NSF Awards: 1908117
Current priorities in science education include efforts to engage students in scientific reasoning, use the practices of science to understand natural phenomena, and constructively respond to local and global challenges. This project responds to these priorities by engaging teams of students in grades 8 -12 in competitive Challenges to design innovative strategies for carbon mitigation in, for example, transportation, agriculture or energy use. The project expands the typical boundaries of schools by enabling teams of students in multiple locations to collaborate in model-based reasoning to construct possible solutions to environmental challenges. Students and their teachers will cross disciplinary boundaries as they choose concepts from chemistry, engineering, mathematics, biology, and social science to support their innovations. Teachers, students, project scientist-researchers, and advisors will comment in online discussion forums to help improve ideas and to troubleshoot, thus using social media and crowdsourcing to iteratively improve submissions in the competition. This early stage Design and Development study is guided by the hypothesis that competitive challenges supported by social media and crowdsourcing will engage a diverse array of students in sustained and meaningful scientific inquiry. Over a period of four years, the project will design and refine four Challenges that will engage approximately 1,000 students of ages 13-17.
James Callahan
Thank you, Innovate to Mitigate! Thank you, TERC, for such a wonderful program and STEM-based team!
I have so much looked forward to watching this video. I was not disappointed. This page should be visited repeatedly; one should not miss the discussion over the next eight days.
James Callahan
James Callahan
Gilly and Santi,
Having watched you video and updated my knowledge of the incredible things you have accomplished to date... I recognize that I must consider two assignments essential:
1.) To recommend that my colleagues in the CLEAN Network come visit this page and watch your video. (That refers to several hundred programs, each with incredible staff.) You are now at the top of the list of Showcase entries that I want the CLEAN staff to come see and experience. Am making that recommendation this morning!
2.) To think how best to try to persuade you (Santi and Gilly) to consent to give a presentation to the national CLEAN Network. As during either scheduled national teleconference, or in a special presentation that is to your liking.
It is absolutely right that Innovate to Mitigate receive support and recognition by so many programs in the Showcase. Most of all, we just have to get you all and CLEAN together. Your work is so important and beautiful.
Thank you so much!
James Callahan
Renee Pawlowski
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Jim -
Thank you for your comments. Most of the credit goes to the students who have had the imagination and persistence to complete their projects. We would be honored to give a presentation to the CLEAN Network.
James Callahan
Renee Pawlowski
Kathryn (Katie) Boyd
I agree, Gillian, this is such an interesting project! So neat to have the students develop these innovative solutions. The CLEAN Network would be excited to hear about it. I emailed you the email address of our call coordinator - please reach out and we can get something scheduled.
James Callahan
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Thank you Katie. We will do that.
James Callahan
James Callahan
And, you will have active support from other CLEAN Network members, as you do!
Katie, Gina and Anne are incredible. I would not want to imagine what the climate and energy education and STEM-based action communities would be like without their indispensable contributions. They are very tuned into, and are very much are responsive to the requests and suggestions of CLEAN network member organizations and individuals.
Recommendations on what will make for an especially great presentation always help. Then there is making sure that loads of people want to log in for a given presentation. Most of all, to take part in the Q &A, and the how-can-we-practically-help-you-to-the-fullest part of the discussions. True collaboration among colleagues.
Innovate to Mitigate and TERC are highly valuable, and highly valued, members of the CLEAN Network. ClimateChangeEducation.org and our Mobile Climate Science Labs program will be very enthusiastic in support of your providing an update of your work at a national teleconference of the CLEAN Network.
Let's be working on when the best timing is, and go for scheduling then.
Sound OK?
James Callahan
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Welcome visitors! We are eager to hear your responses about the wonderful work that Innovate to Mitigate students are accomplishing, and welcome your questions about the project.
James Callahan
Santiago Gasca
Researcher
We're recruiting teachers for next year's competition. If you're interested check out our website and sign up.
James Callahan
James Callahan
Santi,
What are some of the ways fellow Showcase presenters and their programscan help to recruit teachers for next year's I2M competition?
We have the capacity to help in the following. As we did last year, for this year's competition. There may be ways we haven't thought of. We want to, and encourage others to, focus on those methods that resonate best with the ways of I2M:
== Word of mouth with the teachers, schools, school districts, and science-technology centers that our programs work closely with. In our case, we are especially well known and respected in Washington DC, Maryland and (as for the last two decades) in California.
== At large scale hands-on STEM festivals and community events. (Returning big time now that COVID is, at least for the moment, not at a peak.) Interaction with hundreds of teachers, school officials, and informal educators all day long.
== Similarly with STEM field trip hubs. Multi-day events where scores of school groups are bused in to do hands-on STEM. Where a rich array of labs are all set-up and ready to go to engage thousands from all over a region. Especially in the San Francisco Bay Area. Presented by highly experienced specialists in providing high quality fully engaging labs on climate and energy innovation -- featuring innovations pioneered by teams of middle and high school students. Note: most of the lab presenters are educators who are people of color. (Especially African American and Latina/o/x.)
Sounds like a good match for ITM?
== Social media, such as Twitter. https://twitter.com/climatescilabs -- Where fellow Showcase presenters are in regular contact with local and federal government climate programs, school principles, school districts and the like. Tweeting and likes all year round -- can include I2M when the time is right.
== Announcements over the CLEAN Network Listserv.
Regarding timing: Are the two best times to get the word out?: Right now, before the end of the school year? The best time. Only second is August, before the beginning of the school year. Pre-registration is open now, yes?
Next year will get rolling early -- in September. With the submitting of abstracts in early October.
James Callahan
Nuria Jaumot-Pascual
Hi, Gilli and Santi! Loved, loved, loved your video! Proud to call you colleagues.
Nuria
James Callahan
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Thank you Nuria. I so much value your appreciation - it means a lot to all of us!
James Callahan
David Haury
Emeritus Professor
The combination of crowdsourcing possible solutions to environmental challenges and then presenting prospective solutions for critical feedback from an online community seems a powerful learning strategy. I am wondering if there is a way of scaling this approach to local situations where teachers may not have the robust infrastructure your project provides. I know that is not the challenge you have chosen, but do you have any initial thoughts about how a local group of teachers might approximate your very robust model? What would be the essential pieces? I
Santiago Gasca
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Hi David - How wonderful to hear from you! Thank you for visiting our project :)
We have been thinking about this question too, and plan to start soon on a paper for (hopefully) NSTA's The Science Teacher with ideas about setting up a local model. Preliminary thoughts are 1) to include the rubrics and requirements for supporting productive discussion that we have used, 2) suggestions for how to use an online platform, e.g., EdModo, Padlet, NowComment, to support student discussion, 3) strategies for beginning small, perhaps across classes at the same school, and 4) networking in professional groups that teachers are already a part of to find teachers at other schools in other districts. Since environmental challenges are inherently cross-disciplinary, and we are hearing of teachers increasingly collaborating across say environmental science and social sciences, such a collaboration would be an ideal situation for this model too.
I'm sure others have ideas about how this might be done - we'd love to hear from you!
David Haury
Emeritus Professor
I’m delighted to see that you have continued to explore the crowdsourcing approach and are thinking about ways of adapting it to local situations. You have clearly established proof of concept, but I see examining adaptation of the model to various contexts as the next challenge. I also like your idea to explore linkages to the environmental and social sciences. That could be very fruitful in terms both of expanding the model and linking the disciplines around issues.
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Yes, we have inklings currently about how the model works in various contexts, but a more systematic study would yield useful insights. Under future funding, we might consider developing adaptations of the model to local contexts to study how crowdsourcing can be set up and be productive in a network of, say, local or regional teachers. What are the challenges? How do teachers and students perceive the benefits? Under what circumstances can such problem-based learning -and crowdsourcing-flourish? We're asking these kinds of questions in the current context, but it will be interesting to investigate whether the model can be sustainable in "local pods."
In the current year's challenge, several students conducted what may be termed social science studies. For example, one team devised an education campaign at their school on the climate impact of food waste, and employed a pre/post survey to determine learning and intent to act. In addition, one of the teachers in the video is urging us to extend our recruitment beyond STEM teachers, which gives us the impetus to try next year. We suspect that such efforts will be most successful if the non-STEM teacher is recruited by a peer.
David Haury
Emeritus Professor
The teaming idea seems potentially very fruitful, both in terms of helping teachers and students see linkages across disciplines, and in terms of demonstrating the power of perspective through broader collaboration. Hope you test the idea.
Nancy Songer
Dean
Thank you, Gillian and colleagues. This is a creative and impactful project. Can you say more about how you are measuring the impact of these learning modules? Are you assessing both NGSS learning and motivation or effective metrics? Thanks.
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Nancy, thank you for your comment. Since the challenge that each team is tackling is so different, we can obviously only measure impact on the practices as defined by the NGSS. To address science/engineering learning, we include a retrospective item in a post-survey and question in a student interview (Before I knew...now I know...) pertaining to climate science more generally, and to the topic the group has studied. In addition, we interview teachers to get their perception of student learning. In a prior year we were lucky enough to have a local student team that we could study in depth to assess learning; that study has been published (Drayton, B. & Puttick, G. (2018). Innovate to Mitigate: Learning as activity in a team of high school students addressing a climate mitigation challenge. Sustainability in Environment 3, 1-25.).
I should add that the project has not developed learning modules per se. We do provide general resources about climate adaptation and mitigation to teachers but they independently integrate the student activities into their instruction, either in or out of class. Currently we interview teachers about their Innovate experience, but a more systematic future study on teacher learning would be a great next step!
Tara Robillard
Gilly and Santi! What wonderful work - it was so nice to see all of the creative ideas that students came up with since I had only heard about this work in its beginning stages! I am wondering if you could share some insights about using a crowd-sourcing platform? It seems like such a great way to connect students and share and discuss information (and its a format that teens especially are comfortable with). Did students embrace this and get excited about it and dive right in to sharing their work? Did you have to make any adjustments along the way to improve its effectiveness or meet the needs of participants? Do you think its a good model/strategy for others to use for similar collaborative work?
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Thank you Tara. We had originally planned to use Facebook because it has many of the functionalities we sought, but widespread district blocks on that app meant we needed to find another platform. We opted for EdModo because it is familiar to many teachers, and could be adapted to our needs.
Students seemed initially reluctant to share substantive comments, but we provided a rubric to support good feedback - and we also made sure that they knew that the quantity and quality of their comments would be included in the final judging.
As for the quality of the collaborative work, you should check out two conference presentations we have made: one is in the AERA 2022 repository and the other will be part of the ICLS 2022 conference proceedings. Let me know if you're interested in seeing either of these. We found that students not only received ideas that improved their projects, but also found that thinking about meaningful comments to make on others' presentations caused them to think more deeply about their own designs, rationales and investigation plans.
James Larsen
Gilly and Santi, a great project and video. As I was watching and thinking about ways to connect on a broader scale I thought of Engineers without Borders. They have a fairly robust population of both practicing engineers as well as college age students who might serve as great localized resources. From a meeting I attended it seems a lot of their work entails innovating engineering solutions on local issues in the countries they visit. Might be a good resource for you to investigate if you haven't already. They have chapters all over the country. Thanks for sharing this powerful project. It gives me hope.
Santiago Gasca
Santiago Gasca
Researcher
Thank you, Jamie! We are really excited by the connections students are making with members of the community as they develop their innovations. A few teams reached out to the local colleges and to scientists in their lives to help strengthen their ideas. Your thought to reach out to EwB is not something that we had considered, but I will certainly make sure to include local chapters as we prepare for next year's competition.
Jessica Parker
Senior Director
Hi Gillian and Santiago! Thanks for sharing your inspiring project. I appreciated seeing the student projects and the innovative ways you are engaging them in the scientific process through crowdsourcing and social media. Can you share specific ways you have engaged teachers, students, project scientist-researchers, and advisors in the online discussions? What were some preliminary successes and potential hurdles with this effort? Thanks!
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Thank you Jessica! We engaged teachers in 2 PD sessions to introduce them to the goals and overall structure of the challenge, and to share rubrics and guidelines for productive discussion that addressed science practices, e.g., framing a productive investigation question, using evidence to support claims, etc. We also checked in with teachers and students regularly to offer our support.
A preliminary success was that the discussions we're having here in the videohall was a model of sorts for how we hoped students would interact. The students absolutely took excellent advantage of the in-depth discussions they conducted and critiques they provided. We have evidence that the discussions resulted in improvements to almost all of the projects.
Our biggest hurdle in the project so far, as for many, has been the impact that COVID has had on our recruitment efforts. However, the number of participants has been increasing and we hope for more success in the coming two years!
Jessica Parker
Karen Mutch-Jones
Your Innovate project is so encouraging...with the activities and structures that make science meaningful and enable educators to support students to actually be innovative. Your video especially helped me to appreciate the power of crowdsourcing--not only to engage students but to really push their thinking and their application of new ideas further than expected. Did students also express surprise or a sense of empowerment after the experience? Although I've known about the Innovate project for a long time, I more fully appreciate the value of this work. Fabulous! Thank you.
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Thank you Karen! Yes, students did express a sense of empowerment. With respect to the crowdsourced conversations especially - some described feeling daunted at first, especially the 8th graders when commenting on the work of 12th graders, but came to appreciate the benefit both of commenting on and questioning others' work and receiving comments and questions themselves. Some also said that having to think critically about others' designs helped them to think more critically about their own as well.
Shari Metcalf
Hi, Gillian! What a powerful and empowering project. It's so wonderful to see these students engage in innovative solutions for meaningful problems. Can you say a little about the support structures - what kinds of resources or support do students and teachers have in coming up with and developing their ideas?
The crowd-sourcing sounds so valuable, and I gather that conversation happens not just within but across schools, is that right? How far-ranging are the participants?
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Hi Shari, thanks for your comments! I have been responding to posts from the bottom up - so I've described supports in response to Margo just below.
Collectively across the challenges, schools have been located in Florida, New York, Ohio, Louisiana, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland. In one challenge we also had submissions from teams at American Schools in China, and in Lebanon!
James Callahan
Gillian,
Could you share with us (fellow Showcase presenters and visitors) how STEM programs can contribute STEM instrumentation to ITM teams?
How can the communication take place to match up what ITM teams need to what other Showcase participating programs have to share?
I would think a question is also: What is considered "fair and appropriate?" So to speak. Clearly, we don't want students and teachers to cheat-- obtaining support and equipment in ways the ITM rules discourage or don't allow. Am I correct in thinking, that ITM also has no intention of hamstringing the ability of the teams either? Adult professionals (e.g. major university research laboratories) engaged in STEM innovation almost always seek, are offered and successfully obtain equipment from outside entities. [ e.g. Via partnerships, grants, sponsorships, joint ventures, gifts, loans, etc.] Undoubtedly, students are encouraged to be creative when learning how to ask for help. They should not have to solely rely on what they happen to have around the house.
Could you tell us a bit about what the different teams did to obtain support? In this past year, did everything take place in ways that were OK with ITM and the NSF models? Hopefully, nothing ever got close to crossing the line -- where teams received too much support from adult and multi-generational organizations and institutions. Including in the support from fellow middle and high school students such as Abigail Stark, Antonia Romm and Luca Rinzel -- three of the leaders at our labs.
We at Mobile Climate Science Labs lent two of the ITM teams scientific instrumentation this year, to help them in their research and development work. Including one of your top winners. (We ourselves are multi-generational: where middle and high school students actively and practically team up with engineers, scientists, artists, teachers, and other professionals all year round, both to advance STEM education on a mass scale and to deliberately make breakthroughs in STEM-based climate action and energy innovation.)
Over our twenty year history, it has been essential to us to have robust sources for science instrumentation, engineering equipment and technology. After all, we literally bring real STEM labs to hundreds of thousands of students, families, and schools each year (pre and post COVID). With special emphasis on communities of color, and the removal of the barriers that discourage young women from making STEM one of their greatest strengths.
We receive donations to purchase equipment, but we also directly receive gifts of high quality, powerful instrumentation. In turn, some of that equipment, we have lent to ITM teams -- to use for as long as they stick with their projects. (Encouraging sustained involvement with ITM and STEM innovation.) For example, we have tens of thousands of dollars worth of wonderful equipment donated to us by each of the major probe-ware and education-based STEM instrumentation companies -- e.g. Pasco, Pocket-Lab and Vernier. [There is a natural quid pro-quo: Since we openly and publicly employ their instruments in our hands-on labs in very high profile settings, their customer base sees how valuable the equipment is in the real world. When wealthy school district representatives experience the scenes where thousands of school kids from the poorer schools and communities of color are enthusiastically using a given company's instruments, as at a mass scale science festival, it is fantastic advertising of their products.]
Are there ways to help ITM teams next year gain experience how to bring in support in the form of STEM instrumentation? Adult professionals at research labs would have little more than rubber bands and paper clips if they were not effective in gaining support.
We love to help ITM teams. As long as our assistance is not breaking the rules of how the ITM competitions are intended to unfold.
James Callahan
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Thanks Jim -
We appreciated your introducing two teams from your network of educators to the competition and welcome your efforts at promoting the project again next year.
For details about what teams did to gain support, refer to my response to Tara a couple of days ago. We expect teams to collaborate, engage in the scientific process, and with help from their teacher and their community, to find the resources they need.
During the PD sessions with teachers, we discuss ways to help teams get the instrumentation they need and the grant provides some financial support if requested.
Pre-registration is open now, and getting the word out at any time is welcome!
We appreciated your introducing two teams from your network of educators to the competition and welcome your efforts at promoting the project again next year.
For details about what teams did to gain support, refer to my response to Tara a couple of days ago. We expect teams to collaborate, engage in the scientific process, and with help from their teacher and their community, to find the resources they need.
During the PD sessions with teachers, we discuss ways to help teams get the instrumentation they need and the grant provides some financial support if requested.
Pre-registration is open now, and getting the word out at any time is welcome!
Margo Murphy
This work made me very excited to think about my own students and context. I am really interested in knowing the role of the classroom teacher in this project. There is such a range of projects and possibilities and wondering how students found the support they needed for all the aspects of a project or was this interdisciplinary support provided through the project? Is there a plan for scaling or what are next steps. Thanks so much!
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Thank you Margo! Support came from several sources, some provided by the project and many by the teachers. The teachers helped students with many of the challenges you'd expect in a problem-based learning setting - how to engage in the scientific/engineering process, how to guide students towards a feasible project given their capabilities, how to troubleshoot, providing materials and resources, e.g., helping students figure out how to find a needed expert in their community (a parent, a scientist). The teachers will tell you that the students took a lot of initiative on their own as well. The project provided resources on the website (terc.edu/innovatetomitigate) and also convened 3 professional learning sessions with the teachers. Finally, project staff were available to answer questions, and provided guidance when needed. We stayed in regular contact with teachers and their teams throughout.
The number of submissions has grown each year, and we are relying on word of mouth to publicize this opportunity. Please help spread the word!
Marie Himes
Hi Gillian and Santiago!
Thank you for sharing this exciting and impactful project. I'm curious if/how the online discourse among participants and feedback givers is being studied as part of the iterative design of the four challenges.
As part of our future research on Project-Based Inquiry (PBI) Global, we are hoping to examine the role of team coaches and external experts in providing student participants with feedback on the iterative design of their inquiry products. Appreciate any insights you have to share!
With gratitude,
Marie
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Thank you Marie. The first challenge took place right when COVID was on its first upswing, which had a marked impact on participation levels. Submissions grew in the second year, enough so we could do a preliminary study of the online discourse. We presented those data at AERA this year and there is a related paper in the repository. We also had a paper accepted for ICLS 2022 next month, and that will appear in the conference proceedings. Both papers are accessible on Researchgate. We plan to build on these as we continue our design-based research in the next couple of challenges.
Marie Himes
Marie Himes
Thank you, Gillian. I will locate those papers on Researchgate.
With gratitude,
Marie
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Let me know if you cannot find or download them and I'll email them.
Marie Himes
Carol Lumm
Congratulations Gilly and Santi! What an innovative way to engage students in climate change using communication tools they are familiar with. I look forward to hearing more about your work.
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Thank you Carol! All the credit goes to the students and their teachers!