Pathways: Measuring the Impact of Participation in Informal STEM Programming on University Students

途径：衡量参与非正式 STEM 编程对大学生的影响

• 批准号: 1423496
• 负责人: Noah Finkelstein
• 金额: $ 29.98万
• 依托单位: University of Colorado at Boulder
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-01 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1423496&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Pathways; Measuring; Impact; Participation; Informal

Effective communication of science to the public by scientists is a desired and sought after attribute. This project which is working with graduate and undergraduate students in Physics will determine what interventions are best in assessing communication and attitudinal capacities in this cadre. Further, the project will determine what strategies are best at remediation. Finally, the successes will be generalized with regard to interventions and remediation to other Physics programs across the country and perhaps to other disciplines in the STEM fields.There are a variety of factors that contribute to effective communications with public audiences. Some of those factors include audience characteristics and teacher/mentor capabilities. This project will ascertain the issues in the latter teacher/mentor capacities. They will assess the mentor's baseline skills regarding communication, teaching and emergent attitudes. These are considered separately as each contributes uniquely to the effectiveness of communication. In the communications skills section, the objective will be to determine initially if the mentors are using any one of the following models: deficit, meaning the mentor is the expert and the participants are not informed; dialogue, where there is more back and forth between mentor and participant; and finally participatory interactions, where there is full integration of participant and mentor ideas. Once the baseline is established, the investigators will introduce mechanisms for remedial intervention with the student mentors to determine if and what types of changes can be made to improve communication directed toward public understanding of STEM concepts and ideas. Finally, the researchers will seek to determine if these interventions have affects beyond the immediate challenges such as career discussions, participation in classes and/or written products.

科学家向公众进行科学的有效沟通是一种期望的和追求的属性。该项目与物理学的研究生和本科生合作将决定哪些干预措施在评估该干部的沟通和态度能力方面最适合进行。此外，该项目将确定哪些策略最适合补救。最后，成功将在干预措施和对全国其他物理学计划的干预措施以及STEM领域的其他学科的补救方面进行概括。有多种因素有助于与公众有效的沟通。其中一些因素包括受众特征和教师/导师能力。该项目将确定后者的教师/导师能力中的问题。他们将评估导师关于沟通，教学和新兴态度的基线技能。这些被视为分别认为，因为每个都对交流的有效性有唯一的贡献。在“沟通技巧”部分中，目标是确定导师是否使用以下任何模型：赤字，这意味着导师是专家，而参与者没有被告知；对话，导师和参与者之间有更多来回的对话；最后是参与者和导师思想的完全整合的参与互动。建立基线后，调查人员将引入与学生导师进行补救干预的机制，以确定是否可以进行哪种更改，以改善针对公众对STEM概念和思想的公众理解的沟通。最后，研究人员将寻求确定这些干预措施是否影响到诸如职业讨论，班级和/或书面产品之类的直接挑战之外。