Title: Vessels of Opportunity in Marine Science Outreach and Education: Case Study and Caveats
Studying unexpected, ephemeral, or transient events in ocean ecosystems, such as gelatinous zooplankton blooms, is important because it provides us with valuable data on how our oceans may be changing in response to climate change and other anthropogenic activities. However, planning for such events is nearly impossible and making use of opportunistically acquired data allows the marine science community to be adaptive and efficient given the logistical and financial constraints of time at sea and in the field. Because such sampling events are often responsive rather than planned, they are typically not accompanied by outreach and education efforts. This commentary considers if opportunistically acquired data sets can be applied to generate opportunistic outreach and education activities. A case study is provided with successes and caveats outlined. more »« less
Tirumalai, Madhan R
(, Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education)
Maloy, Stanley
(Ed.)
ABSTRACT Education and public outreach activities can be challenging for most active scientists, for very good reasons. Allotment of time to participate in outreach activities could be a major challenge. However, when such activities are incorporated into one’s academic and research plan, they can be enriching. Here, the author describes his experience in what began as on one-off participation at an outreach event, leading to a series of speaking events addressing the public at the monthly meetings of several astronomy clubs/societies, observatories, etc. in the states of Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Colorado. They have often involved the use of motifs and characters from popular science fiction, literature, and movies and when possible, getting the audience actively involved in the presentations. Furthermore, the discussions following each presentation have been enriching in terms of getting a broad perspective of the perceptions that people in general have, regarding the origins of life, microbiology, extremophiles, and astrobiology.
Fasy, Brittany Terese; Hancock, Stacey A.; Komlos, Barbara Z.; Kristiansen, Brendan; Micka, Samuel; Theobold, Allison S.
(, iTiCSE 2020)
Exposure to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at a young age is key to inspiring students to pursue careers in these fields. Thus, many institutions of higher education offer events to engage youth in STEM activities. These events are most effective when they are adapted to the specific audience. In Montana, a large percentage of the K-12 student population is from rural communities, where the ability to participate in such events is limited due to travel logistics and a shortage of relatable materials. We have developed a computer science outreach module that targets these populations through the use of storytelling and the Alice programming environment, thus drawing a parallel between storytelling and building algorithms. We describe the module's implementation, report and analyze feedback, and provide lessons learned from the module's implementation at outreach events.
It is well-known that women and minorities are underrepresented in STEM fields. This is true of mechatronics and robotics engineering (MRE), despite targeted K-12 activities, such as the FIRST Robotics Competition, that aim to increase diversity in engineering. This paper is a first step in assessing the current status of women and underrepresented minorities (URM) as well as investigating solutions to increase diversity and support inclusion of these groups specifically in MRE. The paper examines challenges and potential solutions identified in The 4th Future of Mechatronics and Robotics Education and in an online survey of the MRE college instructor community. Survey participants reported on courses, programs, clubs, and outreach events at the college level. The sample size is small, but the data provide initial findings to inform further study. Qualitative text analysis was used with the survey data. Five themes emerged, ordered from most frequent to least: the instructor’s perspective, social context of MRE, specific attributes of MRE, pre-college interventions, and in-college interventions. The most promising new ideas are in curriculum reform to incorporate social context into engineering education and in expanding STEM outreach by colleges to elementary and middle schools. Existing programs should also be strengthened, including robotics competitions, NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates, STEM summer camps, bridge programs, and affinity programs. Other important aspects include actively engaging parents, and working to be more inclusive of first-generation Americans and first-generation college students. The paper concludes with initial suggestions to increase diversity and inclusion in MRE and areas for further study.
Universities serve as a hub for the advancement of water science and engineering knowledge and innovations. Communities outside of academia hold equally valid expertise on water and environmental topics. However, there is a lack of avenues for knowledge exchange between academia and non-academic communities including homeowners, industry professionals, policy makers, and K-12 students and teachers. Many universities and research centers attempt to enhance knowledge sharing by organizing broader impact outreach events such as lab tours, demonstrations, hands-on activities, and public presentations. This work studies water-focused students who we define to be students from all disciplines (engineering, biology, sociology, geography, planning, etc.) that study water resources, quality, treatment, and management. Anecdotally, we have seen that of a pool of approximately 100 water-focused students, only the same small subset participates in every event while over 70% of those invited never volunteer. Therefore, there is a need to assess why we see this occurrence. This study aims to survey undergraduate and graduate student water scholars’ motivations and barriers for participating in volunteer broader impact outreach events outside of their degree requirements. This study collected quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data were collected through Likert-scale type responses to motivating and hindering factors. Qualitative data were collected through written responses to questions on specific positive or negative student experiences and attitudes. Four main outreach trends emerged: 1) Students enjoy attending outreach events and find it helpful to themselves and to society; 2) Attending events leads students to want to participate in more; 3) Lack of time is by far the top hinderance; 4) Students are motivated by mentor support. Study findings suggest three possible steps to implementing a targeted strategy for broader impact student outreach that aligns with student desires at university research centers: 1) Choice of outreach events should emphasize the contribution to society; 2) Outreach recruitment should emphasize skills students will gain; 3) Faculty mentors should genuinely support their students’ outreach endeavors including finding relevant outreach opportunities.
Zhao, Zhen; Carberry, Adam; Larson, Jean; Jordan, Michelle; Savenye, Wilhelmina; Eustice, Kristi; Godwin, Allison; Roehrig, Gillian; Barr, Christopher; Farnsworth, Kimberly
(, American Society for Engineering Education)
National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Engineering Research Centers (ERC) must complement their technical research with various education and outreach opportunities to: 1) improve and promote engineering education, both within the center and to the local community; 2) encourage and include the underrepresented populations to participate in Engineering activities; and 3) advocate communication and collaboration between industry and academia. ERCs ought to perform an adequate evaluation of their educational and outreach programs to ensure that beneficial goals are met. Each ERC has complete autonomy in conducting and reporting such evaluation. Evaluation tools used by individual ERCs are quite similar, but each ERC has designed their evaluation processes in isolation, including evaluation tools such as survey instruments, interview protocols, focus group protocols, and/or observation protocols. These isolated efforts resulted in redundant resources spent and lacking outcome comparability across ERCs. Leaders from three different ERCs led and initiated a collaborative effort to address the above issue by building a suite of common evaluation instruments that all current and future ERCs can use. This leading group consists of education directors and external evaluators from all three partners ERCs and engineering education researchers, who have worked together for two years. The project intends to address the four ERC program clusters: Broadening Participation in Engineering, Centers and Networks, Engineering Education, and Engineering Workforce Development. The instruments developed will pay attention to culture of inclusion, outreach activities, mentoring experience, and sustained interest in engineering. The project will deliver best practices in education program evaluation, which will not only support existing ERCs, but will also serve as immediate tools for brand new ERCs and similar large-scale research centers. Expanding the research beyond TEEC and sharing the developed instruments with NSF as well as other ERCs will also promote and encourage continual cross-ERC collaboration and research. Further, the joint evaluation will increase the evaluation consistency across all ERC education programs. Embedded instrumental feedback loops will lead to continual improvement to ERC education performance and support the growth of an inclusive and innovative engineering workforce. Four major deliveries are planned. First, develop a common quantitative assessment instrument, named Multi-ERC Instrument Inventory (MERCII). Second, develop a set of qualitative instruments to complement MERCII. Third, create a web-based evaluation platform for MERCII. Fourth, update the NSF ERC education program evaluation best practice manual. These deliveries together will become part of and supplemented by an ERC evaluator toolbox. This project strives to significantly impact how ERCs evaluate their educational and outreach programs. Single ERC based studies lack the sample size to truly test the validity of any evaluation instruments or measures. A common suite of instruments across ERCs would provide an opportunity for a large scale assessment study. The online platform will further provide an easy-to-use tool for all ERCs to facilitate evaluation, share data, and reporting impacts.
Hann, Ashley M., Bernard, Kim S., and Carroll, Lindsay J. Vessels of Opportunity in Marine Science Outreach and Education: Case Study and Caveats. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10472276. Current: The Journal of Marine Education 37.2 Web. doi:10.5334/cjme.76.
Hann, Ashley M., Bernard, Kim S., & Carroll, Lindsay J. Vessels of Opportunity in Marine Science Outreach and Education: Case Study and Caveats. Current: The Journal of Marine Education, 37 (2). Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10472276. https://doi.org/10.5334/cjme.76
Hann, Ashley M., Bernard, Kim S., and Carroll, Lindsay J.
"Vessels of Opportunity in Marine Science Outreach and Education: Case Study and Caveats". Current: The Journal of Marine Education 37 (2). Country unknown/Code not available: Current: The Journal of Marine Education. https://doi.org/10.5334/cjme.76.https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10472276.
@article{osti_10472276,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Vessels of Opportunity in Marine Science Outreach and Education: Case Study and Caveats},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10472276},
DOI = {10.5334/cjme.76},
abstractNote = {Studying unexpected, ephemeral, or transient events in ocean ecosystems, such as gelatinous zooplankton blooms, is important because it provides us with valuable data on how our oceans may be changing in response to climate change and other anthropogenic activities. However, planning for such events is nearly impossible and making use of opportunistically acquired data allows the marine science community to be adaptive and efficient given the logistical and financial constraints of time at sea and in the field. Because such sampling events are often responsive rather than planned, they are typically not accompanied by outreach and education efforts. This commentary considers if opportunistically acquired data sets can be applied to generate opportunistic outreach and education activities. A case study is provided with successes and caveats outlined.},
journal = {Current: The Journal of Marine Education},
volume = {37},
number = {2},
publisher = {Current: The Journal of Marine Education},
author = {Hann, Ashley M. and Bernard, Kim S. and Carroll, Lindsay J.},
}
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