Federal support for museums through the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is based on the premise that museums are valuable community organizations providing rich opportunities for learning and civic engagement. Yet, until recently, there has been a paucity of systematic and evidence-based research on the public impact of museums. Therefore, since 2005, the IMLS Office of Museum Services has funded research projects under the auspices of the National Leadership Grant program. These grants support projects that ‘raise the bar’ in museum research and practice. Funded projects have
The purpose of this case study was to describe the nature of high school students’ experiences in the immersive four-day field experience at Stone Laboratory Biological Field Station including excursions to Kelley’s Island and South Bass Island. Six tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade students participated through interviews, photovoice, observations, and a survey. Pretrip semi-structured interviews were conducted to understand each participant student’s relationship with science. Participants were given cameras to record their field trip experiences to relate what they found interesting
This piece builds on the blog post "How do Museums Adapt to What's Changing Around Us?" It reflects on the role of citizen science in establishing a dialogue and public trust between scientists and the community, providing examples where scientists and communities have successfully worked together surrounding common issues.
In this chapter we present and discuss the results and reflections based on our recent developments and experiences in Europe and in Asia regarding how novel educational design patterns, mobile technologies and software tools can be combined to enhanced learning. We propose and recommend possible directions for the design of future educational activities and technological solutions that can support seamless learning. To the end, we discuss how the notion of seamless learning could be used to tackle some of the challenges our educational systems are facing in connection to the introduction of
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Marcelo MilradLung-Hsiang WongMike SharplesGwo-Jen HwangHiroaki Ogata
This article takes a critical look at three pervasive urban legends in education about the nature of learners, learning, and teaching and looks at what educational and psychological research has to say about them. The three legends can be seen as variations on one central theme, namely, that it is the learner who knows best and that she or he should be the controlling force in her or his learning. The first legend is one of learners as digital natives who form a generation of students knowing by nature how to learn from new media, and for whom “old” media and methods used in teaching/learning
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Paul KirschnerJeroen van Merrienboer
Citizen Science refers to the general public engagement in scientific research activities when citizens actively contribute to science, either with their intellectual effort, through observation or with their tools and resources. For the last two years, the SOCIENTIZE project has coordinated many agents involved in the citizen science process, setting the basis for this new open science paradigm. The project has setup a network where infrastructure providers and researchers recruit volunteers from the general public to perform science at home. Through SOCIENTIZE, individual citizens have
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Fermin Serrano SanzTeresa Holocher-ErtlBarbara KieslingerFrancisco Sanz GarciaCandida Silva
The Ocean Project is pleased to present this latest update on our market research and outreach initiative. In this issue we highlight new insights about the public's interest and understanding of ocean acidification, as well as some very promising findings on the potential for online advertising as the proverbial rising tide that could lift all boats. We also take a look at some of the ways in which our zoo, aquarium, and museum (ZAM) partners are preparing to participate in our planet's biggest celebration of the ocean, World Oceans Day on June 8! We hope you find it all useful as you develop
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) have the potential to become a powerful political vision that can support the urgently needed global transition to a shared and lasting prosperity. In December 2014, the United Nations (UN) Secretary General published his report on the SDGs. However, the final goals and targets that will be adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2015 risk falling short of expectations because of what we call “cockpit-ism”: the illusion that top-down steering by governments and intergovernmental organizations alone can address global problems. In view of the
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Maarten HajerMans NilssonKate RaworthPeter BakkerFrans BerkhoutYvo de BoerJohan RockstromKathrin LudwigMarcel Kok
Urgent issues such as climate change, food scarcity, malnutrition, and loss of biodiversity are highly complex and contested in both science and society (1). To address them, environmental educators and science educators seek to engage people in what are commonly referred to as sustainability challenges. Regrettably, science education (SE), which focuses primarily on teaching knowledge and skills, and environmental education (EE), which also stresses the incorporation of values and changing behaviors, have become increasingly distant. The relationship between SE and EE has been characterized
Today educational activities take place not only in school but also in after-school programs, community centers, museums, and online communities and forums. The success and expansion of these out-of-school initiatives depends on our ability to document and assess what works and what doesn’t in informal learning, but learning outcomes in these settings are often unpredictable. Goals are open-ended; participation is voluntary; and relationships, means, and ends are complex. This report charts the state of the art for learning assessment in informal settings, offering an extensive review of the
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jay LemkeRobert LecusayMichael ColeVera Michalchik
Mobile Media Learning shares innovative uses of mobile technology for learning in a variety of settings. From camps to classrooms, parks to playgrounds, libraries to landmarks, Mobile Media Learning shows that exciting learning can happen anywhere educators can imagine. Join these educator/designers as they share their efforts to amplify spaces as learning tools by engaging learners with challenges, quests, stories, and tools for investigating those spaces.
Educators, docents, and interpreters are considered integral to the learning experiences at many museums. Although there is growing recognition that these staff members need professional development to effectively support visitor learning, there has been little research to describe their work or identify effective facilitation strategies. To address this need, we explored the nature of unstructured staff-facilitated family learning at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland, OR, videotaping and inductively analyzing 65 unstructured staff-family interactions. The analysis