EPS-WO Gateway for Education, Training, Broader Impacts and Outreach

University Of South Dakota Main Campus, Vermillion SD

Investigators

Abstract

All NSF funded grants have the potential to not only advance scientific knowledge but also contribute to the achievement of socially relevant outcomes. Socially relevant scientific outcomes are referred to as Broader Impacts. Education, training, collaboration, broadening participation and raising awareness of the role that science plays in the quality of everyday life are broader impacts that promote science literacy in society. The National Science Foundation places great importance on the communication of science and its potential to benefit society. While broader impacts are of great importance, achieving them at scale requires addressing challenges in planning and implementing activities that include: 1) finding and sharing resources (funding, infrastructure and personnel); 2) locating and collating information that is diverse, widespread and presented in a variety of ways; 3) addressing the lack of technical expertise and infrastructure for creating websites, videos, and integrating applications such as social media, survey tools and analytic tools; 4) disseminating information and interacting with large, distributed groups; 5) meeting recruitment initiative goals to broaden participation and building collaborations in unfamiliar communities; and 6) measuring success and promoting successful projects. The primary objective of this workshop is to address these issues by exploring the creation of an integrated Gateway for Education, Training, Broader Impacts and Outreach for EPSCoR jurisdictions that would provide infrastructure for researchers, educators, students, project managers, and the general public to access, create, and share information about broader impact activities and resources. Strategies for realizing the Broader Impacts (BI) of scientific research include using cyberinfrastructure to empower knowledge dissemination, activating effective jurisdictional and regional collaborations that advance scientific research, broadening participation in science, technology and engineering and mathematics (STEM), expanding the scientific literacy of all citizens, and disseminating the importance of STEM research and education. The primary objective of this workshop is to assess the state of the art in existing resources to promote BI, and explore creating an integrated Gateway for Education, Training, Broader Impacts and Outreach for EPSCoR jurisdictions that would provide infrastructure for researchers, educators, students, project managers, and the general public to access, create, and share information about broader impact activities and resources. Participants will achieve the following during this event: 1) identify BI and outreach needs of the EPSCoR community; 2) identify, introduce, and evaluate BI resources and tools from well-established groups such as the Center for the Advancement of Informal Science Education and the Institute for Broadening Participation; 3) identify what functionality gaps exist in the current BI platforms that are required by the EPSCoR community; 4) create a set of BI “user stories” (i.e. use cases) that would be used to document the requisite functionality; 5) discuss how the development of a EPSCoR BI network could be integrated into a Hub or Ecosystem for the broader community; and 6) identify funding opportunities to develop, pilot test, scale and sustain the system. The outcomes of this project will elevate the visibility and importance of broader impact activities, and their intertwined research activities, in a scalable and transformative way. 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.