Welcome and thank you for viewing our N3 video, narrated by one of our 2021 interns, Jordan O’Kelley. Including autistic voices in everything we do is a key component of NASA’s Neurodiversity Network. We are so proud of the scientific and engineering projects done by our 2021 interns and we are excited to see what our 2022 interns will accomplish! Mentors for the interns are NASA Subject Matter Experts in fields of study that comprise NASA’s Science Mission Directorate: Astrophysics, Heliophysics, Planetary Science and Earth & Environmental Sciences. Mentors are also provided with training in working with autistic learners and a small financial stipend. However, finding good mentors is one of our most difficult challenges. We welcome suggestions about ways to reach potential mentors and incentivize them to participate. We also would be happy to hear from you about any other internship opportunities for these amazing future scientists and engineers.

Thank you for presenting this interesting project--I think the field will benefit greatly as you share approaches for redesigning activities so they will be more engaging for autistic learners.  Since mentors are key to program success, I am curious about the training they receive to prepare for the role.  Also, what are some lessons learned regarding effective supports for intern engagement and learning from the project? I'll be sure to point potential mentors and interns toward N3!

Wonderful work and excellent narration, Jordan!  This is certainly one I will be sharing with students I have and will be working with in the future.  To follow-up with Karen's mentorship training question, are past interns offered an opportunity to remain involved as peer mentors?  What about opportunities for interns to help mentors see diverse perspectives to strengthen the mentor/intern relationship in the future?  Are interns given the opportunity to support the training and development of the mentors?  

Lynn - Love, love, love this project! I appreciate deeply the intentional and interdisciplinary effort to create rigorous and engaging learning for neuro divergent students. In your collaborations with educators, what have been the most important learnings from curriculum implementation you have drawn? How have you already begun to modify what you are doing as a result? In general, I'm really interested in hearing how you are defining and measuring success in development and execution of this project.

GREAT work!

This looks like a great program! Does N3 also provides any support for autistic current employees? This question was brought up at one of our NASA meetings.

Hi Claudia. We are in year 2 of the program, and thus far we are focusing on the high school to college transition for our learners. We are also training NASA employees throughout SciAct and the Science Mission Directorate so that a larger group of people will understand the challenges faced by autistic employees. However, we have no current plans to work directly with those employees or their employers. It is an interesting issue and one for which we would like to provide support, but we have no specific funding to do so at this time. Did you have some specific supports in mind?

• Hello everyone! Collaborating with our N3 partners has enabled us to better expand our own museum experiences for neurodiverse learners at the New York Hall of Science including our first ever week long camp for neurodiverse middle school students. An additional goal in this project is to develop a set of astronomy related resources that are adaptable in a variety of informal settings from drop in activity stations (for families of various ages) to week long camps (for middle school students). As we develop these resources, we would love to hear from educators on challenges they encounter serving neurodiverse learners within their own organization that will inform us on which strategies to incorporate within our resources that addresses these challenges.

Hi Lynn and Team,

The outcomes of this project will benefit so many students and educators (both formal and informal) as well as society as a whole.  I think that the video series created by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific "Welcoming Girls to Astronomy"  https://stemforall2022.videohall.com/presentations/2316.html contains some great welcoming techniques that may be valuable to incorporate into your mentor training - of course you may already include all of these techniques!  Good luck with your project!

Thank you for your interest in our project. We have discussed several aspects of the work we are doing to engage neurodiverse, specifically autistic, teens in earth and space physics and scientific/engineering practices. One way our project is achieving this is through an iterative curriculum development and co-design process. This process begins by using existing NASA-developed activities and curriculum materials that our team redesigns given our expertise in earth & space science and in teaching neurodiverse learners. Our team, including autistic teens and their teachers, test the curriculum activities prior to implementation in the classroom. After some iteration of the curriculum, teachers implement the new activities with their students either during regular instruction or in summer sessions. Co-design sessions are then held with our entire team after the curriculum is implemented with the goal of incorporating student and teacher feedback to create finalized curriculum materials and teaching tools based on their experiences. After the co-design process, only then is the curriculum fully redesigned, making it ready for wide dissemination.

Great project Lynn et al!!

Very fun!!!  Thank you for sharing.  Do you have any reports on your program and resulting data that you could share?  I'm conducting a systematic review of informal learning experiences for neurodiverse students.  I'd like to include your program in our review. 

Wonderful project, Lynn. Let us connect.

 Yes I will definitely be reaching out to you and your team soon. I think we have a lot of common goals and it would be good to discuss our mutual interests.