The Informal STEM Community Resource Library, also known as the Repository, is a crowdsourced and searchable database of thousands of informal STEM learning project descriptions, research materials, and evaluation reports.
Found 9500 results. Change search to: repository and web pages combined or website only.
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
Fostering interest in science is critical for broadening engagement with science topics, careers, and hobbies. Research suggests that these interests begin to form as early as preschool and have long-term implications for participation and learning. However, scholars have only speculated on the processes that shape interest development at this age, when children’s exposure to science primarily occurs during family-based learning...
DATE: March 12th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
Although discussions of museums often revolve around exhibits, educators in these spaces have the potential to create in-depth, social learning experiences beyond what is possible at exhibits alone. There is still little empirical research, however, to inform how we understand, approach, and improve museum facilitation practices. In this study, we sought to address this gap by quantifying the impact of...
DATE: December 14th, 2018
REPOSITORY | EVALUATION
AHA! Island is a new project that uses animation, live-action videos, and hands-on activities to support joint engagement of children and caregivers around computational thinking concepts and practices. This research is intended to examine the extent to which the prototyped media and activity sets support the project’s learning goals. Education Development Center (EDC), WGBH’s research partner for the project, conducted...
DATE: March 12th, 2019
REPOSITORY | EVALUATION
As part of a grant from the National Science Foundation, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) is conducting regional STEM workshops in partnership with local science museums, entitled NFB STEM2U, for blind youth [youth], grades 3 – 6 and 9-12 [apprentices]. During the sixth and final regional workshop in Minneapolis, MN, the NFB operated two different programs simultaneously: one...
DATE: October 1st, 2016
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
This poster was presented as part of the 2019 AISL PI Meeting. In this project, the New York Hall of Science, in collaboration with the Amazeum (Bentonville, AR), the Tech (San Jose, CA), and the Creativity Labs (Indiana University), is conducting a design-based research study to develop evidence-based guidance about how museums can use narratives to create more equitable and...
DATE: February 12th, 2019
REPOSITORY | EVALUATION
The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), in partnership with scholars from Utah State University and educators from the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM), has developed the Spatial Ability and Blind Engineering Research (SABER) project to assess and improve the spatial ability of blind teens in order to broaden the participation of blind students in STEM fields.
Activities began this summer...
DATE: October 1st, 2018
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
This poster was presented at the 2019 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It provides an overview of a project designed to broaden participation of blind students in engineering fields through the development of spatial ability skills and the showcasing of nonvisually accessible teaching methods and techniques.
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DATE: February 11th, 2019
REPOSITORY | EVALUATION
The STAR Library Network Phase 2 (STAR Net) brings inquiry-based STEM learning experiences to public libraries through six traveling exhibits, training for library staff and associated programming for library patrons, and a virtual community of practice for library staff and others interested in bringing STEM programming to libraries. In 2014, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a four-year grant to...
DATE: March 5th, 2019
REPOSITORY | EVALUATION
The STAR Library Network Phase 2 (STAR Net) brings inquiry-based STEM learning experiences to public libraries through six traveling exhibits, training for library staff and associated programming for library patrons, and a virtual community of practice for library staff and others interested in bringing STEM programming to libraries. In 2014, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a four-year grant to...
DATE: March 5th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
Amazon Adventure is a giant screen film that tells the science adventure story of Henry Bates who travels to the Amazon in the 1850s to find evidence of species change. His quest turns into an 11-year journey in which he discovers 8,000 species new to science and what would be called “Batesian Mimicry”.
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DATE: February 11th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
By using widely-available technologies, this project brings fully online instructional coaching in STEM to out-of-school educators who live too remotely to attend ongoing in-person workshops.
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DATE: February 11th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
The aim of this project is to build capacity among institutions of informal science education (ISE) to design co-created public engagement with science (CCPES) activities in partnership with civic, community, and scientist partners.
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DATE: February 11th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
We hired 1-3 residents of rural communities to serve as STEM Guides”, connecting youth to informal STEM experiences.
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DATE: February 11th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
The 60 million people who live in rural settings are often overlooked as a significantly underrepresented STEM audience. In Sept 2018, a small invited conference brought together innovators and experts in rural STEM learning outside of school, to share lessons learned and plan next steps.
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DATE: February 11th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
This project created a social programmable robot to engage middle school girls in computer programming.
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DATE: February 11th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
This poster explores three programs that engage underrepresented youth in physics learning through dance.
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DATE: February 11th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
What if researchers and interpreters had a better way of eliciting, supporting and extending the interests that visitors bring with them to the park? This poster describing the iSWOOP project was presented at the 2019 NSF AISL Principal Investigators Meeting.
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DATE: February 11th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
In partnership with the Digital NEST, students engage in near to peer learning with a technical tool for the benefit of a nonprofit that tackles issues the youth are passionate about. Youth build first from an 'internal’ Impactathon, to planning and developing an additional Impactathon for a local partner and then traveling to another partner elsewhere in the state. Participants...
DATE: February 11th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
In the face of geographic isolation & turnover, how can informal STEM programs maintain community to change rural school culture?
This poster was presented at the 2019 NSF AISL PI Meeting.
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DATE: February 11th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
Many informal learning institutions are experimenting with STEAM approaches to engage diverse learners. However, what STEAM means, including how to design and enact STEAM experiences, is undertheorized. We are offering a PD series for informal educators that centers around a set of core STEAM practices that support identity work among learners. The series involves in-person sessions, online training, and team...
DATE: February 11th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
This article describes a citizen science project that collects data on sharks.
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DATE: April 15th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
Science centers such as museums and planetariums have used stereoscopic (“three-dimensional”) films to draw interest from and educate their visitors for decades. Despite the fact that most adults who are finished with their formal education get their science knowledge from such free-choice learning settings very little is known about the effect of stereoscopic film presentation on their science learning. We...
DATE: February 28th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
The COMPASS conference will bring together 80 participants for two days in September 2018 at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA. The first dissemination will take place in a presentation at the ASTC conference the following month in October 2018. A webinar sharing insights from COMPASS and inviting others to engage will be held in March 2019 hosted by ASTC...
DATE: February 11th, 2019
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
Why Zoos and Aquariums Matter (WZAM3) conference presentaiton slides for the 2018 ASTC Annual Conference (Hartford, CT) and the NAAEE 2018 Annual Conference and Research Symposium (Spokane, WA).
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DATE: October 1st, 2018
REPOSITORY | RESEARCH
The project asks, “What are the real outcomes of the zoo or aquarium enterprise, both as a visitor destination and as a public voice in public media?” and has the following three aims:
To understand how visitor goals and behavior impact learning.
To understand how the conservation education agenda of most Z/As interlaces with those goals.
To understand how the public situates the voice...
DATE: February 12th, 2019
