This CAISE report is designed to track and characterize sector growth, change and impact, important publications, hot topics/trends, new players, funding, and other related areas in Informal STEM Education (ISE) in 2017. The goal is to provide information and links for use by ISE professionals, science communicators, and interested stakeholders who want to discover new strategies and potential collaborators for project and proposal development. Designed as a slide presentation and divided into sectors, it can be used modularly or as a complete report. Each sector reports on research, events
Millions of children visit zoos every year with parents or schools to encounter wildlife firsthand. Public conservation education is a requirement for membership in professional zoo associations. However, in recent years zoos have been criticized for failing to educate the public on conservation issues and related biological concepts, such as animal adaptation to habitats. I used matched pre- and postvisit mixed methods questionnaires to investigate the educational value of zoo visits for children aged 7–15 years. The questionnaires gathered qualitative data from these individuals, including
Campaigns by zoos, aquariums, and other civil society organizations are an important tool for promoting social changes that benefit the environment. Here, we evaluate a global biodiversity education campaign's impact through a repeated-measures survey of nearly 5000 visitors to 20 zoos and aquariums located in 14 countries. By comparing visitors’ pre- and post-visit responses combined across respondents, we found significant aggregate improvements in their biodiversity understanding and their knowledge of actions to help protect biodiversity. Respondents who reported seeing the education
The Ocean Science project integrates the Ocean Literacy Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts into a Western Washington region-wide, coordinated program of formal and informal education consisting of: 1. Teacher professional development in the ocean sciences to integrate the Ocean Literacy Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts into inquiry-based marine science education and instruction; 2. Evaluation and re-alignment of existing Sound Science ecosystems curricula into Ocean Science, incorporating NOAA data and promoting the Ocean Literacy Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts; 3. Classroom programs, beach field investigations, and on-site programs at the Seattle Aquarium of the Olympic Coast national Marine Sanctuary's Olympic Coast Discovery Center for grades 4-5 students, their parents and teachers; 4. Parent training in ocean science content, the Ocean Literacy Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts, and inquiry-based methods for supporting their children's science education; 5. Informal education for the general public via an interactive learning station linked to the Window on Washington Waters exhibit and designed to innovatively use NOAA data and information (videos, computer simulations and other creative media) to increase and evaluate ocean literacy in adults and children. Window on Washington Waters displays the outer coast marine environments and sea life of the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary.
This program is a pilot project and collaborative effort to develop partnerships and educational programming using state of the art technology. The project partnership is comprised of a leading ocean science research and education institution, the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography and its new state of the art Inner Space Center (ISC), and two strong national ocean science education networks: the National Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE) Network and NOAAs Office of Exploration and Research (NOAA-OER) Education Alliance. In addition, two partner sites will serve as proof of concept sites and education hubs - Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration (CT) and South Carolina Aquarium (SC), both affiliated with COSEE, the Coastal Ecosystem Learning Center Network (CELC), and NOAA-OER. Through this initiative, the ISC will install new Exploration Command Stations (ECSs) and enhance Ocean Today kiosks at the partner sites, strategically selected aquariums. Through this pilot project, the ECSs and kiosks (modeled after the original Ocean Today kiosk in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History s Sant Ocean Hall) will form an Ocean Interpretive Station at the partner sites. The ISC will provide live links from the Centers facilities to the newly installed ECSs and kiosks using feeds from various remote Ocean Exploration platforms, including the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer and the exploration vessel, E/V Nautilus. The projects Content Development Team (CDT) will develop associated educational materials for use in public programs at the partner sites.
To promote ocean and climate change literacy that addresses the needs of the Gulf of Mexico region, six aquariums based on the Gulf are partnering to educate the communities on both risks and ways to contribute locally to sustainability. The aquariums are combining community outreach programs, stewardship promotion, social networking and workshops for non-formal educators to reach broad audiences throughout the Gulf in Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and Mexico. Each partner is developing content that emphasizes local ecosystems and consequences of climate change, tailoring stewardship activities to address them. Over five years, the aquariums will reach out to diverse audiences in their communities, which have populations that total over five million people. With evaluated programs, exhibits, and websites in place, the partners will be able to continue building stewardship and educating their communities after the award ends.
As part of its on-going commitment to engage, inform, and inspire visitors around issues of critical importance to ocean conservation, the Monterey Bay Aquarium opened the nation's first live aquatic animal exhibition on climate change and the ocean. This award supports a comprehensive and integrated suite of associated informal educational activities, designed to extend the exhibit experience and allow visitors to explore this critically important topic in more depth during their visit and after leaving the Aquarium. These activities include: community engagement events, virtual reality auditorium programs using Google Earth, musical theater presentations, and exhibit interactives that allow audiences to discuss solutions to ocean issues. Over the course of three years, this initiative will reach more than 4.5 million people and: 1) raise public awareness about the connection between climate change and ocean health; 2) demonstrate that public actions do have an impact on climate change (and therefore ocean health); and 3) encourage meaningful action to address climate change.
Interpretation is a critical aspect of any zoo or aquarium’s educational mission. This study evaluated the impact of Tiger Trail, a new habitat for Sumatran tigers at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park featuring an immersive environment where the visitor’s journey unfolds through a storyline narrative. The study measured visitor knowledge of key messages, recall of interpretive elements, and reaction to the exhibit and found that Tiger Trail visitors demonstrated significantly more knowledge of the exhibit’s key messages relative to a matched comparison group.
This project will expand and enhance an initiative that offers zoos, aquariums, and science museums the market research they need to engage and motivate the public on issues related to the ocean and climate change. The three-year project will measure changes in public awareness and action on ocean and climate-related issues. It will integrate these research findings into recommendations offered to staff working at zoos, aquariums, and science museums as well as to the ocean conservation community and provide professional development for staff members at these institutions in order to support and shape public outreach efforts that connect climate change, the ocean and individual actions, especially among our nation's youth.
National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded an Informal Science Education (ISE) grant, since renamed Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) to a group of institutions led by two of the University of California, Davis’s centers: the Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) and the W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in Earth Sciences (KeckCAVES). Additional partner institutions were the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center (ECHO), Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) at the University of California, Berkeley, and Audience Viewpoints Consulting (AVC). The summative evaluation study was
Poet’s House, a preeminent poetry library in New York City, will collaborate with ten public libraries and zoos across the United States to support library-zoo partnerships in five cities. The project teams will install exhibitions that use poetry as an interpretive tool to deepen visitor thinking about wildlife and conservation in each zoo. This project follows a year-long planning grant funded by IMLS and extends the success of an IMLS-funded partnership in New York City between Poets House and the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Central Park Zoo, which pioneered the installation of poetry in the zoo. The new project will create a set of models and tools for developing strong collaborations and exhibits by carefully documenting the process of building these partnerships and evaluating their impact on visitors, the community, and professional audiences.