Search Results – Website Pages

THIS POSITION IS NOW CLOSED. The Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) is looking for a Project Manager to join our Washington, DC-based team.  Note that we are also hiring a Senior Manager of Community and Communications Coordinator.  Learn more about our recent team transitions. CAISE is based at the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) in Washington, DC. The position is full-time, 40 hours ... Read more

The Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) is looking for a Senior Manager of Community to join our Washington, DC-based team.  Note that we are also hiring a Project Manager and Communications Coordinator. Learn more about our recent team transitions. CAISE is based at the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) in Washington, DC. The position is full-time, 40 hours per week and ... Read more

Proposals to the National Science Foundation’s Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program are due on November 6, 2017. This pre-recorded webcast is an in-depth review of the AISL Solicitation (NSF 17-573). It is a complement to the AISL Overview webinar (see archived materials) but provides more detail and addresses nuances not covered in the AISL ... Read more

The National Science Foundation (NSF) hereby solicits proposals for the establishment of the Arecibo Center for STEM Education and Research (ACSER) at the original site of the Arecibo Observatory (AO). Arecibo Center for STEM Education and Research (ACSER)

The National Science Foundation has a new Dear Colleague Letter: Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure Incubators and Conferences for STEM Education Research with a Focus on Education Equity. Proposal deadlines are 7/1/2022, 9/1/2022, and 3/1/2023. Join an informational webinar on June 14, 3-4PM ET.   May 11, 2022 Dear Colleagues: With this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), the ... Read more

On behalf of NSF, we are writing to let you know that the ITEST Program is holding an informational webinar regarding its call for resource center proposals.  Information about the ITEST Resource Center responsibilities is available in the current ITEST program solicitation: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2022/nsf22585/nsf22585.htm The webinar will be held on June 7th from 1pm to 2pm Eastern Time (US and ... Read more

Thank you to everyone who attended our recent webinar on defining and measuring STEM interest, identity, and engagement! We hope that it exposed you to new perspectives on these concepts and inspired you to explore new approaches and tools for your informal STEM education work. Watch the recording below and download the presentation slides. More ... Read more

Dear Colleague: The new NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) solicitation (NSF 17-573) was released in July. NSF Program Officers will present a webinar on the solicitation on Thursday, August 24 from 2:00-3:30 PM EDT. This is an opportunity to hear from NSF Program Officers and CAISE staff during a webinar focused on an overview of ... Read more

The Network for the Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST Network) will be holding their 2023 conference in Rotterdam, The Netherlands from 12 to 14 April, with a pre-conference day on 11 April 2023. With PCST 2023 focusing on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA), some of their members thought they should have a ... Read more

The Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) co-principal investigators, staff and advisors wish all in the STEM education communities- informal, formal and everything in-between a productive, rewarding new year.   In our January newsletter, we include pieces that follow up on or are related our major initiatives. The Portal to the Public program ... Read more

CAISE is very pleased to welcome Grace Troxel as our Digital Librarian and Collection Analyst. Grace will be assisting with a variety of activities on InformalScience.org, including cataloging and curating new project, research, and evaluation resources. Grace is originally from Portage, Pennsylvania. Prior to joining CAISE, she worked as a librarian on contract at the ... Read more

Welcome, and thanks for visiting! The Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) launched a newly redesigned InformalScience.org in May 2013 to serve as a primary resource for informal science education (ISE) professionals. Site users can share and access project, evaluation, and research resources, as well as get up-to-date news about the ISE field ... Read more

Welcome to the new informalscience.org. We’re glad you’re here! This site is a resource for the informal science education (ISE) field, for people who are conducting or wishing to conduct, ISE activities, research or evaluation, or to collaborate with others who are. It is the culmination of several years of work by the Center for ... Read more

CAISE is pleased to welcome Jared Nielsen as our new Online Producer. Jared joins us after spending several years developing The Hello World Program and Dototot, websites which engage children in learning computer science to kids through videos and interactive tutorials. He has also designed interactive science exhibits at the Natural History Museum of Los ... Read more

This post was co-written by Amy Grack Nelson and Denise Deng of the Science Museum of Minnesota. As described in our previous blog posts, the Building Informal Science Education (BISE) project created a coding framework to code and synthesize evaluation reports on the previous version of InformalScience.org, which included all reports voluntarily posted through May ... Read more

Informal STEM education refers to lifelong learning in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) that takes place across a multitude of designed settings and experiences outside of the formal classroom

This article was migrated from a previous version of the Knowledge Base. The date stamp does not reflect the original publication date. Overview Informal science education (ISE) is considered learning about science as well as technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) outside of the formal school setting (Bell et al, 2009; NSF, 2015; . A 2011 ... Read more

Resources » STEM Identity, Interest, and Engagement Interviews Overview What is STEM Identity? What is STEM Interest? What is STEM Engagement? 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 ... Read more

Resources » STEM Identity, Interest, and Engagement Interviews Overview What is STEM Identity? What is STEM Interest? What is STEM Engagement? 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 ... Read more

Resources » STEM Identity, Interest, and Engagement Interviews Overview What is STEM Identity? What is STEM Interest? What is STEM Engagement? The landmark National Research Council consensus report Learning Science in Informal Environments (2009), which was based on a review of the literature to date, posited that learners in informal environments “experience excitement, interest, and motivation to ... Read more

This research brief has been made available by Relating Research to Practice (RR2P). RR2P provides short synopses of current peer-reviewed research relevant to informal science education (ISE). This study, conducted in New Zealand, is an analysis of the questions that students in their final year of school were anticipated to ask, and actually asked, during ... Read more

With the redesign and re-launch of InformalScience.org in May 2013, the Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) created a “one-stop shop” of resources for informal science education (ISE) professionals–people who are conducting or wishing to conduct ISE activities, research or evaluation, or to collaborate with others who are. The site builds on several ... Read more

Proposals for the NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program are due on November 6, 2017 at 5 pm in the submitter’s local time. As you begin to prepare your proposals, here is a quick overview of some of the changes in the solicitation from previous years. To read the complete solicitation, visit the NSF ... Read more

You may have experienced occasional confusion between the terms Design-Based Research (DBR) and Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR). These two approaches, springing from the field of the learning sciences, share a common goal and common history. But there are key distinctions. The common goal of DBR and DBIR is to guide education beyond traditional models of ... Read more

What makes for a compelling story? How can you start constructing your own stories from the ground up? How can you fit science into your story without lapsing into Scientist Voice? In this fast-paced interactive lecture, you’ll learn the fundamentals of story structure and composition, brainstorm the building blocks of your own personal stories, and ... Read more