NASA's Science Activation Program Achievements and Opportunities (2020) / Chapter Skim
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3 Characterizing the Current Portfolio
3 Characterizing the Current Portfolio
Pages 41-54
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science education program leading to more effective, sustainable, and efficient utilization of SMD science discoveries and learning experiences and to meet overall SMD science education objectives." According to the Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN) for SciAct, fundamental to achieving this outcome is to "enable National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
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Based on its understanding of the available evidence, the committee designed the following logic model to illustrate the strategy for utilizing SciAct awardees as the mediating agents for transforming NASA assets into activities that serve the desired objectives (see Figure 3-1)
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FIGURE 3-1 SciAct logic model as understood by the committee. SOURCE: Adapted from the Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN)
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The SciAct projects focus on engaging a variety of audiences, including families, K–12 students and teachers, adults, children, and teens in formal education, informal education, and community settings.1 The awardees include museums and science centers, universities, a community college, a K–12 school district, research institutes, and educational organizations and foundations. Overall, about 50 percent of SciAct projects engage learners in informal learning environments (such as museums, libraries, summer camps, out-of-school programs, in-home, and neighborhood or community spaces)
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A primary component of all SciAct projects is that they leverage NASA assets and infrastructure, including but not limited to • NASA science content and data, • NASA space and airborne platforms, • NASA subject matter experts (SMEs) (i.e., scientific and technical personnel)
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SciAct awardees are developing and delivering NASA science-focused edu cational resources and programs in a variety of formats to a diversity of learners in both formal and informal learning environments. Examples of these products include • online exploratory activities that align with the Next Generation Science Standards/A Framework for K–12 Science Education and use NASA data and SMEs; • professional development programs for K–12 educators that include online astronomy and planetary science content, a week-long STEM immersion ex perience at a NASA facility, in-person training in using student curricula, and ongoing opportunities to connect with astrophysics and planetary SMEs; • interactive data-visualization software designed to visualize the entire known universe and portray ongoing efforts to investigate the cosmos; • program that trains teachers, 4-H leaders, and community members on climate change concepts, culturally responsive curriculum, and environ mental observing protocols (integrated with GLOBE)
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One SciAct project is focused solely on collecting national data on scientific literacy and thus is not directly leveraging specific NASA assets or infrastructure. As noted in previous chapters, the SciAct Program effectively replaces educational programming that was previously funded as a part of each science mission.
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NASA employs many of the world's leading researchers in heliophysics, astrophysics, planetary science, and earth sciences and engages in some of the most ambitious research to date. SciAct projects are expected to leverage these assets for educational and public engagement activities to meet the overarching program goals.
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, included the priority area "Better Serve Groups Historically Underrepresented in STEM Fields: Increase the number of students from groups that have been underrepresented in STEM fields that graduate with STEM degrees in the next 10 years and improve women's participation in areas of STEM where they are significantly underrepresented." Moreover, the 2018 CoSTEM Strategic Plan maintains and re-emphasizes this focus on broadening participation in STEM. The SciAct CAN notes this CoSTEM priority, and it is included as part of the top-level SMD science education objective "advance national education goals." Despite this emphasis, only 9 of the 24 currently active SciAct projects include some diversity metrics in their evaluation plans and reports to SMD.
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CURRENT APPROACH TO EVALUATION Current SciAct awardees are required to have an external evaluation plan as part of their collaborative agreement. SciAct provides awardees with a checklist of required evaluation documents.
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. COLLABORATION WITHIN THE CURRENT PORTFOLIO The SciAct portfolio consists of cooperative agreements with individual awardees who are encouraged to think and work like a collective -- for example, by leveraging each other's resources and by sharing tools.
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One outcome of the 2018 annual PI meeting was the creation of a community of practice for the evaluators of each project. This nascent group has served as a professional learning opportunity for individual evaluators, and its promise for using the collective knowledge to enhance individual projects (or the entire portfolio)
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CONCLUSION 7: The Science Activation approach to evaluation focuses on evaluating individual projects without adequate attention to how evaluation can inform the whole portfolio. Project evaluators support individual projects and are surfacing important insights that could benefit the portfolio.
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