Overview of the CAISE Media Initiative, a set of topics and issues the media field/CAISE could take action on.

Collaboration

Collaboration is key, is not in our DNA, competitive field. Partnerships and collective action is essential for survival. But where and how to collaborate in an effective, efficient way is something we need to discuss. Where to bridge?

COP / Lack of Forum

Currently no good forum for media PIs to gather and meet and learn from and about each other’s work. Need a coalition for learning together. Convening needed as a place to gather and talk, a mechanism for sharing. Many of us working in isolation or within our institutions turning the wheel.

Visibility, Awareness and Showcasing

Project visibility is key — to field, to funders, to the public

Want to find out about others in ISE.  No recognizable brand.  Hard to track.

At media/practioner conferences ISE projects have a low presence

Need better branding, awareness of ISE projects, people and a stronger sense of community and identity

Questions about NSF role in communicating about its projects?  A suggestion to talk with Jeff Nesbit, Dir. of Legislative and Public Affairs about how to promote the success and impacts of ISE media projects within NSF, DC, the administration.  A mention of how Knight and MacArthur foundations promote their grants, PIs, and research.

A request for a structured conversation and listening to what other ISE /DRL/NSF program officers see as promising practices, important directions for ISE (how do they see, value the role of media in STEM?)

Making the case for STEM media

Loss of confidence in traditional STEM media, we really need to make the case for its impact, show value of what we are doing to float our collective boat.

What other orgs do we need to make the case to —  DOE,  NIH and the public?

Show value through evidence and strong examples.  How do we get there?

How might the tenets of effective communications campaigns apply to the question of building public policy/awareness/support of a strong informal learning sector?

Knowledge-building and Research

Research not in the DNA of media folks?  Scientists (PIs) by training think about work/projects as a process of discovery.  Research is a way to test a hypothesis about how people learn. We need build on knowledge and community, but in a way, that is relevant to its practioners and stakeholders.  Evaluation and its findings need to make sense to the PIs and inform how we move forward.  Seems like media needs to better incorporate the PIship, the research aspect – hypothesis building —  into their work.  Perhaps a national agenda or a road map.  What are key research questions media PIs what to know about?  Some general agreement voiced on this point.

Research and Evaluation

We need to use evaluation to make a coherent case for the value. Reap the benefits across the field. A need for convos about learning goals and outcomes/impacts with media PIs.  This will require better collaboration and use evaluation and figuring out how PIs-evaluators can work and communicate effectively. Need to frame evaluation as a tool, not a report card by building a culture of reflective practice that learns from its and others work

VSA as a potential organizer of evaluation knowledge.  The BISE grant funded by ISE to do a meta-analysis/synthesis of evaluation reports.  Kevin can do a report out of preliminary finds around media evaluations at the convening in July.  However, it is a very difficult data set to make sense of.

Panel Process

The panel process is an issue–how to improve quality.  See viable proposals with data to back their work shot down based on personal opinion. Impressions and opinion in review process can trumps evidence. Rating mechanism in proposal process should downplay mere opinion. Suggest talking to NSF about panel process, training new reviewers so that gut instinct does not take precedence over proven outcomes and data.

Innovation

Need to answer the question of what is the “traditional educational broadcaster’s role in the new media landscape?”   What new technologies and media developments in the offing are most likely to be useful to our community and ought to be planned for? A bit of a crisis in ISE – need guidance and inspiration.  Need to ISE media projects to figure out how to extend and reach audience and support science learning/engagement in news ways.

Solictation

The transition from 6 month to 12+ month grant cycle in ISE has occurred. What are the impacts of this change to series, broadcast media projocts and otherwise.

Recap main discussion topic ideas for the convening…

— Building a stronger ISE and media learning community, improving ways to communicate, learn and share;

— Increasing visibility, awareness of our work;

— Better connections between media and research; develop a strategy to building and sharing knowledge

— Articulating the value of ISE media projects to stakeholders ISE, NSF, field, publics in compelling, evidence based ways.