A Learning Community for understanding and meeting needs through collaborative opportunity
The Foundations & Bridges project is building collaborative learning and research opportunities across the landscape of intensive, teen-oriented, STEM programming at informal STEM learning sites.
Why? Together we can document and improve best practices. Although these youth programs are fairly common (we’ve identified over 1,000!), they generally operate in isolation and without the opportunity to learn from the experiences of other programs– in design, implementation, and even in making a case for their value.
- While this grant focuses on identifying and articulating needs in this landscape, over time and beyond the grant period, this learning community can co-create a research network of like-minded program leaders, researchers, and evaluators
- Coalesce “Best Practices”
- Develop valuable tools (e.g., communally-developed and scientifically validated program evaluation approaches and participant/alum tracking approaches)
How? Each practitioner, evaluator, or researcher who joins the community contributes their experience, expertise, and questions to four main aims:
- Aim 1 Landscape Survey
- Identify the range of existing programs and their goals.
- Source: Questionnaire responses from intensive STEM programs for youth in informal learning settings
- Aim 2 An Outcomes & Measures Database
- Create a meta-database of intended long-term outcomes and how programs track them.
- Source: member profiles
- Aim 3 Social Network Mapping
- Create a visual Network Map of communication/collaboration relationships & how intended short- and long-term outcome types distribute across the network, and opportunities for collaboration
- Source: member profiles
- Aim 4. Stakeholder review
- Document stakeholder review, feedback, and suggestions for next steps
- Source: Member feedback and four focus groups, including:
- Practitioners
- Alums
- evaluators & researchers
- organizational leadership/decision makers