The University of Florida, in collaboration with the Florida Museum of Natural History and Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Extension, National 4-H, Association of Zoos and Aquariums, Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens, and the Institute for Learning Innovation will implement Call the Wild, a proof-of-concept project to investigate the educational outcomes of promoting understanding of the nature of science (NOS) through visitor engagement in outdoor exhibits that incorporate mobile technology to further focus attention and deliver unique content. The project will explore: (1) zoo visitor ownership of cell phones, use of the different cell phone features, and likelihood to access interactive content and activities through their phone; (2) the potential of wildlife viewing experiences and technology applications for engaging visitors in learning about NOS; and (3) the potential to measure visitor understanding of NOS related to zoo experiences. This project seeks to advance our understanding of the educational impacts of mobile telephony in informal learning environments such as zoos.
The objective of this project is to extend the concept of crowdsourcing in citizen science to the interaction design of the organization as well as to data collection. Distributed technologies offer new opportunities for conducting scientific research on a larger scale than ever before by enabling distributed collaboration. Virtual organizations that use distributed technologies in scientific organizations have primarily focused on how dedicated, professional scientists collaborate and communicate. More recently a rapidly increasing number of citizen science virtual organizations are being formed. Citizen scientists participate in scientific endeavors and typically lack formal credentials, do not hold professional positions in scientific institutions, and bring diversity of knowledge and expertise to projects and challenges. They participate in scientific endeavors related to their personal scientific interests and create new challenges for the design of virtual organizations. In terms of intellectual merit, the project will make three specific contributions: a new interaction design for collecting biodiversity data within a nature park, a model for crowdsourcing the design of an social computing approach to citizen science, and an analysis of the impact of crowdsourcing the design on motivating participation in collecting biodiversity data. Interactive tabletop computers will be placed in two nature parks so that the design of the citizen science environment can be embedded in a park experience and engage the public in understanding more about their parks, in data collection, and develop a personal commitment to environmental sustainability issues. In terms of broader impacts, the project provides three types of impact: research training by including graduate students, broad public dissemination to enhance scientific understanding of biodiversity, and benefits to society through association with the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (ACES) and Encyclopedia of Life (EOL).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mary Lou MaherTom YehJennifer Preece