NSF Awards: 1610693
How does a researcher effectively plan and implement public engagement with science?
Broader impacts require substantial commitments by researchers to engage with the public. Many researchers are welcoming of support to develop high quality broader impacts plans. Innovative partnerships and collaborations can make the journey more palatable and result in truly collaborative and impactful public engagement programs that may last a lifetime for the researcher and the community.
- How can institutional partnerships assist researchers as they develop their 'impact identity' to develop and implement broader impacts plans?
- What supports across institutions do researchers have to make the appropriate connections at the right stage of a project to allow for participatory and co-design practices?
- What supports across institutions do community-based organizations have to make the appropriate connections at the right stage of a project to allow for participatory and co-design practices?
Our video snapshot features the connections and case studies of how this more comprehensive Broader Impacts Design process supports researchers’ participation in designing and implementing Broader Impacts plans. A key aspect of the project is to research and understand the relationship between UW-Madison (WISCIENCE) and the public engagement with science programs at the Discovery Building (Morgridge Institute for Research, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, WARF, and the Illuminating Discovery Hub).
What are the connections and processes of this inter-institutional partnership that are sustainable and bring about ideal broader impacts?
Travis Tangen
Education & Outreach Manager
Welcome to our 'snapshot' video. It is a slice of how our group's public engagement with science programs at the Discovery Building on the UW-Madison campus relies on strong partners, on-campus and off-campus. Our group of public engagement professionals from WARF and the Morgridge Institute for Research partner with UW-Madison students, staff, and faculty to help support quality design and implementation of broader impacts programs. This NSF-AISL project led by Kevin Niemi of WISCIENCE at UW-Madison seeks to explore ways we can improve support for Broader Impacts planning and implementation by developing sustainable institutional partnerships between higher education institutions (UW-Madison) and an informal science education setting (Discovery Building).
Our project is connected to other projects focusing in on Broader Impacts and partnerships at Cornell University and Sciencenter, University of Washington-Bothell and the Pacific Science Center; all of our projects are being researched by Oregon State University. Leadership of the project is in association with the Institute for Learning Innovation. Just this last September (2018) new partnerships joined the broader project from the Minnesota Zoo and University of Minnesota, Science Discovery and University of Colorado-Boulder, Fleet Science Center and University of California-San Diego, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and Museum of Life and Science and Duke University, Vermont Institute of Natural Science and Dartmouth Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies, Explora and University of New Mexico.
It has been amazing to be able to learn how unique yet how similar these partnerships are across the board. The coolest thing about being involved with this project is learning from all the individuals across the sites, there are so many great ideas in action.
We hope that you can share some ideas in action that you may have to help the broader community!
Travis Tangen
Education & Outreach Manager
We are lucky to have communities of practice like the UW-Madison Science Alliance and the newly formed Illuminating Discovery Hub to help support making connections for public engagement with science across a large campus setting like UW-Madison. Our video focuses on one part of our project; making it easier to make connections, largely from the viewpoint of a Primary Investigator (PI) developing/implementing a Broader Impacts plan.
What works for you to help support on-campus and off-campus connections for Broader Impacts?
Becca Schillaci
Research Associate
Hi Travis! Thanks for starting the important conversation of how to reach beyond the walls of academia to make a broader impact! I’m excited to read responses to your prompt about what actions other researchers are taking. My question for you is - what are some tips you can share for new PIs who want to form partnerships for broader impacts?
Travis Tangen
Education & Outreach Manager
Becca,
Excellent question; we have learned a lot about this. We are trying to shift the process for PIs 'shopping' readily-available broader impacts projects to identifying and creating aligned and relevant broader impacts projects. The difference is providing support for PIs to define and connect to their 'Impact Identity' early on in the process. This helps to support connections in broader impacts that have personal meaning and in a lot of cases intrinsic motivation to make the planned societal impact happen. In a practical sense it involves impact identity workshops and individual meetings with PIs as early as possible in the proposal process. This helps to guide the next steps around the types of partners on campus and in the community that might be a match.
We have learned from the work of Julie Risien and Martin Storksdieck at Oregon State University, as well as our learning community in the Broader Impact Design project, NABI, and ARIS to inform how we shape our consultations and workshops.
Julie Risien, Martin Storksdieck; Unveiling Impact Identities: A Path for Connecting Science and Society, Integrative and Comparative Biology, Volume 58, Issue 1, 1 July 2018, Pages 58–66, https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icy011
Aida Awad
Thanks for your video! I noticed that you show engagement with children in the video. That's great! Please don't forget engagement with K-12 teachers! When you hold workshops to engage K-12 teachers in your research you are actually reaching not only the teacher, but also all of their students, and in ways that may be longer lasting and more deeply impacting.
Travis Tangen
Education & Outreach Manager
Aida,
Most certainly, thanks for that note. We are trying to support researchers in making the right connections for their Broader Impacts. In cases where researchers identify K-12 as part of their Impact Identity we help to narrow down and focus in on a subset of K-12. Then we would help to identify partners such as our Research Experience for Teachers program that our UW-Madison MRSEC program has, or making connections to the Wisconsin Society for Science Teachers for professional teacher connections. As part of the development process of the BI activities we would leverage our infrastructure at the Discovery Building and garner co-creation and feedback from K-12 teachers and students in our field trip programs and summer camps that have students and teachers as participants with the researchers or our staff.
I'd like to hear more about any ideas for being able to work best with teachers at the co-creation stage of BI projects in models that value the professional roles and extended professional expectations that teachers have.
KEVIN NIEMI
Outreach Director
I am sharing some of the aspects of our work with K-12 STEM teacher leaders at the Summer Leadership Institute of the National Science Education Leadership Association. My talk is titled Expanding the Connections of K-12 with Informal STEM Institutions and Higher Education. We are meeting June 23-June 26 in Orlando. See https://www.nsela.org/2019-summer-leadership-in... for details.
Monae Verbeke
Senior Research Associate
Hey Travis, I love seeing so much BID work. I was wondering how you've been evaluating/researching the impacts of your work? What have you found most useful or interesting?
Travis Tangen
Education & Outreach Manager
Monae,
Thanks for the question. There are a few layers to this and some aspirational evaluation projects that we are pursuing to continue to understand our specific impacts: for and on researchers, participants in BI from our communities, and our team and partners that make the public engagement with science programs happen.
For this project Kevin Niemi and I are being researched by the evaluation team at Oregon State University (Julie Risien, Kelly Hoke, Cat Stylinski, & Martin Storksdieck). We are being researched in many aspects around our partnership of how a Higher Education Institute and an Informal Science Environment can partner around Broader Impacts Design. I am excited to learn over the course of this project about the attributes that influence our partnership (WISCIENCE at UW-Madison & the Discovery Building public engagement with science team). There are so many challenges to working well across institutions for BI work and I am eager to see what emerges from this research to inform improved practice in this area.
In terms of usefulness for BID I would once again point to impact identity being a critical piece for PIs to connect to. Moving through this process develops some specifics around defining impact for BI projects, which in turn makes it easier to evaluate and measure impact. For example, if a PI's impact identity starts to focus on making connections with rural high school students and impacting their fascination with science in a rural summer camp program we can more easily work to develop evaluation that can measure that.
We are trying to develop more coordination in evaluation across projects and programs in working with our partners at the UW-Madison Wisconsin Center for Education Research (Annalee Good, Christine Pribbenow, and Rebecca Cors). Our goal with this project is to have the ability to have some level of aggregated evaluation of our impact across our different stakeholders inclusive of researchers/scientists, public audiences/participants, and the many partner institution that support the public engagement with science programs. I am very excited about how this will better inform our practice over time.
It is always a joy to work closely with motivated researchers who dive so deep into their Broader Impacts work. Though this is a bit anecdotal, I appreciate the many moments of 'mutual thanks' that come from diverse viewpoints when working on our BID projects that move to implementation. This is something special that serves as an intrinsic motivator in seeing how the sum of the parts of a project gel together and coordinate to reach the defined impact of the project.
Gregory Rushton
Director, TN STEM Education Center
Hi, thanks for sharing your work with us, have you connected your BI program with those outside of your state or is your goal to connect within your community? thanks again.
Travis Tangen
Education & Outreach Manager
Gregory,
Thanks for this question. Our programs at the Discovery Building (the Informal Science Ed venue) are almost always in partnership with researchers and UW-Madison campus partners; this is core to our mission. That means that we have a lot of public engagement with science events that reach the local community members of all ages, but we have an extensive reach across the state with our K-12 Field Trip program. The statewide Wisconsin Science Festival directed by Laura Heisler (who also serves as our overall program director) is a program that emphasizes the extensible local connections to science across the state under the umbrella of the festival. Wes Marner, who is part of the BID team, primarily helps with coordination across the many event sites across the state for the Wisconsin Science Festival.
Our overall goal of connections parallels the Wisconsin Idea to reach the boundaries of the state and beyond. With that said we have identified capacity limits that we have and are thinking creatively about extending the reach of the BI activities through different formats like digital media that can transcend boundaries more easily.
To circle back to partnership and impact identity - when supporting designing BI plans we rely on the researcher to focus in on the change they want to make in the world. If this happens to be outside of our reach we try to utilize the rich connections across campus to find the right fit. So while we might not participate beyond helping with ideation and making the connections the PI can move forward on a project that might have international connections by working with groups like Engineers without Borders on our campus. This would be beyond our reach in terms of in-person experiences but we often think creatively of how to bring these experiences back to the people of Wisconsin in some shape or form in our events.
KEVIN NIEMI
Outreach Director
Thanks Gregory,
To add and expand on what Travis shared on partnerships, I am a co-PI on both the National Alliance for Broader Impacts (NABI) and the Advancing Research Impacts in Society (ARIS) projects funded by NSF. They are both heavily geared towards establishing a Community of Practice around BI work and sharing our effective programs and practices with all interested professionals. ARIS is a five year Center grant from NSF so watch for its evolution as a professional organization and resource center at www.researchinsociety.org.
Kathy Huncosky
Hi Fellow Madisonians!
I was excited to see your video! Thanks for sharing your work with a wider audience. I remember how important your partnership was to the Madison Metropolitan School District as we worked to provide professional learning opportunities for both public and private school teachers in science. I greatly valued your participation in the process and the impact it had on both teachers and their students.
I hope you will be able to watch a video about how my current work is allowing me to serve teachers in the Milwaukee and Racine School districts as well as in districts in CA through an i3 grant. I'm thankful there are efforts in our state and across the nation to make science teaching and learning better for all!
Travis Tangen
Education & Outreach Manager
Kathy,
Thanks for the note of support, appreciate your rich discussion thread on your project page and your video showcasing the transformation work you are doing collaboratively in WI and CA, very exciting.
Patricia Marsteller
Great idea. All institutions should consider such a team to support broader impacts and community outreach.
Love it!
Travis Tangen
Education & Outreach Manager
Pat,
It's been a great opportunity to grow our partnership (WISCIENCE - UW-Madison & the Discovery Building's public engagement with science programs) to help support Broader Impacts. We have been motivated by and learned a lot from the various support mechanisms across the board; there is quite the continuum of options that take shape to reflect the priorities and resources of the local settings.
Further posting is closed as the showcase has ended.