RAPID: Online Educational Resources on the Science of Vaccines

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This project aims to serve the national interest by providing science-based educational resources on the development of vaccines. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, colleges and universities have a unique and timely opportunity to provide information about how vaccines are developed and how they work. This project will integrate information about the development of a COVID-19 vaccine into videos and supporting teaching materials. It will disseminate these materials widely to colleges and universities, as well as to the public at large. The project will also provide workshops about how to communicate the scientific information neede to make informed decisions about the vaccine. Broad public access to the videos and workshops will be achieved through 1) a YouTube channel including videos and supporting material, 3) partnerships with National Center for Science and Civic Engagement’s project Science Education for New Civic Engagement and Responsibilities (SENCER), BioQuest/QUBES, American Association of Engineering Education (ASEE), and Hawaii and Pacific Islands Campus Compact (HIPICC) and 4) virtual workshops. To reach diverse communities, project materials will be produced in both Spanish and English and project personnel intend to implement outreach strategies for Indigenous (Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Native Pacific Islander) communities. Project workshops will be open to all educators with potentially thousands of individuals engaging with project materials. The project evaluation and research components will make important contributions to understanding the impact of a rapid science education response to the COVID-19 pandemic.The project will create four module toolkits: 1) Framing an Understanding of Science, 2) The Science of COVID-19, 3) Vaccine Science, and 4) COVID-19 Science Communication. Each module toolkit will consist of 3-5 instructional videos, 3-5 public informational videos, and supporting materials including assessments, discussion questions, and activities. All materials will be open source. The dissemination plan is grounded in the Diffusion of Innovation theory of change. The project partners will disseminate the materials by providing links to the course materials on their websites and by providing opportunities to host workshops related to the educational materials at their meetings. Virtual workshops will be held to support adoption and posted on the YouTube Channel for asynchronous viewing. Workshops will be conducted to reach diverse communities including Indigenous communities. The project evaluation will involve surveying project participants to evaluate if the project has met its primary goal of effective education about vaccine development. Pre- and post- surveys will be developed and conducted to determine if the use of the educational resources impacted students’ understanding of COVID-19 vaccines. In addition, the project will address the following research questions: Can long-standing science education efforts – SENCER, BioQuest, ASEE - be leveraged to effectively disseminate national COVID-19 vaccine educational resources? Can such an effort reach Hispanic, Native Hawaiian, and Native American communities that often lack access to this information? To address these questions, the results of the evaluation surveys as well as interviews and focus groups with project participants will be used. A focused study of project outreach in Indigenous communities will be conducted. This RAPID award is made by the IUSE program in the Division of Undergraduate Education: Education and Human Resources Directorate.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.