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Renee Lyons and Corliss Wilson Outley share more about the Using storytelling and a justice oriented STEM after-school club as critical tools for cultivating African American youths' STEM identities (NSF Award #2214740).

PI: Judy Vesel Primary Organization: TERC Award Number: 2005511 Project Title: STEM Workforce Stories for Adolescents Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing Judy Vesel, TERC, shares more about the STEM Workforce Stories for Adolescents Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing (NSF Award #2005511). What is your project’s big idea?  While progress has been ... Read more

These short interviews showcase equity-centered practices  and diverse perspectives from 9 AISL-funded projects.

This post is a part of a series about Framing Equity. Click here to go the series’ main page. “If done authentically, by nurturing trust, belonging, and persistence, the Center, in partnership with you, will shift the ISE field toward greater equity understanding and practice.”   We need to build trust with marginalized communities through cultural responsiveness ... Read more

Karen Peterman, president of Karen Peterman Consulting, Co., co-wrote this blog. Along with Todd Boyette, Katherine and Karen lead EvalFest, a community of practice that develops, tests, and shares evaluation approaches for science festivals. In the mid-2000s, just a handful of American science festivals were in existence. Since then, the number of festivals has grown significantly. ... Read more

In a world driven by data, the power of evaluation comes from our ability to weave data points into a story that meaningfully answers our project’s questions. The interpretation of evaluation findings is a crucial step in the evaluation process that turns analyzed data into useful evaluative conclusions. The process of interpretations extracts valuable insights ... Read more

Building understanding of and capacity for evaluation and measurement.

Evaluation Capacity Building Convening (2013) Agenda Evaluation Capacity Building Convening (2013) Participant List Evaluation Capacity Building Convening (2013) Strategic Framing Evaluation Capacity Building Convening (2013) Meeting Summary Evaluation produces evidence that is critical to improving our work, driving innovation, and making the case for the outcomes and impacts of informal STEM education (ISE). There are ... Read more

Today from the BISE (Building Informal Science Education) project, we explore what might be learned by examining the subsection of evaluation reports on informalscience.org that focus on informal science education (ISE) Media. We selected 101 evaluation reports that focused on some aspect of media, broadly construed. In most cases, the reports are focused on broadcast ... Read more

Resources » Design Evaluation Overview Working with an Evaluator Developing an Evaluation Plan Evaluation Tools and Instruments Evaluation Reporting and Dissemination Learn More About Evaluation See Also Discover Research Writing the Evaluation Report What goes into an evaluation report and how it is reported depends on the evaluation audience and how they intend to use ... Read more

Resources » Design Evaluation Overview Working with an Evaluator Developing an Evaluation Plan Evaluation Tools and Instruments Evaluation Reporting and Dissemination Learn More About Evaluation See Also Discover Research Most evaluations require the use of a data collection tool—a survey or other data collection instrument. Evaluators either need to adopt or adapt existing tools or ... Read more

The World Biotech Tour was a three-year initiative supported by the Biogen Foundation and managed by the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC). The project was designed to promote a greater understanding of biotechnology through science center and museum programming and provided insights on the resources required and challenges encountered when implementing a year-long, multi-country program in informal science environments.  ... Read more

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly a month since the meeting, so our apologies for the delayed post! In between vacation and other work, we thought it might be helpful to recount the three action areas identified during the final session, and in particular the diverse questions participants raised to help inform next steps. ... Read more

Have an event or opportunity you would like to include here? Contact us. We are interested in conferences, workshops, and other events; grant opportunities from public or private funders; calls for journal papers, particularly those that are open-access; and professional development opportunities like webinars, fellowships, and in-person trainings.   If there is anything you would ... Read more

Paul Orselli is President and Chief Instigator at Paul Orselli Workshop. He writes extensively about museum exhibit design and development on his blog, ExhibiTricks. We recently interviewed him on the intersections of informal STEM learning, science communication, and museum exhibits.  [CAISE] What role does/can exhibit design play in communicating science? [PO] Good exhibit design can be both intuitive ... Read more

The Exhibit Designs for Girls’ Engagement (EDGE) project is a three-year Exploratorium-run NSF-funded research study that aims to identify the most important design attributes for engaging girls at STEM exhibits. The study identified nearly 100 exhibit design attributes that had the potential for better engaging girls. To test those 100 attributes and their relationship to ... Read more

Through this new initiative, the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR) and the newly established Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) seek to support experiential learning opportunities for individuals from diverse professional and educational backgrounds that will increase access to, and interest in, career pathways in emerging technology fields (e.g., advanced manufacturing, advanced wireless, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, quantum information science, semiconductors, and microelectronics). As NSF seeks to support the ... Read more

Bethany Brookshire is a science education writer for ScienceNews. She is the guest editor of The Open Laboratory Anthology of Science Blogging, 2009, and the winner of the Society for Neuroscience Next Generation Award and the Three Quarks Daily Science Writing Award, among others. She blogs at Eureka! Lab and at Scicurious. You can follow ... Read more

The Exploratorium has partnered with Coursera, a leading Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provider to offer professional development courses for teachers all over the world, free of charge. The Exploratorium will be offering online courses to support teachers’ integration of its inquiry-based, hands-on approach to learning into the classroom. The Exploratorium, along with the American ... Read more

The Reimagining Equity and Values in Informal STEM Education (REVISE) Center is a resource center for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program and is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) award DRL-2229061. REVISE is a collaborative effort to advance equity across the informal STEM education field. Explore the various ... Read more

Delve into the beautiful phenomenon of the Northern and Southern Lights! NASA@ My Library/STAR Net is joined by Dr. Elizabeth MacDonald and Laura Edson of Aurorasaurus: a participatory science project that uses web reports to map auroras. Learn more about aurora science, get an introduction to the Aurorasaurus project, create your own aurora chalk art, ... Read more

Community engagement is an important context for effectively communicating about health and science. The Standing Committee on Advancing Science Communication is hosting a public webinar to share insights from research, practice, and community experts on principles and practices for ethical science communication when engaging communities. Featured discussions will address:  What are principles and core elements of ethical and effective science communication and engagement in the ... Read more

The Visitor Studies Association, a professional organization dedicated to understanding and enhancing learning experiences in informal settings through research, evaluation, and dialogue, recently convened in Detroit for its annual conference. The meeting drew attendees from large and small organizations across the United States, as well as over one dozen international attendees. Many professional researchers and ... Read more

Facilitate the Conversation!: The Fourth Annual STEM for All Video Showcase will be running from May 14 to May 21, 2018. If you are not among the 30+ Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL)-funded project presenters this year and would like to facilitate collegial discourse on the submitted videos, please let us know by sending an ... Read more

In my last post, I described the idea of an “exempt” project, that is, one that an IRB has determined does not require ongoing oversight. This post has two parts. The first contains suggestions for designing your project so that it is more likely to be exempt by minimizing risk to participants. Within the limits ... Read more