A partnership between Carthage College and the Appalachian Mountain Club has delivered a successful public education and outreach program that merges natural environment topics and astronomy. Over the four years of activity, over 25,000 people have received programming. The effort has trained nature educators, permanent and seasonal AMC staff, and undergraduate physics and astronomy students to integrate diverse topical material and deliver high quality programming to the lay public. Unique to the program is the holistic nature of the material delivered - an 'atypical' astronomy program. Linking observable characteristics of the natural world with astronomical history and phenomena, and emphasizing the unique sequence of events that have led to human life on Earth, the program has changed attitudes and behaviors among the public participants. Successful interventions have included hands-on observing programs (day and night) that link nature content to the observed objects; table-talk presentations on nature/astronomy topics; dark skies preservation workshops; and hands-on activities developed for younger audiences, including schools, camps, and family groups. An extensive evaluation and assessment effort managed by a leading sociologist has demonstrated the effectiveness of the approach, and contributed to continuous improvement in the program content and methods.
The goal of this study was to investigate the degree to which school-based and nonformal education programs that focus on air quality (AQ) achieved measurable AQ improvements, and whether specific instructional methods were associated with those improvements. We completed a standardized telephone interview with representatives of 54 AQ education programs. Quantitative analysis of these interviews generated three key findings: (1) nearly half (46%) of the programs we studied reported evidence that AQ had actually improved over the course of their projects; (2) most (89%) of the programs we
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Brian JohnsonMichael DuffinMichael Murphy
NNOCCI is a collaborative effort led by the New England Aquarium with the Association for Zoos and Aquariums, the FrameWorks Institute, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Monterey Bay Aquarium, the New Knowledge Organization in partnership with Penn State University and the Ohio's Center for Science and Industry. With support from the National Science Foundation Climate Change Education Partnership program, NNOCCI's goal is to establish a national network of professionals who are skilled in communicating climate science to the American public.
The project will conduct a mapping study to describe the contexts, characteristics and practices of a national sample of science-focused Out-of-School Time (OST) programs. The study targets OST programs for middle- and high-school-aged youth, including after-school programs, camps, workshops, internships, and other models. While millions of dollars are invested in these programs, and tens of thousands of students participate , as a community, we have no truly comprehensive view of the wide variety of formats, audiences, and approaches that are represented by the many active programs. Where, when, and by whom are these science-rich programs conducted? What types of experiences do they offer to what kinds of students, with what goals? What organizational and experiential factors affect the outcomes for these youth? Ultimately, we wish to understand how these differences in program design are related to youth outcomes such as STEM learning, attitudes and interest, and their later career and educational choices. To answer these questions, we are gathering data through documents, interviews, and the online MOST-Science Questionnaire.
The Museum is partnering with San Francisco State University's Department of Biology to learn more about the zombie fly, Apocephalus borealis, and how this parasitoid (like a parasite, except they always kill their host) affects honey bees, Apis mellifera. You can join this investigation by becoming a ZomBee Hunter! ZomBees are honey bees that have been parasitized by zombie flies. We know that zombie flies have been affecting honey bees in California and South Dakota. The big mysteries that need to be solved are: Where exactly are honey bees being affected? How big of a threat are zombie flies to honey bees? Have zombie flies spread to honey bees across North America? By collecting honey bees in L.A. that look like they have been affected by the zombie fly, you can be a detective for this exciting case.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles CountyJohn Hafernick
The Museum is partnering with Butterflies and Moths of North America (BAMONA) to share data and learn more about L.A. butterflies and moths. Help us find and photograph them in Los Angeles. Why Butterflies? Unlike some of the other Citizen Science projects here at the Museum, the L.A. Butterfly Survey (LABS) isn't looking for lost butterflies. We already know the species we are likely to find in L.A., all 236 of them. What we need to find out is which butterflies and moths we're likely to find when we plant the new Pollinator Garden in the Museum's upcoming outdoor exhibit, the North Campus. When you submit images of L.A. butterflies and moths, we'll map the species closest to the Museum and determine which one's might show up when we start planting butterfly attracting plants.
With the Museum's increasing interest in urban biodiversity, we have started looking at all types of wildlife in our highly modified industrial, suburban, and urban habitats. One thing that quickly struck us was that in our own backyard, Exposition Park, nobody had documented any lizards since 1988. This seemed strange, as lizards are common in other parts of Los Angeles, and it led to the question, "Why are there no lizards here?" We hope to answer this question with the LLOLA (pronouced "lola") project. LLOLA aims to do two things: 1) Confirm the presence or absence of lizards in Exposition park. (After all, nobody has looked extensively for them! 2) Find out where lizards DO occur in the Los Angeles Basin, and start to hypothesize why they can survive there.
Our Year 3 formative evaluation of Go Botany, a four-year NSF-funded project focused on botanical learning, centered on tracking the continued development and the launch of the Go Botany Simple Key, which contains botanical data on more than 1200 native plants in the New England region. The project is a collaboration between the New England Wild Flower Society and three partnering institutions: The Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, VT; The Chewonki Foundation in Wiscasset, Maine; and the Yale Peabody Museum on Natural History in New Haven, CT. During Year 3, the Go Botany Simple Key was
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Judah LeblangNew England Wild Flower Society
The New England Wild Flower Society, in collaboration with the Yale Peabody Museum, Montshire Museum of Science, and the Chewonki Foundation, is implementing the Go-Botany project, a multi-faceted, web-based botany user interface. "Go-Botany: Integrated Tools to Advance Botanical Learning," improves botanical education by opening plant study to a larger and more diverse segment of the population including novices, citizen scientists, and informal science educators. The project is designed to integrate a variety of web tools and mobile communication devices to facilitate learning about botany and plant conservation with a focus on native and naturalized plants in New England. Project deliverables include an online database of New England plants; online keys to over 4,000 species of New England flora; a customizable user interface; My Plants personal webpages; an outdoor exhibit that incorporates mobile resources; training programs for informal science educators and educational programs for the public. Projected impacts include increased attraction to and engagement in botanical learning for public audiences and improved teaching abilities by informal science education professionals through the application of user friendly, digital resources on mobile communication devices. Go-Botany significantly impacts the field of informal science education by changing the way that informal learners learn about plants by removing barriers through the use of free online materials, mentoring, and user created resources. This project is projected to reach over 46,000 youth, adults, and informal educators in workshops and via the Go-Botany website.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Elizabeth FarnsworthGregory LowenbergArthur HainesWilliam Brumback
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