SciOut18 Flash Talk: Sara Kobilka
https://rockedu.rockefeller.edu/new_outreach/flash-talk-sara-kobilka/

Okay well I'm coming from the Pacific time zone so I won't force you to be all awake and say hello to me. My name is Sarah Kobilka and I too actually spent most of my life in the informal science education realm working at science museums, running camps, really focusing on that engage and inspire and the aha moments and all that exciting stuff until I transitioned recently into more formal education role and actually just finished a master's of science and science education from the University of Montana in Bozeman and it was an opportunity for me to learn a little bit more about the best practices of the formal education realm and I think we can take some of those best practices and maybe they have a role for us to play. I know we like to think we informal people got all the best stuff but I would like to propose an idea called backwards design and just by a show of hands how many of you have heard of that concept? Excellent, okay, so we've heard of it for those who haven't heard of it. Inspired by design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe is a wonderful book on that topic it's a planning framework and on the Vanderbilt website if you just do a google search of backwards design you're gonna find a video of Grant Wiggins doing some teacher training and one of the questions he says or one of the statements he says is it's your job to know where we want to end up and we just said at the beginning how will I know that this is successful and knowing what the goal is is critical for designing your program. You have to think from that backwards design backwards position because there's a disconnect from our short-term actions and our long-term goals if we don't take that backwards position so one thing that teachers often get challenged on is that they teach to the test, that they are focused on the content part, and especially before the next generation science standards came in and gave us the science and engineering practices and the cross-cutting concepts those content strands really were everything and so the concept that was come up with the backwards design is that you have three steps. You start with your end-to-end desire your goals. Then you figure out how do you assess to see if you've met those goals and not just what you're going to take a test or a quiz on in a formal classroom but what skills do you want people to have, what connections do you want them to be able to make and then finally they plan the learning experience and instruction and in our case in outreach, we might come up with this really great idea of the activity that we're gonna do oh and then we have to assess it and then maybe then I will kind of think about what the goal was and why we even did it and that disconnect just doesn't work so the questions that you want to be thinking about with your goals and questions that I don't have answers to but what do you want your students to be able to do with what they learn? What meanings or transfers do you want to make and when we go from that meaning angle it puts power in the students because it implies that they already know something and they can take what you're teaching them and experiences that you're giving them and take them and apply them to something that already matters to them and when we talk about those goals that we want to set we use the acronym smart. So S is specific M is measurable there's those metrics again A achievable you're not going to eradicate hunger but you can make an achievable goal with regards to that you have R relevant to the program that you're doing and T time-bound you can't have a goal that's just gonna continue going on forever. You've got a funder, you've got a time period, or even just a program you still want to have times with that so specific measurable achievable relevant to the program and time-bound. Now going back to when you set those goals I asked you the question of who's at the table when you start that planning process. Oftentimes I do we do some work at the STEM Learning Center with NSF funded programs and many of you in this room have had people come in and say okay my application is due in one week can I can you write a letter of support and you know help me out with my broader impacts because I really didn't think about it but I got my whole research ready to go. So who is when can we get into that conversation can we get in sooner who else needs to be part of that conversation when do you bring the audience that you're trying to serve into the conversation especially if you're talking about some students who are older if you're looking at working with youth, high school kids have a lot to say and they know what they want they know what they're passionate about. They know what will mean something to them so can you bring them to the table at a sooner at an earlier point we talked about we had the concept of IRB just brought up well do you bring education researchers do you work with your department with the College of Education at your University or people who are education researchers because there is a difference between evaluating a program and doing education research on a program and so these people can bring in some expertise and maybe answer some of those questions that we might have because that's not our area of expertise. When do you bring in those informal science educators: the people from the museum, from the zoo, from the Boys and Girls Club, not oh we've got this whole idea now we want to bring it to your setting but hey come talk to us about how we design something for your settings so we don't make all these ideas or come up with all the ideas and then we try to fit them into your setting. So things to think about as you're doing it when you have those groups together and talking from the very beginning another bonus that comes out of it is you get that shared vocabulary and having that shared vocabulary then allows you to have that communication on the topic going forward and moving forward and making it more of a sustainable not a one-off thing but truly building that relationship and connecting you with those people in those audiences. Karen asks the question what data is worth sharing I would ask this question what data is worth collecting? Sometimes we put a lot of time and effort into collecting all this stuff because well I think it might be useful but really we have limited resources and we have to acknowledge that so what is worth it for us and for telling that story that was mentioned we need the who the what the who the where the what and the when those years sometimes more metrics numerical things your quantitative data but you need that qualitative data as well to tell you the how and the why. I can tell you that we increase from thirty to sixty percent but how did it happen? Why did it happen? That's where that qualitative data comes in in my personal feelings and so connecting partners, audiences, education researchers learning experiences to your assessment which is tied to your goals. All this concept of connectedness, if you like talking about it well you are in luck because the National Alliance for Broader Impacts is coming to sunny Tucson Arizona and that is going to be happening April 30th through May 2nd and connectedness is our theme so we have good conversations going on here and then you go through for most of you a cold horrible winter and then you need to get away from it all and work on your tan so I am personally inviting each and every one of you in this room to join us for NABI in Tucson Arizona and I will be passing out these postcards so that you can remember to join us for the fun to talk about connections