Learning Solutions: Investigating Fundamental Tools, Resources & Strategies to Support Professionals Addressing Persistent Issues in STEM

在美国各地，个人、组织和社区都在努力解决与科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)相关的各种具有挑战性和持久性的问题。几个例子包括确保更公平地获得STEM职业；建设农村图书馆支持STEM学习的能力；以及支持青年提高网络素养。好消息是，数以千计的个人、组织和社区正在提出如何应对这些问题的伟大想法；其中许多想法得到了NSF的支持。不幸的是，大多数人在成功的道路上会遇到重大的障碍，但不是因为糟糕的想法。大多数变革推动者在想法和成功执行之间漫长且往往错综复杂的道路上步履蹒跚，因为他们遇到了他们没有预料到或不知道如何克服的障碍。这项试点和可行性研究将创建学习解决方案，这是一个多平台计划，旨在支持那些从事工作的个人和实体，培养公众对STEM领域和STEM相关信息的理解、参与和兴趣。首先，该项目将系统地确定个人、组织和社区在努力实现与STEM相关的重大和有影响力的变化时遇到的真实但往往是未言明的问题。然后，该项目将汇编、管理并使数字可用的工具、资源和策略的集合，旨在帮助人们理解和解决这些类型的问题，如果它们出现。通过更好地了解变革推动者的经验、他们面临的挑战以及他们制定的创造性学习解决方案，该项目将确保更多的变革推动者在需要时以精心策划的、易于消化的形式成功地获取他们所需的学习诀窍。该奖项由高级非正式STEM学习计划资助，该计划通过支持非正式环境中STEM学习的新方法和基于证据的理解，促进STEM参与和扫盲、劳动力发展和教育成功。学习解决方案将建设能力，并将帮助更多的专业人士成功地将更多好的想法付诸实践。学习解决方案试点和可行性阶段的目标受众将是在不同行业的STEM和社会的交叉点工作的STEM专业人员。它将侧重于变革推动者--希望成为或已经参与以社区为基础、以行动为导向的STEM相关变革项目的个人，无论是他们自己、在一个组织内还是作为更广泛的组织社区的一部分。为了实现使与STEM相关的变革更容易实现的目标，学习解决方案将实施一个多步骤的过程。最后，4)使用各种平台(例如，社交媒体、传统媒体、数字和印刷出版物、播客、小组讨论和小组演示)和利用指标，以确保有效地以数字方式交付所选问题的潜在解决方案。

Across the United States, individuals, organizations, and communities are wrestling with a wide array of challenging and persistent science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-related problems. A few examples include ensuring more equitable access to STEM careers; building capacity for rural libraries to support STEM learning; and supporting greater cyber literacy among youth. The good news is that thousands of individuals, organizations, and communities are coming up with great ideas for how to confront these problems; many of them supported by the NSF. Unfortunately, most will encounter significant roadblocks to success along the way, but not because of bad ideas. Most change agents falter along the lengthy and often convoluted pathway between idea and successful execution because they bump up against barriers they do not expect or know how to overcome. This Pilot and Feasibility Study will create Learning Solutions, a multi-platform program designed to support those people and entities engaged in work that cultivates the public’s understanding of, engagement with, and interest in STEM fields and STEM-related information. First, the project will systematically identify the real, but often unspoken issues that individuals, organizations, and communities run into as they work to bring about significant and impactful STEM-related change. Then, the project will assemble, curate, and make digitally available a collection of tools, resources and strategies designed to help someone understand and resolve these kinds of issues if and when they arise. By better understanding the experiences of change agents, the challenges they face, and the creative learning solutions they enact, this project will ensure that more change agents successfully access the learning know-how they need, when they need it, in curated, easy-to-digest formats. This award is funded by the Advanced Informal STEM Learning program which contributes to STEM engagement and literacy, workforce development, and educational success via supporting new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of STEM learning in informal environments. Learning Solutions will build capacity and will help more professionals successfully bring more good ideas to fruition.The target audience for this Pilot & Feasibility phase of Learning Solutions will be STEM professionals working at the intersection of STEM and society across diverse sectors. It will focus on change agents -- individuals who want to be or who already are engaged in community-based, action-oriented STEM-related change projects, whether acting on their own, within an organization, or as part of a broader community of organizations. To achieve the goal of making STEM-related change easier to accomplish, Learning Solutions will implement a multi-step process. With input from five Critical Advisors, 20 Key Informants, and ultimately hundreds of change agents, project staff will: 1) Utilize an iterative process of in-depth interviews and broadly disseminated surveys to identify the major understandings, skills and processes that current and past STEM-related change agents have experienced as impediments to their success; 2) Determine how best to describe and categorize these issues across diverse problem spaces; 3) Select twelve issues, based on which are the most frequently mentioned and/or perceived to be the most critical or challenging, and research and curate the best and most authoritative resources responsive to these dozen issues; and finally, 4) Use a variety of platforms (e.g., social media, traditional media, digital and in print publications, podcasts, panels, and group presentations) and utilization metrics to ensure effective digital delivery of potential solutions to the selected issues. By the project’s end, we will have identified some of the key challenges the STEM-related change agents who work in communities across America regularly encounter, as well as the feasibility of developing a mechanism for helping those change agents discover preexisting and readily accessible resources to assist them in resolving those challenges.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.