Tag Archives: Learning Across Settings

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.   

Heather & Chris presenting at Open Badges in Education workshop

On Monday, March 26, 2015, Chris & Heather are presenting on  an digital badges with their paper An Online Badging System Supporting Educators’ STEM Learning at Workshop on Open Badges in Education in Poughkeepsie, New York, USA.  Download the paper here: Gamrat_Zimmerman_2015_OBIE_Workshop_Long_Paper [pdf].

In our paper, we investigate how a digital badging system was used as part of an informal (i.e., not-for-credit) professional development project. Teacher Learning Journeys was designed for personalized science learning for educators in K-12 schools, museums, universities, and teaching colleges through employing two levels of micro-credentials: lower achievement digital stamps and higher achievement digital badges. We conducted a qualitative collective case study centered on 36 teachers; the primary data were records from learners’ interactions within the digital badge system; secondary data came from a survey at the end of the experience and two interviews with 11 focal teachers. Our findings suggest the following design principles: (a) two levels of assessment can support personalized learning, (b) mastery of learning can be demonstrated and assessed through reflective logs, (c) collaboration during and after badging activities can provide value to the learners, and (d) establishment of relevance of badging experiences can support the application of content outside the badging system.