Learning Solutions: Investigating Fundamental Tools, Resources & Strategies to Support Professionals Addressing Persistent Issues in STEM

学习解决方案：研究基本工具、资源

• 批准号: 2011424
• 负责人: John Falk
• 金额: $ 24.44万
• 依托单位: Institute for Learning Innovation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-08-01 至 2023-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2011424&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Learning; Solutions; Investigating; Fundamental; Tools

Across the United States, individuals, organizations, and communities are wrestling with a wide array of challenging and persistent science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-related problems. A few examples include ensuring more equitable access to STEM careers; building capacity for rural libraries to support STEM learning; and supporting greater cyber literacy among youth. The good news is that thousands of individuals, organizations, and communities are coming up with great ideas for how to confront these problems; many of them supported by the NSF. Unfortunately, most will encounter significant roadblocks to success along the way, but not because of bad ideas. Most change agents falter along the lengthy and often convoluted pathway between idea and successful execution because they bump up against barriers they do not expect or know how to overcome. This Pilot and Feasibility Study will create Learning Solutions, a multi-platform program designed to support those people and entities engaged in work that cultivates the public’s understanding of, engagement with, and interest in STEM fields and STEM-related information. First, the project will systematically identify the real, but often unspoken issues that individuals, organizations, and communities run into as they work to bring about significant and impactful STEM-related change. Then, the project will assemble, curate, and make digitally available a collection of tools, resources and strategies designed to help someone understand and resolve these kinds of issues if and when they arise. By better understanding the experiences of change agents, the challenges they face, and the creative learning solutions they enact, this project will ensure that more change agents successfully access the learning know-how they need, when they need it, in curated, easy-to-digest formats. This award is funded by the Advanced Informal STEM Learning program which contributes to STEM engagement and literacy, workforce development, and educational success via supporting new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of STEM learning in informal environments. Learning Solutions will build capacity and will help more professionals successfully bring more good ideas to fruition.The target audience for this Pilot & Feasibility phase of Learning Solutions will be STEM professionals working at the intersection of STEM and society across diverse sectors. It will focus on change agents -- individuals who want to be or who already are engaged in community-based, action-oriented STEM-related change projects, whether acting on their own, within an organization, or as part of a broader community of organizations. To achieve the goal of making STEM-related change easier to accomplish, Learning Solutions will implement a multi-step process. With input from five Critical Advisors, 20 Key Informants, and ultimately hundreds of change agents, project staff will: 1) Utilize an iterative process of in-depth interviews and broadly disseminated surveys to identify the major understandings, skills and processes that current and past STEM-related change agents have experienced as impediments to their success; 2) Determine how best to describe and categorize these issues across diverse problem spaces; 3) Select twelve issues, based on which are the most frequently mentioned and/or perceived to be the most critical or challenging, and research and curate the best and most authoritative resources responsive to these dozen issues; and finally, 4) Use a variety of platforms (e.g., social media, traditional media, digital and in print publications, podcasts, panels, and group presentations) and utilization metrics to ensure effective digital delivery of potential solutions to the selected issues. By the project’s end, we will have identified some of the key challenges the STEM-related change agents who work in communities across America regularly encounter, as well as the feasibility of developing a mechanism for helping those change agents discover preexisting and readily accessible resources to assist them in resolving those challenges.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在整个美国，个人，组织和社区都在与各种各样的挑战和持续的科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）相关的问题搏斗。一些例子包括确保更公平地获得STEM职业；建立粗糙图书馆支持STEM学习的能力；并支持青年的更高网络素养。好消息是，成千上万的个人，组织和社区都提出了如何面对这些问题的好主意。他们中的许多人得到了NSF的支持。不幸的是，大多数人会在此过程中遇到成功的巨大障碍，但这并不是因为坏主意。大多数变更代理在整个长度上都是错误的，并且经常在思想和成功执行之间进行曲折的途径，因为它们遇到了他们不期望或不知道如何克服的障碍。这项飞行员和可行性研究将创建学习解决方案，这是一项多平台计划，旨在支持从事工作的人和实体，以培养公众对STEM领域和与STEM相关信息的理解，参与和兴趣。首先，该项目将系统地确定个人，组织和社区在努力带来重大且有影响力的STEM相关变化时遇到的真实但通常是不言而喻的问题。然后，该项目将组装，策划并使数字上可用的工具，资源和策略集合，旨在帮助某人理解和解决这些问题，并在出现时解决这些问题。通过更好地了解变革代理人的经验，他们面临的挑战以及他们制定的创造性学习解决方案，该项目将确保更多的变革代理成功访问他们需要的学习知识，以策划，易于消化的格式。该奖项由先进的非正式STEM学习计划资助，该计划通过支持非正式环境中对STEM学习的新方法和基于证据的理解，从而有助于STEM参与和识字，劳动力发展和教育成功。学习解决方案将增强能力，并将帮助更多的专业人员成功带来更多的好主意。该试点和可行性解决方案的目标受众将是在潜水员领域的STEM和社会交集的STEM专业人员。它将集中于变革代理 - 想要成为的个人或已经从事基于社区的，以行动为导向的STEM相关的变更项目的人，无论是自行行事，在组织内还是作为更广泛的组织社区的一部分。为了实现使与STEM相关的更改更容易完成的目标，学习解决方案将实施多步骤过程。随着五位关键顾问，20名重要线人以及最终数百名变更代理的投入，项目人员将：1）使用深入的访谈的迭代过程，并广泛传播了勘测，以确定当前和过去与STEM相关的变化代理的主要理解，技能和过程，这是他们成功的障碍； 2）确定如何在潜水员问题空间中最好地描述和分类这些问题； 3）选择十二个问题，这些问题是最常见的和/或认为是最关键或挑战的问题，并研究和策划最好，最有权威的资源对这些十几个问题做出回应；最后，4）使用各种平台（例如社交媒体，传统媒体，数字和印刷出版物，播客，面板和小组演示文稿）和利用指标来确保有效地将潜在解决方案用于所选问题。到该项目的结尾，我们将确定在美国各地社区工作的与STEM相关的变革代理人经常遇到的一些关键挑战，以及开发一种可行的可行性，可以帮助这些变化代理人发现既定的和易于访问的资源，又易于访问的资源，以帮助他们解决这些挑战，以反映了NSF的范围，以评估NSF的范围，以实现的范围进行了评估。 标准。