Plants of Concern is a citizen science-based rare plant monitoring program in the Chicago Region. Developed in 2001, it how has collected long-term census data on 205 species at 245 sites in 710 separate element occurrences. More than 200 volunteers are involved each year. Threats and invasive species are also recorded. The data is housed in a master Access database and is shared with the Illinois Natural Heritage Database but more importantly with individual landowners to help guide their management decisions.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Susanne MasiChicago WildernessIllinois Department of Natural Resources
This 2-page poster was presented at the April 2011 workshop, Engaging and Learning for Conservation. It features images associated with Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission's Statewide Citizen Science Projects.
The California Environmental Legacy Project is a new kind of educational media project. Through an integrated package of programs and media resources, it seeks to build public understanding about about environmental change and the deep and inextricable connections we have with the natural world. The Project has three interwoven media programs: "Becoming California," is a two-hour public television documentary that takes a fresh look at our past, present and future relationship with California's changing environment. Produced for a national public television audience, the target for broadcast is summer 2014. The Changing Places Initiative is a package of regional films created for selected state and national parks in California. Produced as standalone and companion programs to the broadcast program, the films are planned for release in park visitor centers beginning in summer 2014. A companion website aims to increase public understanding of environmental change by integrating the project's video program into an engaging and interactive user interface that offers streaming video, educational resources and social networking tools. Audience Research is a key element of the project that guides development of its media and provides feedback on its overall effectiveness. Project partners include California State Parks, the National Park Service and U.S. Geological Survey. KQED-TV in San Francisco is serving as its presenting station for PBS broadcast. The Project is led by team of distinguished scientists, leading educators and award-winning media professionals.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
James BaxterKit TylerJeffrey WhiteDavid Scheerer
Led by Washington University, Making Natural Connections: An Authentic Field Research Collaboration (DRL-0739874), is a series of two field-based informal science education programs in environmental biology targeting St. Louis area teenagers. The project aims for engagement of science research institutions and career scientists in the execution of informal science education programming, bringing real and dynamic context to the science content and allowing for deep and transparent career exploration by teenage participants. Project goals include (1) providing a model for integration of informal science education into the research and restoration projects at biological field stations and nature reserves, (2) communicating current environmental biology research to audiences outside the research community, and (3) influencing the entry of pre-college students into the science career pipeline. The project is a collaborative partnership between Washington University’s Tyson Research Center and the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Shaw Nature Reserve. The Shaw Institute for Field Training (SIFT) program trains St. Louis area high school students in scientific exploration of the natural world at Shaw Nature Reserve. During a one-week training session in June, teens are introduced to a variety of Missouri ecosystems and gain skills necessary to conduct field research, including plant and animal identifications, biotic sampling and census techniques, testing of abiotic factors, and training in the use of maps, compass and GPS. During the rest of the summer and school year, teens are involved in important research and restoration activities at Shaw, Tyson Research Center and other field research sites in the St. Louis area. Fieldwork opportunities may include invasive species management, prairie reconstruction, plant and animal inventories, and prescribed burns. The Tyson Environmental Research Fellowships (TERF) program places high school students as summer interns on ecology and environmental biology research teams at Tyson Research Center. Selected teen participants have successfully completed the SIFT program and apply their field skills to ongoing research projects at Tyson and other partnering research sites. During the summer, the four-week program provides teens with exposure to a variety of field science experiences and skills. TERF teens work alongside university scientists, post-doctoral researchers, graduate students and undergraduate students. The TERF program provides a cultural apprenticeship in university-based environmental biology research and training in scientific communication. It is an advanced summer experience modeled on the undergraduate research internships offered at Tyson. During the following school year, participants work on posters and presentations for symposia at Washington University and Tyson and at community fairs, and their posters are displayed at Shaw Nature Reserve. A national dissemination workshop for informal science educators, high school biology teachers, and research scientists provides the necessary materials and background to replicate the project design in other locales. The summative evaluation will address impacts on teenage participants (engagement, cognitive and emotional support, competence, career viability, experiential learning) and professional audiences (implementation of teen program, program components, impacts on mentoring scientists). The strategic impact of this project results from the integration of teenage immersion experiences into research activities at a university-based facility. This model of informal science training activities leading into participation in authentic research may be transferable to other STEM disciplines.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Phyllis BalcerzakPeter RavenSusan FlowersKim Medley
The Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative projects in a variety of informal settings. The iSWOOP project aims to equip National Park Service interpretive rangers with visualizations and interactive approaches for communicating science in natural learning spaces. An advantage to locating STEM learning in national parks is that they serve as America’s outdoor laboratories, hosting thousands of research studies annually. Dynamic changes in the landscape, wildlife, and interspecies interactions offer countless avenues for inquiry. The project will build collaborations between park-based scientists, whose work frequently happens out of the public eye, and interpreters, who interact with millions of visitors annually. Based on pilot studies done at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, the researchers have extended this work to four more national park units, each with its own natural resources and research. Partners in this endeavor include Winston-Salem State University, Institute for Learning Innovation, and TERC. This project's goal is to establish a model for how national parks can be resources for science education and learning.
iSWOOP works by providing interpretive rangers with professional development. iSWOOP coordinates 1) opportunities for interpreters and scientists to work together in a classroom setting and in the field; 2) creates compelling visualizations, which can function as a jumping off point for conversations about the methods and relevance of park-based research; 3) ongoing opportunities for interpretive rangers to reflect on interactions with visitors and to experiment with questions that spark visitors’ curiosity in the moment and interest long-term.
The main goal of this proposed effort is to translate park-based research endeavors and results from the scientists to the park visitors in ways that make the process enjoyable, informative, and thought-provoking. Evaluation elements will be included every step in this process in order to not only determine if learning has occurred but also how effectively the science has been translated.
This project has developed a highly successful model for integration of pre-college youth career exploration into authentic environmental research and restoration activities at Washington University’s field station, Tyson Research Center, and the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Shaw Nature Reserve. The Shaw Institute for Field Training (SIFT) and Tyson Environmental Research Fellowships (TERF) programs provide access to field research for St. Louis, Missouri area high school youth interested in careers related to environmental biology. SIFT is an introductory field skills training program that
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Washington UniversityKatherine BeyerSusan Flowers
This project engages members of racially and economically diverse communities in identifying and carrying out environmental projects that are meaningful to their lives, and adapts technology known as NatureNet to assist them. NatureNet, which encompasses a cell phone app, a multi-user, touch-based tabletop display and a web-based community, was developed with prior NSF support. Core participants involved in programs of the Anacostia Watershed Society in Washington, D.C., and Maryland, and the Reedy Creek Nature Preserve in Charlotte, NC, will work with naturalists, educators, and technology specialists to ask scientific questions and form hypotheses related to urban waterway restoration and preservation of native species. They will then collect and analyze data using NatureNet, requesting changes to the technology to customize it as needed for their projects. Casual visitors to the nature centers will be able to interact with the environmental projects via the tabletop, and those who live farther away will be able to participate more peripherally via the online community. The research project, led by researchers from the University of Maryland, College Park, with collaborators from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and the University of Colorado, Boulder, will provide answers to two questions: 1) How do community-driven informal environmental learning projects impact participants, including their motivation to actively participate in science issues via technology and their disposition toward nature preserves and scientific inquiry? and 2) What are the key factors (e.g., demographic composition of participants, geographical location) that influence the development of community-driven environmental projects? Researchers will gather extensive qualitative and quantitative data to understand how community projects are selected and carried out, how participants approach technology use and adaptation, and how informal learning and engagement on STEM-related issues can be fostered over a period of several months and through iterative project cycles. Data will be collected through motivation questionnaires; focus groups; interviews; tabletop, mobile, and website interaction logs; field notes from participatory design and reflection sessions; and project journals kept by nature preserve staff. Through extensive research, iterative design, and evaluation efforts, researchers will develop an innovative model for community-driven environmental projects that will deepen informal science education by demonstrating how members of diverse communities connect environmental knowledge and scientific inquiry skills to the practices, values, and goals of their communities, and how technology can be used to facilitate such connections.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Tom YehMary Lou MaherJennifer PreeceTamara CleggCarol Boston