About Resource
The National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Network), originally the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network, is committed to advancing and strengthening STEM learning and literacy with communities across the country. The NISE Network achieves this through working with partner organizations like science centers, museums, and universities to carry out STEM programming on various topics. The majority of NISE Network partners are museums and university outreach educators and scientists in the United States. For these projects, the NISE Network supports the creation and development of educational materials, professional learning materials and opportunities, and helps to build and enhance capacity for increased community engagement through fostering collaboration with new partners, organizations, and groups.
Notable resources developed by the NISE Network include kits for public science engagement, the first of which was the Nano & Society toolkit. Their Building with Biology toolkit has been used widely across the country in facilitating conversations with the public at all age levels on synthetic biology and led to the development of the Public Engagement with Science guide. In developing materials, NISE Network leaders and partners work together to identify needs and use combined expertise to develop resources and coordinate activities at a national level while local partners carry out activities and programming at the community level. Resources and programming are adapted and improved to account for lessons learned and feedback from public participants.
The NISE Network and their collaborators have received funding for projects from a variety of sources, including NASA, the NSF, NOAA, the Kavli Foundation, and the Rob and Melani Walton Foundation. Their extended leadership includes representatives from groups across the country.
How to Use
The NISE Network Resource Collection for Forums provides users with open access materials developed for public engagement projects. These include kits, like the Building with Biology Digital Kit, that are available for download. Physical kits can also be ordered on their website for use at science engagement institutions like science museums. Other materials available for download include files developed for projects on Women’s Rights and Sustainability and Privacy. Civil Liberties. Nanotechnology.
The collection also includes fundamental guiding materials, such as the Forums Manual. This resource brings together manuals from Building with Biology and Nano & Society, which describe in-depth the various stages of each of these projects, including program development, delivery, and follow-up. The Forums Manual includes evaluation tools for audience participants and speakers, along with other tools used for the program such as discussion debriefs, observation notes, and registration surveys. In addition, the How to Hold a Science Cafe guide provides organizers with the steps and considerations in hosting a science cafe in person or online.
Other materials include downloadable framing documents, presentation slides, worksheets, and more, such as the documents developed for the forum on “Should We Edit the Genome?” and “Our Evolution - Rewriting the Human Genome.” Recordings of workshops are also available and include training videos, introductory videos, and accompanying PDFs, such as the “Online Workshop Recording of Engaging Audiences in Science through Building with Biology Public Forums.”
You may also be interested in visiting the Public Engagement with Science Forum Archive. This archive features information and related materials on community forums held at the Museum of Science. This archive is a free resource for educators and engagement professionals at other institutions to use for hosting programs in their communities.
Users can make use of these materials in various ways, either through using the kits and forum materials for engagement activities with their communities or as a basis for developing materials for different topics or types of engagement. Kits and materials are designed for engagement with families and kids of all ages. In addition, many materials are also catered to developing professionals in informal STEM. Thus, many of the resources in this Forum and on the NISE Network website in general can be useful for organizations aiming to develop a greater capacity for public engagement among their professional staff and community.
Author(s)/Organization: The National Informal STEM Education Network
Tags
Attributes:Aims for Action
Outcomes:Increased Science Agency, Ethical Decision-Making, Inspiration for New Science
Approaches:Dialogue & Deliberation
Type:Databases & Collections