Category Archives: Informal Learning

Studying Science Curiosity and Computational Thinking in an eTextile Upward Bound Curriculum

This project will examine and iteratively improve the design of a youth-centered 30-hour summer school curriculum that will engage high school students in making e-textiles (i.e., wearable technologies). The research builds on an existing curriculum (STEAM-Maker) that, when piloted, showed a promising capacity to improve participants’ computational thinking. In addition to studying the impact of the revised curriculum on computational thinking, the current project will assess the curriculum?s impact on: science curiosity; affinity for science, technology, and engineering; youths’ self-perceptions as computational professionals; and increased knowledge of and/or interest in STEM-related careers and pursuits. This work will solidify a research-practice partnership in two states with the youth-serving organization, Upward Bound. The project will work with 60 youth in Upward Bound summer camps in Pennsylvania and Michigan, and employ computer science and engineering graduates involved in wearable technology industries (e.g., biomedical devices, fitness trackers, robotics, and smart fabrics) as near-peer mentors during the program. The mentors have been recruited to challenge typical stereotypes about who can create technology, and will be trained in anti-racist and equity-based mentorship practices. The project will produce a refined curriculum which will be shared with high school summer camp providers, with the intent to broaden participation of Black and Hispanic/Latinx youth in STEAM-Maker camps.

The research will support further theorization around the linkages between curiosity, computational thinking, STEM career interest, and science curiosity. Data will include video of youths’ engagement with activities; learners’ artifacts; validated surveys of science curiosity, STEM career interest, and computational thinking; and surveys of post-program engagement with making. Analysis includes qualitative coding of artifacts, micro-ethnographic analysis of youth engagement, learning and innovation, and statistical analysis of quantitative data including affect surveys (using location, gender, and race/ethnicity as variables). The intellectual merit of the project rests in the development of design principles for encouraging science curiosity, career interest, and computational thinking in youth-centered making experiences. This project is funded by the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing youths’ knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers. This project is co-funded by the CS for All: Research and RPPs program.

Heather to chair AERA’s Informal Learning Environments Research group for 2019-20

Heather is chairing AERA’s Informal Learning Environments Research group for 2019-2020. The group is dedicated to furthering educational research in informal learning environments and to promote a community practice interested in establishing and maintaining a better understanding of learning in multiple out-of-school time environments. Members are researchers and practitioners focusing on equity, inclusion, and access to learning in libraries, museums, community-based organizations, hobbies, outdoor education, and everyday settings.

To join AERA, click here to purchase your membership!

 

Informal Learning Environments Research
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Our purpose is to further educational research in informal learning environments and to promote a community practice interested in establishing and ma…
 

Check out STEM Pillars 3-min video!

Our team is highlighting our IMLS-funded STEM Pillars project on the STEM for All Video Hall.  Our 3-minute video describes our design-based research project where we are working with rural libraries and museums to create programs to help smaller institutions serve their communities.

STEM Pillars 3-minute video

 

Join our team — we are hiring a full-time Lab Manager!

The College of Education at Penn State seeks candidates for the position of Lab Manager/Human Research Technologist with the Augmented and Mobile Learning Research (AMLR) Group. The AMLR group (https://sites.psu.edu/augmentedlearning/about-us/stem-pillars//) conducts video-based research studies in libraries, museums, summer camps, gardens, and nature centers. The successful candidate will work on a 4-year NSF-funded study investigating how rural families and youths can best learn science with mobile computers. The position involves overseeing a dynamic team: organizing the group’s schedule, recruiting research participants, scheduling 30 workshops per year, developing appropriate databases, and managing the daily lab operation (which includes equipment oversight, supply orders, managing project finances, updating websites, updating existing IRB protocols, and similar tasks). Duties also include preparing materials for studies, conducting video-based data collection on weekends and early evenings from spring to fall (~30 evenings/weekend days per year); and completing video digitizing and archiving. Travel to data collection sites in Centre, Blair, and Huntingdon counties is required. This position requires that you operate a motor vehicle as a part of your job duties. A valid driver’s license and successful completion of a motor vehicle records check will be required in addition to standard background checks. Typically requires an Associate’s degree or higher plus two years of related experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience. A Bachelor’s degree is preferred. The successful candidate will have strong computer skills (Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and willingness to learn additional computer skills related to data management, preparation, analysis, and archiving. Applicants should have excellent interpersonal, communication, and organizational skills – with the ability to manage multiple simultaneous projects. Interested applicants should upload a cover letter, a CV/resume, and contact information for three references. This is a fixed-term appointment funded for one year from date of hire with strong possibility of re-funding. 
Apply online at https://psu.jobs/job/80555 To review the Annual Security Report which contains information about crime statistics and other safety and security matters and policies, please go to https://police.psu.edu/annual-security-reports, which will also explain how to request a paper copy of the Annual Security Report. 
Penn State is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer, and is committed to providing employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.

Heather, Susan, and team awarded IMLS grant to investigate learning in rural libraries and museums

Our team from Penn State’s College of Education in partnership with the Schlow Centre Region Library, the Centre County Library, Discovery Space of Central Pennsylvania, and Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center received a federal research grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.  Together, we will explore how to best support family science learning as we work with STEM professionals from Penn State University, local businesses, and a rural county agency.

The project will use design-based research methods to iteratively develop family workshops on five personally relevant science themes that foster science conversations and intergenerational learning:

  • Engineering my World (engineering)
  • Weather Where I am (meteorology)
  • Water Quality in my Community (toxicology, watershed monitoring)
  • Plants around Us (botany, genetics, pollination)
  • My Happy Valley Sky (astronomy)

The research team will examine questions including, How can intergenerational library and museum experiences use STEM expert narratives effectively to make the science present in the community more visible and relevant? The project will result in a model for personally relevant informal education that brings together community science topics, hands-on inquiry, and personal stories from STEM experts in order to help museum and library professionals learn where and how to place STEM experts’ stories within programs; engage parents in their children’s learning; and position children as knowledge builders in STEM content areas.   

Susan and team win AERA SIG Instructional Technology (SIG IT) best paper award.

Susan led our team on a paper that won the best paper award for the American Education Research Association (AERA) Special Interest Group Instructional Technology (SIG IT).

Land, S. M., Zimmerman, H. T., Seely, B. J., Mohney, M. R., Dudek, J., Jung, Y., & Choi, G. W., (2015, April). Photo-capture and annotations supporting observations in outdoor mobile learning. 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. Chicago, IL.

SIG IT best paper award

SIG IT best paper award for 2015

Heather presenting at Research Symposium

Heather Zimmerman is presented emerging research findings from our team’s COIL grant at the 2nd Annual COIL Research Symposium on Thursday, October 16.

The Augmented and Mobile Learning Research Group’s  COIL grant is a 12-month research project on how mobile computers can support engagement with the life sciences in people’s communities. Project Co-Directors Heather Zimmerman and Susan Land began this project to compare forms of technologically enhanced facilitation in regard to supporting learners to think scientifically at the Arboretum at Penn State and Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center. The technologically enhanced facilitation supports observing to encourage deliberate noticing that will lead to the development of scientific concepts as learners coordinate information contained on the mobile computer with the specimens on-site.

Prior to this funded project, our team conducted two small scale qualitative studies (see our Publications Page).  Now with the COIL funds, we engaged in a more rigorous series of qualitative and multi-condition, design-based research studies in summer 2014 that examined various aspects of mobile computing pedagogy. Our publications on this new work are forthcoming.

In addition to Heather and Susan, members of the COIL project team include: Brian J. Seely, Michael R. Mohney, Gi Woong Choi, Jaclyn Dudek, Yong Ju Jung, and Lucy R. McClain.

Connecting out-of-school learning to home: Digital postcards from summer camp

Chris Gamrat, Simon Hooper and Heather Zimmerman have a new article in TechTrends about digital photography in informal learning environments:

Parents and children are rapidly adopting mobile technologies, yet designs for mobile devices that serve a communication function to connect parents to children’s out-of-school time activities are limited. As a result, our team designed the Digital Postcard Maker so that children attending summer camps can create digital photographs to send home to their parents. These digital postcards help to connect children’s home life with out-of-school learning experiences and also support 21st Century Skills’ media literacy practices. The research design included two iterations of a design-based research project with 58 children from 55 families. Design implications related to supporting informal science learning with mobile computing relying on digital photography are shared, including (i) the need for additional support to transform an out-of-school recreational activity into an out-of-school learning activity, and (ii) the utility of photographs as a means to connect parents and children to talk about environmental sciences topics.

If you do not have access to a university library, you can download the article here on our website: 2014_Zimmerman_Gamrat_Hooper_TechTrends.

Designing for place-based learning

In the January/February 2014 issue of TechTrends, Heather and Susan offer a design paper that brings together research on place-based education with research on mobile computing’s location awareness feature.  In this article, we developed three design guidelines to support learners to develop rich science-related understandings within local communities.

(1) Facilitate participation in disciplinary conversations & practices within personally-relevant places

(2) Amplifying observations to see the disciplinary-relevant aspects of a place

(3) Extending experiences through exploring new perspectives, representations, conversations, & knowledge artifacts

We illustrate these design ideas with a case study from our Tree Investigator project.

To access the journal article from the TechTrends site (subscription is required), click here.  To download the pdf from our website’s publication list instead, please click here and navigate to Zimmerman & Land (2014).