Project

LabVenture Learning Retention and Engagement

Leveraging the power of reflections and visual representations during an informal science experience and beyond.

This research project investigates the power and potential of visual representations and conversational reflections in supporting scientific discovery and learning during and after LabVenture, our longstanding informal science experience for Maine’s 5th and 6th graders. This research is conducted in partnership between researchers at GMRI, Northwestern University, and Loyola University Chicago.

Project Goals:

  • Understand whether and how visual representations facilitate students’ reflections during and after informal learning.
  • Investigate how practices which engage students in reflection affect learning and subsequent use of information acquired during LabVenture.
  • Apply an integrated, theoretical perspective on young learners’ memory and construction of science learning in informal science learning experiences.

This project investigates the power and potential of visual representations and conversational reflections in supporting scientific discovery and learning during and after an informal STEM experience. The Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s LabVenture program serves as the focal informal science learning experience for the project. The project aims to apply an integrated, theoretical perspective on children’s memory and construction of their science learning experience to understand whether and how the use of visual representations can facilitate students' conversational reflections during LabVenture and their subsequent use of the knowledge acquired during LabVenture in future settings.

Through this work, we hope to increase learning for the 9,000+ 5th and 6th grade students from across the rurality and growing diversity of the state of Maine who annually participate in LabVenture and provide new and actionable informal science learning practices that promote engagement with visual representations and reflection, and science understandings that can be applied broadly by informal science institutions.

Project Team

Project Sponsor

This is the national science foundation logo.

This project is generously sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), award #2115603.

Project Partners

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