Brown University, a founding member of the 72-member New England Science Center Collaborative (NESCC), is leading Seasons of Change, a traveling exhibit development project involving members of NESCC as well as the 31-member North Carolina Grassroots Science Museums Collaborative. The key concept of the exhibit is how regional iconic "harbingers" are related to climate change - for example, the impacts of a changing climate on the maple syrup industry in New England and shifts in bird migration patterns in North Carolina. Two customizable and modularized versions of an approximately 900 square foot exhibit on local impacts of climate change are being produced for small and medium-sized venues. The project expects to serve approximately 1.5 million visitors in the two regions and is positioned as an innovative model for other regions of the country. A citizen science program will be developed by staff at TERC for those participating centers with outdoor venues. The exhibit is being designed by Jeff Kennedy Associates and MegaFun simulation software designers. NESCC is also developing a project Web site. Goodman Research Associates is conducting both formative and summative evaluation processes on visitor learning and on the project's collaborative process. The Association of Science-Technology Centers will manage the two tours.
The Science Museum of Minnesota, in collaboration with six NSF-funded Science and Technology Centers (STCs) around the country, is developing several deliverables around the theme of the Anthropocene; that is, the idea that Earth has entered a new geologic epoch in which humanity is the dominant agent of global change. Deliverables include: (1) a 3,500 square-foot exhibit with object theater at the museum; (2) an Earth Buzz Web site that focuses on global change topics equivalent in design intent to the museum's popular current science Science Buzz website; (3) kiosks with Earth Buzz experiences installed in selected public venues; (4) Public programs with decision makers and opinion leaders on the implications of a human-dominated planet; and (5) youth programs and activities that engage them with the exhibit, web site, and careers in STEM. The exhibits and Web site will feature scientific visualizations and computational models adapted to public learning environments from research work being conducted by STCs and other academic research partners. First-person narrative videos of scientists and their research produced by Twin Cities Public Television now are on display in the Future Earth exhibit and also have been packaged into a half-hour program for broadcast statewide. The intended strategic impact on the field of informal STEM education is twofold: (1) explore how to accelerate the dissemination of scientific research to public audiences; (2) investigate ways science centers/museums can serve as forums for public policy dialogues.
The purpose of this Communicating Research to Public Audiences project is to develop a suite of media products to raise awareness about global-warming-induced sea level rise and how scientists study it. The project will focus on Dr. Maureen Raymo's NSF funded research which looks to the Pliocene era thought to be the most recent time in geologic history with a concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere with levels as high as today. The multimedia materials including video footage, photographic images, and audio recordings will be widely distributed on the internet, on kiosks in science centers, and through podcasts. Collaborations with numerous organizations will ensure widespread dissemination of the multimedia materials. Some of the collaborators include Climate Central, a new nonprofit science and media organization; Encyclopedia of Earth, a peer-review, open access electronic reference about the Earth; and Audubon magazine among others. The project will also disseminate its resources through organizations and websites that reach teachers and students in classrooms. Rockman Et Al will evaluate the project impacts conducting both formative and summative evaluations. Focus groups and online surveys will be conducted at various stages providing feedback to the project team as well as a summative evaluation of audience impacts.
The Anchorage Museum, in partnership with the Washington State Historical Society and Cook Inlet Historical Society, will fabricate, and present a 7,500-square-foot exhibition on James Cook’s Third Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, titled Arctic Ambitions: Captain Cook and the Northwest Passage. The exhibition will open March 27, 2015 in Anchorage and run until September 11, at which time it will travel to the Washington State Historical Society in Tacoma. The exhibition will be part of the Municipality of Anchorage’s Centennial Celebration. Although Cook spent time in southern seas en route to America, the prime focus of the exhibition will be the Northwest Coast, mainland Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, the Bering Sea, Siberia, Kamchatka, and the Arctic Ocean.
This Advancing Informal Science Learning Pathways project, Using Technology to Research After Class (UTRAC), explores whether a combination of technology (e.g., iPad-enabled sensors, web-based inquiry-focused portal) and facilitated visits improves learning outcomes for rural and Native American elementary-age youth in after school programs. Expected outcomes include improved engagement, knowledge, skills, and attitudes toward science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Project goals include promoting STEM learning through science inquiry activities keyed to specific Next Generation Science Standards as well as improving how technology can be used to enhance learning outcomes in afterschool programs. The experimental design of this project - testing the effects of physical or virtual facilitation visits on learning outcomes - will lead to improvements in STEM learning outcomes among rural and underrepresented students. This project will employ several innovations in utilizing technology to teach STEM topics including: (i) hands-on, real-time, crowd sourced data collected by participants in their schoolyards; (ii) a pedagogic emphasis on communication of schoolyard data among and between participants; (iii) testing of motivational incentives; and (iv) partnerships between after school providers, preservice teachers, and university researchers as facilitators. The entire process will be modularized so that it can be modified in terms of place, STEM topic or student cohort. The topic focus of the project -- Life Under Snow -- is relevant to participating students, as Montana school playgrounds lie blanketed under snow for the majority of the school year; it includes elements of snow science, carbon cycle science, and a combination at the intersection of three recent literacy initiatives (e.g., Earth Science, Climate, or Energy). UTRAC will pilot and evaluate facilitated snow science/carbon cycle science activities that couple real-time schoolyard data with tools patterned after those available through WISE (Web-based Inquiry Science Environment; wise.berkeley.edu). Participants will collect and compare data with other youth participants, and researchers will use formative assessments to define interventions with potential to maximize student engagement and learning improvements among underserved youth. The project will advance understanding of informal education's potential to improve STEM engagement, knowledge, skills and attitudes by quantifying how - and to what extent - youth engage with emerging technologies iPad-enabled sensors, and crowdsourcing and visualization tools. The deliverables include a quantifying metric for learning outcomes, a training model for the iPad sensors and web application, an orientation kit, a social media portal, and database for the measurements.
This project by teams at the University of Alaska and the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry will engage the public in the topic of the nature and prevalence of permafrost, its scale on the earth and the important role it plays in the global climate. It builds on 50 years of informal education and outreach at the Alaskan Permafrost Tunnel near Fairbanks, AK, which, since the 1960s, has been the Nation's only underground facility for research related to permafrost and climate. The project has four components: (1) a nationally distributed 2,000 square-foot traveling exhibition; (2) exhibit and program enhancements to the learning opportunities at the tunnel; (3) programs, table-top exhibits and oral history research in 27 Native Alaskan villages; and (4) an education research study. Each of these components will be evaluated over the course of the work. By upgrading the displays at the tunnel, and by taking traveling programs to the villages, the work will extend the tunnel experience across Alaska. In the villages the team will collect stories about climate change, along with samples of real ancient ice and permafrost. These stories and materials will be used in the traveling exhibit which is expected to be at three museums per year for eight years. The research component of the initiative will build on the observation to date that the tunnel has provided thousands of visitors with an underground immersive environment where they learn about the science research being conducted and engage with climate-sensitive materials (e.g., permafrost, wedge ice, frozen silt, Pleistocene bones) using all of their senses. It has been conjectured that their learning experiences are enhanced by interacting with real vs. replicated objects. As museums often contain exhibits that are more likely to contain replicated and/or virtual objects and environments, understanding the impact that these different categories of objects have on learning is important. Using both types of materials, the project will investigate differences in their efficacy in informal science learning institutions related to climate change. Real objects are postulated to have the following attributes that stimulate fuller engagement; they are (1) information-rich by virtue of such features as their texture, odor, and dimensionality; (2) at real-life scale; (3) authentic, i.e., original objects; and (4) often unique, i.e., have inherent value. Research questions will explore the potential impacts on learning of these and related features. Methods employed will be observation, video, and interviews of the public with a particular focus on visitor talk with respect to explanations and elaborations about permafrost, tipping points, climate change, and geological time.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow (CoCoRaHS) network is an existing backyard citizen science project that is enhancing the research efforts of scientists and promoting climate literacy among the public by engaging volunteers in precipitation-monitoring activities.
In this article, we review concepts, measures, and strategies that can be applied to opinion-leader campaigns on climate change. These campaigns can be used to catalyze wider political engagement on the issue and to promote sustainable consumer choices and behaviors. From past research, we outline six relevant categories of self-designated opinion-leaders, detailing issues related to identification, recruitment, training, message development, and coordination. We additionally analyze as prominent initiatives Al Gore's The Climate Project and his more recent We campaign, which combines the
The Dynamic Earth: You Have To See it To Believe It is a public exhibition and suite of programming designed to educate and excite K-8 students, teachers, and families about weather and climate science, plate tectonics, erosion, and stream formation. The Dynamic Earth program draws attention to the importance of large-scale earth processes and the human impacts on these processes, utilizing real artifacts, hands-on models, and NASA earth imagery and data. The program includes the exhibition, student workshops, family workshops, annual professional development opportunities for classroom teachers, innovative theater shows, lectures for adults by visiting scientists, and interpretive activities. The Montshire Museum of Science has partnered with Chabot Space and Science Center (CA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (NH) on various components. The project has broadened our internal capacity for providing quality earth science programming by greatly expanding our program titles and allowing us to create hands-on materials for use by our educators and to loan to schools in our Partnership Initiative. Programming developed during the grant period continues to reach thousands of students and teachers each year, both on-site and as part of our rural outreach efforts.
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS) CP4SMP program, Methods of Increasing Awareness of Comparative Planetology and Climate Science with Science On a Sphere in Museum Settings, intended to educate our audiences about planetary exploration missions, illuminate climate science through comparative planetology, and produce new educational materials, interpretation techniques, and knowledge that facilitate more effective informal education on these themes nationally. DMNS was the lead organization on this program, but collaborated closely with other institutions involved in the Science on a Sphere® (SOS) user community. This program achieved its intentions to: (1) boost literacy in climate science, (2) build awareness of NASA’s space science missions and the relevance of NASA Earth observing satellites to contemporary issues of global change, and (3) evaluate the effectiveness of different modes of employing the SOS system with diverse audiences. We capitalized on our unique combination of scientific expertise in planetary science and spacecraft exploration, our considerable experience in digital media development, informal science education, exhibit design, educational research, and museum evaluation. Over the duration of the project we: (1) developed visually exciting and compelling SOS programming on comparative planetology and climate science using NASA mission data; (2) tested different modes of presentation of SOS to determine how this technology can be best utilized in informal science contexts; (3) investigated how visitors perceive and understand scientific data presented on SOS; and (4) created teacher professional development workshops to reach K-12 formal educators both locally and nationally. The DMNS CP4SMP NASA grant created opportunities to positively impact climate literacy for millions of DMNS visitors over the five-year period.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Scott SampsonSteve LeeKa Chun YuEddie GoldsteinAndrea Giron
Climate Change: NASA’s Eyes on the Arctic is a multi-disciplinary outreach program built around a partnership targeted at k-12 students, teachers and communities. Utilizing the strengths of three main educational outreach institutions in Alaska, the Challenger Learning Center of Alaska partnered with the University of Alaska Museum of the North, the Anchorage Museum and UAF researchers to build a strategic and long lasting partnership between STEM formal and informal education providers to promote STEM literacy and awareness of NASA’s mission. Specific Goals of the project include: 1) Engaging and inspiring the public through presentation of relevant, compelling stories of research and adventure in the Arctic; 2) strengthening the pipeline of k-12 students into STEM careers, particularly those from underserved groups; 3) increasing interest in science among children and their parents; 4) increasing awareness of NASA’s role in climate change research; and 5) strengthening connections between UAF researchers, rural Alaska, and Alaska’s informal science education institutions. Each institution chose communities with whom they had prior relationships and/or made logistical sense. Through discussions analyzing partner strengths, tasks were divided; the Challenger Center taking on the role of k-12 curriculum development, the Museum of the North creating animations with data pulled from UAF research, to be shown on both in-house and traveling spherical display systems and the Anchorage Museum creating table top displays for use in community science nights. Each developed element was used while visiting the identified communities both in the classroom environment and during the community science nights.
This summative evaluation was commissioned by the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) to explore visitors’ perceptions of the exhibition, “Climate Change: ” – which was installed from October 2008 through August 2009. This report provides systematic information about visitors’ perceptions of the intended messages and about the different types of exhibitry used to create the educational and experiential value of the exhibition. The information can be used to reflect on the exhibit development and design process, to consider whether to rent the traveling exhibition, and to inform future