'TV411 What's Cooking?' provides adults with low levels of literacy and numeracy with access to a free multi-media resource which delivers mathematics and science content in the form of an online cooking show. This series builds on a prior NSF planning grant (DRL 07-75623) and the research-based design of the TV411 educational materials while addressing biochemical, physical, and mathematical processes that occur in cooking and daily life. The project will be managed by the Education Development Center's Adult Literacy Media Alliance (ALMA) project, in partnership with the Public Internet Channel, a New York-based Head Start Program, and formal education partners.
The project's goals are to raise awareness of math and science content in daily life, overcome negative attitudes and behaviors related to science learning, and increase knowledge, vocabulary, and skills related to science and math while building capacity to use informal science education resources. Additional goals are to increase the capacity level of adult educators and informal workshop facilitators to teach basic math and science concepts. Finally, the project is designed to research strategies in which low-literacy adult learners utilize informal math and science resources in a Web 2.0 environment.
Deliverables include six video segments that embed basic literacy and numeracy concepts in a cooking show format, 12 interactive web activities including games and simulations, and a reconstructed TV411 Online website with Web 2.0 features. In year 2, Spanish language videos and web lessons, customized toolkits for The Public Internet Channel, workshop materials for parents, and articles and reports for dissemination to education and informal learning networks nationwide are produced. The videos will be distributed on TV411 Online and the Public Internet Channel (pic.tv).
The mixed-methods evaluation addresses four impact categories (awareness, engagement, attitudes, and behavior). An embedded evaluation approach will be used to determine knowledge gains, while behavioral and attitudinal questions will be asked separately in two web surveys given to random sample of 500 website visitors. Interviews are used to determine teacher perceptions of usability and effectiveness of materials. 'TV411 What's Cooking?' is projected to attract 1.5 million website visitors in the first year and an additional 500,000 each subsequent year. This well-researched project advances adult literacy and numeracy, while providing students participating in GED, adult basic education, and informal community-based programs with engaging STEM content.
Created primarily for adult learners with less than a high school education, TV411 What’s Cooking? is a unique web-based, multimedia STEM project on tv411.org. The project builds on the award-winning design of Education Development Center’s TV411-branded informal education materials, among the first to adopt technology-based strategies to reach and teach low-literacy adults. The centerpiece of TV411 What’s Cooking? is a popular-style cooking show hosted by a celebrity chef, Jamika Pessoa of "The Chew." The show consists of six videos (in English and Spanish) that feature the preparation of healthful recipes while exploring the topics of Carbohydrates, Heat (Energy), Water (Phases of Matter), Salt (Elements and Compounds), Photosynthesis, and Bacteria. In addition, 12 correlated web lessons (in English and Spanish) give online learners additional practice in the science and math topics embedded in the cooking episodes. These materials, plus more than 200 multimedia literacy and numeracy resources previously produced by TV411, are now freely available on www. tv411.org, which was restructured for this project to enable "any time, at any pace" learning. Through this project, adult basic education teachers across the country report that they have successfully used TV411 What’s Cooking? materials to reinforce or introduce the STEM content of their customary curricula. In our work with community nutrition educators with limited or no background in science education, we have effectively increased their capacity to fold essential science concepts into workshops that focus primarily on nutrition and food safety. The platform for the project is a free website that has attracted more than one million unique visitors in the fourteen months since the launch of TV411 What’s Cooking?. More than seven thousand websites, primarily educational ones, link to TV411.org. Through observations of and interviews with adult learners and their teachers, we have ascertained that the STEM materials we created are at an appropriate level for pre-GED/GED adult learners, are engaging, and are embedded in a web design that is easy to use. Finally, all web lesson templates on the site are based on open-source Drupal modules that can now be repurposed by other web developers. * This project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
