Effects of Designing a Narrative-Based Video Game on High School Students’ Climate Change Perspectives

Publications
This study examined how high school students’ participation in designing an extended reality (XR) video game influenced their understanding of climate change. The Make Games, Save the World program, supported by a National Science Foundation grant, engaged students, from backgrounds underrepresented in STEM fields, in a year-long, out-of-school initiative. Working collaboratively in narrative and design teams, students created a story-driven game set in a fictional future world impacted by extreme heat and water scarcity. To assess changes in understanding, participants completed Personal
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Data Jam

Curricular Materials
Logo for Data Jam
Engaging students with local ecological data in Puerto Rico Data Jam is an initiative of the Luquillo Long -Term Ecological Research (LTER) program. The University of Puerto Rico's Luquillo LTER has compiled decades of data on the El Yunque rainforest ecosystem and made it publicly available. The Data Jam program engages middle and high school students in the process of formulating their own questions about environmental phenomena in El Yunque and then exploring, analyzing, and summarizing long-term data as evidence to support their scientific research questions. Successful Data Jam projects
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Luquillo Data Jam: A Powerful Model for Broadening Participation in Science

Publications
The Luquillo Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program in Puerto Rico has implemented a Data Jam initiative that fosters student engagement in ecological data science. In December 2023, over 175 middle and high school students presented 51 data-driven projects at a symposium in El Yunque National Rainforest. The initiative, rooted in the LTER’s extensive datasets, allows students to develop research questions, analyze data using the CODAP tool, and present findings. The program includes professional development for teachers, with workshops and Virtual Lab Meetings that equip them to guide
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A Youth-Led Citizen Science Network for Community Environmental Assessment

Curricular Materials
This curriculum was developed in an informal STEM context through after-school programs, however this versatile content can be implemented in a variety of formal and informal settings, including classroom use at the high school level. In this curriculum, students design, carry out, and communicate findings from technology-rich community-focused environmental citizen science projects. Students learn about various types of pollution, environmental health, and human impacts on the environment, as well as develop research and science communication skills and utilize various technologies and
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Drones in Alaska Elementary Curriculum

Curricular Materials
This collection of three teacher's manuals, five videos, and one career exploration guide were created with and for Alaska Native communities as part of the Drone Research and Opportunities for Native Elementary Students project, funded by NSF I-TEST Grant Nos. 1850561 (Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks) and 1850556 (Univ. of Alaska Anchorage). The Drones in Alaska base curriculum has three versions, one with lexicon in Sugs'tun, one with lexicon in Lower Tanana Athabascan, and one with lexicon in Lower Koyukon Athabascan. The Teacher's manual for the Drones in Alaska base curriculum is applicable to
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A Lesson in Geospatial Inquiry

Publications
Geospatial Inquiry is an educational framework that offers students an opportunity to engage with, and become curious about, geospatial data for a defined purpose. The authors define Geospatial Inquiry as: "Asking and answering a question through the analysis and communication of data that is linked to a geographic location on, above, or near Earth." (Rubino-Hare et al. 2017). Since Geospatial Inquiry is designed to evoke curiosity and engagement, students have multiple opportunities to seek information and explore ideas on how they see the world they live in. Geospatial Inquiry uses
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Investigating environmental identity development among children in rural Alaska Native communities through intergenerational, culturally responsive community science programming

Poster

Project Overview: This two-year research-design project, undertaken in collaboration with GBH and Molly of Denali is: (1) building new knowledge about the ways in which children from rural Alaska Native communities, ages 6- 8, develop “environmental identity” (defined as the empathy, knowledge, and skills that children need to act responsibly for the environment) and (2) investigating how environmental identity can be nurtured via an intergenerational, community-based environmental science program that is supported by appropriate technologies and

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Investigating environmental identity development among children in rural Alaska Native communities through intergenerational, culturally responsive community science programming

Poster

Media producers from GBH and researchers from South Dakota State University and the University of Alaska Southeast have recently launched a new research and development project that is designed to: (1) build new knowledge about the ways in which children from rural Alaska Native communities, ages 6-8, develop “environmental identity”—the empathy, knowledge, and skills that children need to act responsibly for the environment (Green, Kalvaitis, & Worster, 2016)—and (2) investigate how environmental identity can be nurtured via a

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