JoinAll Informal Education resources
Journal Article
Evaluating Nature Museum Field Trip Workshops, an Out-of-School STEM Education Program
Out-of-school learning opportunities for students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) represent an important context in which students learn about and do STEM. Studies have shown that in- and out-of-school experiences work syn...
By Caroline Freitag, and Melissa Siska
Journal Article
Saturday Seminars for Urban Scholars Program
The K–16 academic journey to a career in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is often described as having serious barriers, such as uninspired teaching, an unwelcome environment, and poor math and science preparation that lea...
By Michele W. McColgan, Robert J. Colesante, Albert G. Andrade, and Kenneth Robin
Journal Article
Learning Design Experiments (LDEs), which take their name from design experiments in the learning sciences (Brown 1992), support educational innovation and progressive refinement of learning experiences by taking an evidence-centered design perspec...
By Peter Wardrip, Lisa Brahms, and Annie McNamara
Journal Article
Teaching Environmental Awareness in Baltimore
A national movement, sparked by Richard Louv’s (2005) treatise Last Child in the Woods, has catalyzed collaborations among government agencies, schools, and nonprofit and community organizations to reconnect children with the environment. Research ...
By Sarah Haines, Chelsea McClure, and Symone Johnson
Journal Article
Formative Assessment of STEM Activities in Afterschool and Summer Programs
The positive impacts of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) afterschool and summer programs have been well documented and summarized in a number of review papers and books (e.g., Allen, Noam, and Little 2017; Krishnamurthi and Bevan 2...
By Cary Sneider and Sue Allen
Journal Article
Regardless of the setting in which learning takes place, identifying the goals and intended outcomes of an educational experience, then measuring how well that experience achieved them, is becoming more commonplace and is often essential. However, ...
By Sarah Cohn
Journal Article
Shared Measures for STEM and Science Learning Through the ActApp
Many formal and informal science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning programs want to understand the impact their work has on learner outcomes. This can be difficult, especially in informal settings (e.g., afterschool programs, museu...
By Matthew A. Cannady and Kalie Sacco
Journal Article
Communities across the United States are working together to increase the quality and quantity of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning opportunities for all youth, with special emphasis on encouraging young people from ...
By Lydia Peabody, Rebecca K. Browne, Bailey Triggs, Patricia J. Allen, and Gil G. Noam
Journal Article
The fundamental ideas in John Dewey’s 1913 essay, Interest and Effort in Education, are as true today as they were when he published it more than a century ago. His key point was that interest can motivate students to undertake efforts that may n...
By Cary Sneider and Gil G. Noam
Journal Article
I love data—especially when used to look at learning experiences and figure out what’s working, what isn’t, and what to do next. Not surprisingly, then, I’m quite excited about this issue of Connected Science Learning, which is all about Pr...
By Beth Murphy
Journal Article
When ExpandED Schools, a nonprofit based in New York, began planning a new STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) initiative three years ago, it started by taking a closer look at the existing science programming happening in its network...
By Lizzie Murchison and Emma Banay
Journal Article
Innovation and progress in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce is critical to the growth of the United States in the global economy (NRC 2007). Men are more likely to pursue a degree in STEM fields, with almost 27% of ma...
By Sarah Rhodes-Ondi, and Maryam Ghadiri
Journal Article
Using Virtual Reality in the Classroom for Students on the Autism Spectrum
Virtual reality has seen rapid development in the first part of the 21st century, although it has been around for many years. Remember the old ViewMasters? And who could forget the first time a sea monster reached out to grab you while you were wea...
By Wyayn Rasmussen, and Kate Drechsler
Journal Article
People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) become more widely recognized as part of our population every year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, about 1 in 59 c...
By Katie Slivensky, Ellen Cohn, Alexander Lussenhop, and Christina Moscat
Journal Article
Making On and Off the Spectrum
People have been making since the first human used a tool, and have continued to create things for both fun and function. From building model trains to quilting, from woodworking to baking, people have for centuries been enriching their own lives by ...
By Wendy Martin, Regan Vidiksis, Kristie Patten Koenig, and Yu-Lun Chen