their communication goals and target audience. About this resource: This is...

The varied and diverse ways in which people engage with STEM are often not acknowledged due to the historical representation of STEM in school, industry, and society. These cultural models of “who does STEM” discourage many who don’t identify as male and/ or white, or who don’t see themselves as highly intelligent, from choosing or identifying with STEM. To broaden...

When everybody engaging in STEM is expected to adhere to dominant cultural norms established by the populations that have historically participated in and institutionalized STEM—that is, male, white, western, and privileged, some may feel like outsiders, even though others will find them familiar and comfortable. This can shape perceptions about who has expertise and/or belongs in STEM fields. STEM programs...

Science communicators and educators need strategies to account for the differences in ways that learners build on prior knowledge and experiences, and position these differences as strengths, rather than as weaknesses. Science communicators and STEM educators can more effectively engage their audiences by applying asset-based approaches in their activities and strategies. About this resource: This is a practice brief produced by CAISE's...

Learning is a lifelong, life-wide, and life-deep process. Narrow definitions of learning as consisting only of conceptual knowledge can limit how we engage people with and in STEM. Science communicators and educators can design opportunities to build on prior knowledge to help people make sense of new ideas and experiences in ways that can guide decision-making as well as future...

Though many communities are now undertaking collective efforts to transform who participates in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), the informal science education and science communication sectors are largely peripheral to these initiatives. A task force assembled by the Center for the Advancement of Informal STEM Education (CAISE) spent 18 months examining how the public engagement with STEM sector typically presents...

To help informal STEM education (ISE) and science communication groups reflect on and strengthen their efforts to broaden participation in STEM, CAISE’s Broadening Participation in STEM Task Force developed a suite of professional development tools. If you are a staff leader or trainer working on broadening participation, these resources can help support your work. You can use them to plan and lead reflective...

Given the current level of Galeophobia, or fear of sharks, that’s an excellent question. Most people will leave the water immediately if they think a shark is in the area. Oddly, the greatest number of those who fear sharks seem to come from those who rarely, if ever, go into the ocean—so, clearly, this is a primal fear, much like...

The National Building Museum (NBM) contracted RK&A, Inc. to conduct a summative evaluation of the Why Engineering? distance learning program.  The goal of the evaluation was to assess program operations and explore the extent to which the program achieved its intended outcomes for students and teachers. How did we approach this study? RK&A used three methodologies for the study: online program observations;...

RK&A conducted a summative evaluation of five climate change and resiliency programs at the Science Museum of Virginia (SMV).  The summative evaluation was the culmination of a three-year grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—front-end and formative evaluations were completed in the two years prior. The goal of this evaluation was to test the extent to which the...

Informal STEM education (ISE) organizations, especially museums, have used evaluation productively but unevenly. We argue that advancing evaluation in ISE requires that evaluation capacity building (ECB) broadens to include not only professional evaluators but also other professionals such as educators, exhibit developers, activity facilitators, and institutional leaders. We identify four categories of evaluation capacity: evaluation skill and knowledge, use of...

Informal STEM education institutions seek to engage broader cross sections of their communities to address inequities in STEM participation and remain relevant in a multicultural society. In this chapter, we advance the role that evaluation can play in helping the field adopt more inclusive practices and achieve greater equity than at present through evaluation that addresses sociopolitical contexts and reflects...

The free‐choice nature of informal STEM education (ISE) makes rigorous and contextually appropriate evaluation of outcomes challenging. Traditional measures such as surveys and interviews have been widely used in ISE evaluations, but they have limitations: They are typically self‐reports that are susceptible to the reactive effects of measurement, and they tend to intrude upon the participant's learning experience. The ISE...

We define "informal STEM education" and explain some of the reasons its outcomes are so inherently challenging to evaluate, including the critical need for ecological validity and the fact that many informal learning experiences are low-visibility and opportunistic. We go on to highlight significant advances in the field, starting with the fundamental embracing of learning outcomes that go well beyond...

The STEM Interest and Engagement (STEM IE) Study was a four-year project funded by the National Science Foundation under the auspices of its Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program that was designed to better understand what types of practices, supports, and opportunities afforded to early adolescent youth: (1) Are especially effective in helping youth experience in-the-moment engagement while participating in...

Parents are vital players in raising youth’s awareness of the value of STEM and in brokering their participation in activities that build STEM competencies. STEM Next Opportunity Fund is committed to ensuring that every child – especially girls, youth of color, kids in low-income communities, and youth with disabilities – has access to STEM experiences and the social capital that lead to greater...

‘6 Degrees of Connection’ is an informative and memorable program that combines a one-hour Science On a Sphere® interactive presentation with a follow-up creative art activity – each aspect of which encourages middle school students to think of interconnections among phenomena on the planet, including the natural world and human activity.  The ‘6 Degrees of Connection’ program was developed by the...

In informal STEM education, thinking about engagement has evolved from a focus on innovative ways of attracting the initial attention of science center/museum visitors or media consumers to strategies for designing environments and activities that foster deeper experiences such as experimentation, skill development, and contemplation in a variety of settings. In the science communication field, engagement increasingly refers to “two-way”...

The landmark 2009 National Research Council consensus report Learning Science in Informal Environments, posited that learners in informal environments “experience excitement, interest, and motivation to learn about phenomena in the natural and physical world” as one of six strands of informal science learning. In 2016, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Center for Public Engagement with Science and Technology identified “increased...

In everyday language, one might define “identity” as the way that people answer questions such as: “Who do I think I am, or who can I be, where do I belong, and how do I think other people see me?” The concept of identity has become an increasingly important factor in the study of informal science, technology, engineering, and math...

The Field Museum contracted RK&A to conduct a summative evaluation of the Grainger Science Hub and the Discovery Squad Carts, two museum experiences facilitated by educators or trained volunteers.  The goals of the study are to explore the extent to which visitors interact with programming in the Science Hub and at Discovery Squad Carts and the nature of those interactions,...

The HOWL science team set out to analyze the quality of the Hofmann Forest’s watershed in order to understand the Hofmann’s place in the coastal ecosystem as a whole and how its quality would affect the surrounding human and ecological community. However, we realized quickly that we would need help collecting hundreds of stream water samples and observations, and so...

The Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Experience Studies (COVES) aims to help science centers gather and share data to better understand visitors’ experiences. For the summative evaluation of COVES, the Museum of Science’s Research and Evaluation Department studied the program’s impacts on participating museums and museum professionals. Specifically, this evaluation was designed to: Examine participants’ overall satisfaction with the collaboration and their...

Citizen science, also known as participatory research, combines the efforts among professional researchers and community volunteers to collect data. We have established a collaborative project in eastern North Carolina, near the 79,000-acre Hofmann Forest, comprising of 55,000 acres of planted forests and 24,00 acres of deep pocosin natural forests. The White Oak River, New River, and Trent River all flow...

“Reclaiming Digital Futures” is a free guide and associated website for youth organizations to use as they integrate digital learning into their programming and practices. The report is available at DigitalLearningPractices.org. The report and the associated DigitalLearningPractices.org site contain a cross-section of resources to aid organizations and educators in developing quality programming that integrate technology and youth development. Rather than focusing...