The Art of Science Learning is a National Science Foundation-funded initiative exploring innovation at the intersection of art, science and learning by using the arts to spark creativity in STEM education and foster the development of an innovative 21st Century STEM workforce.

“Integrating Informal STEM and Arts-Based Learning to Foster Innovation” was a research and development project that investigated whether integrating arts-based learning into Informal STEM contributes to the development of creative thinking, innovation skills and collaborative behaviors in STEM learners and professionals.  

To accomplish this, in the first year of the project, we created a curriculum that uses the arts to teach STEM innovation. The curriculum took a comprehensive approach, with 12 modules covering processes ranging from exploring opportunity through go-to-market.  At the same time, working in partnership with local hosts (Balboa Park Cultural Partnership in San Diego, Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, EcoTarium in Worcester), we created three Incubators for Innovation to serve as test sites for the new curriculum. 

Each incubator chose a STEM innovation challenge as its focus (water resources in San Diego, urban nutrition in Chicago, transportation alternatives in Worcester) and brought together 100 scientists, engineers, artists, educators, students and business leaders (Art of Science Learning Fellows) to tackle its challenge. The Fellows spent an entire year learning and practicing innovation by developing innovative solutions to the STEM challenges. They experienced more than 60 workshops from the Art of Science Learning Innovation Curriculum that used the arts to help them explore challenges; identify problems and opportunities for innovation; generate, transform, and communicate creative ideas; collaborate on cross–disciplinary teams; and co–create their solutions with external partners. Open–ended jazz improvisation helped Fellows learn new  observational techniques and practice suspending their disbelief. Surrealist visual and spoken word techniques helped stimulate the flow of intuitive insights in their ideation. Laban–based movement work helped them learn to “feel numbers” and bring openness to their search for productive convergence around shared insights. Fellows used clay sculpture to model their ideas and assessment criteria.  

After four months of front end exploratory work, the Fellows chose the problems and solutions they wanted to work on, and formed themselves into 28 teams. Over the next eight months, as the teams developed their concepts into innovations, we continued to support their learning with ongoing innovation training. Fellows spent time with string quartets to observe successful collaborative behaviors in multi–leader environments, practiced user–centric iterative design thinking in community workshops, and worked with a theater–based technique called Rehearsing Ideas to accelerate their prototyping cycles. We also provided teams with mentors, ongoing access to experts, community partnerships, periodic input to external advisory panels, and modest budgets.

By the end of the year, 22 of the 28 innovation teams succeeded in bringing working prototypes of their novel solutions to market.

During the third year of the project, we studied the impact of arts-based learning on high school students and adult scientists under experimental conditions, by testing the hypothesis that integrating the arts into STEM-related innovation training results in enhanced creative thinking skills, more robust collaborative processes and stronger innovation outcomes. The research found clear evidence of a causal relationship between arts-based learning and improved creative thinking skills and innovation outcomes in adolescents, and between arts-based learning and increased emotionally intelligent and collaborative behavior in adults.

During the final year, we created a traveling exhibition that gave more than 125,000 visitors hands-on opportunities to participate in STEM innovation while learning about the innovations and research outcomes generated by our project.  We also published the Art of Science Learning Innovation Curriculum; conducted more than 45 symposia, innovation workshops and engagement events for educators, students, scientists, business leaders, researchers and the general public; and created a 76-minute video documentary with University of California-TV’s STEAM Channel which received more than 300,000 views in its first 12 months. 

Over the years, “Integrating Informal STEM and Arts-Based Learning to Foster Innovation” has advanced America’s STEM workforce development objectives in important ways, by identifying, developing and demonstrating the effectiveness of new ways to blend the creativity and innovation of the arts with the excitement of discovery of STEM learning.  The project directly generated innovation in informal science learning centers, strengthened the innovation skills of hundreds of STEM learners and professionals,  developed a new model for strengthening engagement with STEM by using the arts to foster 21st Century STEM learning and innovation, and - through compelling data and narrative - shared the model with hundreds of thousands of people across the country.  

For information about project activities and the new products, processes, services and STEM curricula created by Art of Science Learning's 28 innovation teams, please visit our website:  www.artofsciencelearning.org

To greater detail about project outcomes and research findings, please see the Art of Science Learning on University of California TV:

https://www.uctv.tv/shows/The-Art-of-Science-Learning-with-Harvey-Seifter-30491

Last Modified: 11/14/2017
Modified by: Harvey J Seifter