We should also add the website for the Science Activation collective from NASA Science Mission Directorate. You can see more about projects and resources from the collective at this link.

Thanks Vicki...as one of the people responsible for the DNA of the original network, we are happy to see you here! We are excited to continue working with OMSI on more NISE Net events. Engage! 

Thanks Anushree...these are great questions! 

As you know, there are many challenges to grow and support a community of STEM educators connecting with the public. One strategy we have in the network is focusing on the design and development of high-quality STEM hands-on activities we know educators will use. We like to boil our design principles in this quick 5-word mantra:

Engaging, Authentic, Current, Relevant, & Accessible.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of a very intensive design & development process we use to make sure all our materials will be successful. We have captured this process in our Development Process on our website. Peer review and formative evaluation are key components of this process to make sure we are including the right amount of facilitation tips and background content knowledge. We like this support to be baked right into the materials and readily accessible in training videos and other just-in-time additions to our toolkit. The hands-on activities guides in the toolkits are the result of a 10+ years learning about and addressing the needs of our museum educator and scientists audiences. 

This is a big topic...so we are always happy to talk more!

Hey Anna...thanks for your comments! We have lots of interesting STEM experiences planned for the next Explore Science: Earth & Space toolkit, and will continue to work with you and ASP on activities for young children. Like the entire science activation collective we are looking forward to connecting with some of the big NASA anniversaries approaching not to mention the great exoplanet missions starting soon. The eclipse was nothing less than "astronomical" but we know there will be some other great crystallizing moments for our partners over the next few years.  

Thanks Sherry...starting the conversation is super important to us, and we spend a lot of time thinking about that activity "spark" for visitors and educators while designing the toolkit. 

Your time is well spent! I love being able to use the kits as examples of well-thought-out museum activities when training staff to develop their own activities. From thorough materials lists, step-by-step directions, and detailed background information to the way you accommodate diverse audiences through Universal Design, the kits are a great resource even beyond their original content objectives. Thanks!

Stephanie,

Thanks for all your comments  - feedback you and other partners provide to us really help us shape the materials we develop and distribute. Kudos to you and Stepping Stones for all the great work you do engaging your local audiences in STEM topics!

-Catherine

Hey Steve...

A lot of the evaluation work for the Earth & Space events and materials is still ongoing, but I can point you to a few from the nano era of NISE Net that have insights into content knowledge. 

NISE Network Public Impacts Summative Evaluation (2012-2015)

NISE Net Years 6‐10 Evaluation Summary Report (2017)

Summative Evaluation Study of NanoDays 2014 Events

While these are nanotechnology focused, the content is no less abstract that Earth and space sciences.

You are correct that the hands-on activities we develop allow visitors (and facilitators) to see connections in their own lives, thus providing a foundation for further conversations and exploration into these complex STEM topics. We also structure our activities around a content framework that assists us in steering our activities towards clear and streamlined learning objectives. All the facilitator guides for the activities include these objectives, that are further reinforced in activity and content training videos for each activity, giving facilitators a lot of potential structure for their interactions with visitors.

Misconceptions are also an important topic for us in this project, and we have created a video and quick guide for facilitators to provide simple strategies to use. These resources and others have laid the groundwork for engaging and high-quality STEM experiences for the public, which we have seen in formative evaluation and will continue to observe in larger-scale summative evaluations happening now. We hope to share those results as they become available.

Hi Paul...the NISE Network sent out Explore Science: Earth & Space toolkits to 250 partners after a competitive application process in both 2017 and 2018. All our physical toolkits have a digital version. You can download the digital version of the Explore Science: Earth & Space toolkits and many other physical toolkits that the network has distributed over the years on this page of our website. All resources included in the digital toolkits carry a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license to encourage free sharing, use, and remixing of the collection by similar education institutions and users. The NISE Networks is committed to sharing high-quality open educational resources we create through our many projects. 

Hi Lisa,

Thanks so much for your comments.  

In terms of challenges, we actually have tried to document some of our history in a way that we hope may be useful to other networks:

The document is entitled, Leading and Managing the NISE Network: Practical Solutions for Creating a Flexible National Network, and triads to capture some of our history as well as some lessons learned that we hope might be useful for others thinking about setting up a network or large project with many partners:
http://www.nisenet.org/catalog/leading-and-mana...

In terms of the future, we do have some planned growth this coming year in terms of growing from 250 partners receiving physical Explore Science: Earth & Space toolkits to 350 toolkits.  In addition, many other institutions and individuals use digital versions of our materials.  

To answer your question about scale and growth, we have experimented with different kinds of institutional partnerships over the years, but currently our primary partners are informal science education institutions primarily museums and university outreach programs; we don't have the capacity to reach large numbers of K-12 schools, teachers, libraries, and afterschool programs, community organizations, and youth-serving organizations programs directly ourselves; instead we rely on partners collaborating at the local level to partner with these different organizations.  We do have a collaboration guide focused on museum and community collaborations:

http://www.nisenet.org/collaboration-guide

Thanks Chad! I wanted to add to Catherine's comment that we also work with the Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) to help us broaden our reach to the informal ed community. We'd love any suggestions about networks that you think we should be talking with. We know there are more people out there doing great work!

Hi NISE Net team!

Congratulations on a great video that shows how you are building on the investment in this network. I find Julia's reference to desired outcomes on educators facilitating the activities especially interesting. I see a lot of long-term continuity in the network participants and wonder what effect this might have had on their career choices and professional pathways. Are you studying the impact of participation on the core NISE Net team, or hub leaders?

Very interesting question Margaret! That dovetails so nicely with your work - thinking about how being involved in national networks can professionally develop museum staff in their career. These impacts might also be true for library and out-of-school time professionals as well - could be an interesting thing to study!