The Free-Choice Learning Laboratory at HMSC « Informal science education research

Welcoming sun, great food, and warm people came to greet us upon our arrival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. For me, it is always so good to be home, and this time home at the “wonderful City” to learn about the advancements in science communication taking place in Brazil and Latin America in general. Make no assumptions, this was not a “have fun in the sun” trip, although I would have liked to have spent some time at a tropical beach where swimming is the main activity. Instead, as hard workers and, let’s be honest, good museum nerds, we got to visit Museums and work on strategic evaluation and research planning around some exhibits.

Our first activity involved a whole day visit to the “Museu Ciencia e Vida” (Museum of Science and life) to see and discuss an exhibit called “Forest of Senses”. Luisa Massarani, a former Cyberscholar and Director of Red-Pop UNESCO (Network for the popularization of science and technology in Latin America and the Carebean) is a part of the team in charge of evaluation and research on children’s experience in the exhibit. After a 4 hour meeting, we discussed and finalized the whole research plan and stages of analyses. It felt very rewarding to be recognized as researchers with valuable expertise and to contribute to cutting edge learning research in the Brazilian landscape. Forest of Senses is a great exhibit designed to work as a game activity for younger kids (5-8 years of age) to explore the Brazilian forest habitats and, through using their senses, be provoked and able to explore the ideas around biodiversity, invasive species and wildlife traffic (which is a big problem in Brazil). When we walked through the exhibit to see the initial camera installation and testing through the system package we arranged for them to become a “node” of Cyberlab, it was like reliving the past when Cyberlab started, amidst tons of duck tape and creative solutions for IT problems. As we move forward in this collaboration, it will be interesting to share the process, findings and cultural clashes in the use of cutting edge technology.

To finalize this part I in the summary of our trip, we spent our last 2 days in Rio participating at the RedPop Event organized by Luisa Massarani, with the goal to discuss the science communication scenario in Latin America, where Brazil holds 260 of the total 490 science museums established. It was a great event, I even got to be interviewed by a science journalist for the first time (way to practice my communicating skills). It seems to me Latin America has come long ways not only in the effort of establishing science museums but in the reflection on evaluation and research practices to attend the cultural use of these places. From this event, we came out with fresh ideas on methods for learning research, with many bridges to collaboration in interdisciplinary projects including touch-tank research in Brazilian aquariums, and with a amazing contact list with the names of great science communication researchers throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. It was also very professionally rewarding to receive recognition for the cutting edge work being developed at Cyberlab and seeing its potential to really materialize and spread. Stay tune for more!

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What do erupting volcanoes, learning to code, building bridges, creating art, and cooking have in common? They are all STEAM activities! This past year I started working as an external evaluator on Lincoln County School District’s (LCSD) 21^st Century After School Program. There are seven sites throughout the county that are funded as 21^st Century Community Learning Centers. The goal of the federal program is to “provide academic enrichment opportunities during non-school hours for children…offer students a broad array of enrichment activities that can complement their regular academic programs, and offer literacy and other educational services to the families of participating children.” LCSD’s program aligns with these goals, focusing specifically on providing students and their families STEAM-based activities.

Being a new project in the 2013-2014 school year, the 21^st Century After School Program kept me on my toes as an external evaluator. All documents for data collection had to be written very quickly so they could be distributed as close to the start of the school year as possible. While the tools for collecting data did not fail they certainly could have been better. As the program moves into the second of it’s five years, I thought it best not only to redesigned some of the tools but also to communicate to the site coordinators why collecting this data is important. Site coordinators, one for each of the seven sites, are responsible for distributing, collecting, and turning in all of the instruments I use to collect data. The only part of data collection they are not responsible for are the standardized test scores, which are handled by the school district. Collecting data is no small task for the site coordinators because they already have a lot on their plate. Therefore, the program coordinator and I agreed that sharing results from the first year would showcase the importance of data collection.

Early in September I presented preliminary findings at the first site coordinator meeting of the second year of the program. You can view and listen to my presentation here. The presentation ends with me addressing the four main instruments for data collection: a monthly recording sheet to document the STEAM activities and resources, the student STEM interest survey, a family literacy and STEAM night reporting document, and the parent survey.

Working as an external evaluator on these types of projects is always exciting for me. They push me to think in new ways and certainly make me a better researcher and evaluator. If you have any questions about the 21^st Century After School Program or the documents I’ve produced, please feel free to be in touch.

After all the preparation for my research study, it was finally time to sit and observe visitor behavior around exhibits and collect some data. This allowed me to personally see what natural behaviors in an informal science setting look like, while applying the skills and knowledge I have gained about conducting research and interviewing human participants.

Over the course of August I interviewed 25 family groups after they used the Ideum multi-touch table. My goal was to collect data in the Visitor Center over morning and afternoon hours each day of the week to get a wide distribution of visitor attendance. After each sampling session I was busy processing the data, inputting survey responses and typing up the comments from the open-ended piece of the interview, while downloading video footage of the interactions. I enjoyed the result of our team’s effort of putting the camera system in place, as it was convenient to go back to the day of the visitor encounter and know that their conversations and interactions were captured unobtrusively on film. The set-up of the Cyberlab provides an advantage to past methodologies where the researcher physically tracked the visitor or a large video camera was placed right over an exhibit. Through our methods, I believe we are collecting very natural behaviors by the visitor which will help us understand learning in the public science setting more efficiently and effectively.

Family use of museums and science centers have been investigated over the past few decades, but as learning researcher Doris Ash noted in 2003 in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, there are few studies that investigate at depth the dialogic analysis of interactions with the family group. This is important to understanding how meaning and sense-making between learners takes place in the informal science setting. In looking at the research on large touch surface technology, I have not found much on family group use in public settings with science-related content. The field of human-computer interaction has explored this technology with regard to usability features, particularly with gestures and software or program navigation. I hope that my research provides insight combining both family learning and how this technology can support that.

While there are many different layers to the informal science experience (physical, personal, and sociocultural elements), I thought about the individual and collective learning in the family group, as well as how they were positioned in the physical sense around the touch table during the “live” observations. As I look at footage, I will be exploring the interactions and roles that occur within the group while considering the conversations that are taking place. I am also interested in the overall response to the touch table. Part of my interview with the group was to hear how they would describe their attraction to the exhibit and how they described their interaction with this type of technology. I will be doing some content analysis in an effort to see what the common themes are within their responses.

Considering the other technology we have, a familiar digital “interactive” is a single user kiosk or desktop computer with games and information. The touch table allows for multiple users and inputs and is not commonly seen in other settings. We have a desktop interactive located near the touch table, and I observed families (in groups of two, three, even up to five) crowding around the computer and “coaching” the user in control of the mouse. As the desktop exhibit affords one kind of experience, the touch table allows for collective physical action at the same time. Five people could use this exhibit at once. Keeping this in mind, how can we (informal science centers with access to the technology) take advantage of this to facilitate learning for the individual and the group?

September and October will be busy months analyzing footage. I am eager to see just what comes out of all of this data!

The first few pages of Nancy Baron’s book (Escape from Ivory Tower: A Guide to Make Your Science Matter) set the bottom line, the “so what” of why science communication is important and the common cultural clashes tied to the idea of communication, advocacy and policy making. I particularly like her use of the term “agent of change” to assign an important role to scientists who do engage in communicating their science to broader audiences, both as a self- fulfilling role and as a societal role, to give the publics the information they need to make informed decisions or to simply understand the work of science, its true limitations, and also its essentiality.

Do you consider yourself a science communicator? Science educator? Agent of change?

In our group, we have been talking about this needed cultural change in the ways we see and understand learning in various educational landscapes. That to me entails us seeing ourselves as such “agents of change” and committed to become social scientists, who are among the growing body of professionals struggling to become better science communicators. Just as we call for a new cultural of learning, we should also turn attention to the communication processes it entails, in order to contribute to this hybrid space between science discoveries and public perception as a space of accuracy, fruitful dialogue, needed awareness and welcoming changes.

Looking at our growing steps to become important agents in this hybrid space between what we do and what we say, our group will be producing a series of articles in simple but not simplistic language for the International InterpNews magazine starting this fall, tying our various works to the ideal of a change in learning cultures and the role of interpretation in a global education era. It is a commitment to reach a broader audience, to do what we preach and to learn with it. I am proud to be part of this professional community and have valuable opportunities to play the role of an “agent of change”.

I have been Tweeted! This summer I spent more time than usual traveling and presenting at conferences, or padding my CV, whichever. It is a good time to focus on this part of my academic career- I am the home stretch- done with classes and able to focus more on my own particular interests, and I still get to register for conferences at the discounted student rate! It is pretty much win-win. As I was traveling to the Chicago area anyway for a family gathering, it seemed like a good idea to submit a proposal to speak at a conference happening there at the same time. At least I will save on airfare, I figured. So, I cobbled together yet another talk on Maker culture and was accepted to present at the first annual EdTech Teacher Summit. After presenting at and attending the ISTE conference in Atlanta earlier in the summer (with about 14,000 other attendees!), this conference was on a much smaller scale, and with only 6 choices per session compared to about a hundred, I didn’t really know what to expect in terms of audience.

The talk was scheduled for a full hour, the longest I have presented while in graduate school. All in all, I do feel like it was one of my more successful presentations. Having more time to delve into the topic and integrate more opportunities for it to be interactive than a more typical 30 minute talk (with time for Q&A!) let me relax and enjoy the experience. I was also able to pull the audience in more during the talk, to contribute their experiences- anything to break up the “sage on the stage” format! However, this is always a bit risky, and there was a man in the audience who made a comment that made it apparent that he had been expecting my talk to cover more advanced territory, while I was focused on “what is Make?” and “how can it be implemented?” Yet, he was pleasant and stayed until the end, so I approached him after the talk and apologized if my title had been misleading. He assured me that he had enjoyed the talk and gotten things out of it, and I would see that from the Tweets he had sent out during the talk.

So, as soon as I was back in the car, I whipped out my smart phone and got on Twitter. Lo and behold- I had been Tweeted about! I am not sure why, but seeing so many comments with my Twitter handle (wyld_peace) attached to them was quite a rush! From the feed, it seems that there were at least four people who were Tweeting out during the talk, posting quotes and even photos of some of the slides. And not only was it an incredible ego boost, it was also great, real-time feedback about what comments and slides had more of an impact on the audience. And, I was able to see not only what mattered to that immediate audience, but then what was favorited and retweeted from the feed. What a great experience in “real” assessment!

As part of the FCL lab’s foray into social media, some of us have taken to Tweeting when we are at conferences or workshops, although I always feel a little self-conscious when I do it. “Really, I am not on Facebook or texting, I am Tweeting your talk”, I want to say. Yet, as a presenter, I did not notice anyone on their phones or tablets or such, in ways that were distracting or felt rude to me.

In short, to all of you on the fence- I say Tweet on! From my own perspective as a presenter, it is flattering and an informative source of feedback, and when I am in the audience, I am paying special attention to find things that would be interesting to Tweet, so I might even be more attentive. This is a great use of social media that can make our learning and sharing more interactive- which is one thing we do know makes learning more effective and impactful! See you in the Twitterverse!

Summer is flying by and the hard work in the Cyberlab continues. If you have been keeping up with previous posts, we have had researchers in residence as part of our Cyber Scholar program, movement on our facial recognition camera installations, and conference presentations taking place around the country and internationally. Sometimes I forget just how amazing the implementation of unobtrusive audio and video collection methods are to the field of visitor research and exhibit evaluation until I talk to another researcher or educator working at another informal learning center. The methods and tools we are applying have huge implications to streamlining these types of projects. It is exciting to be a part of an innovative project in an effort to understand free choice learning and after a year in the lab, I have gained several new skills, particularly learning by doing.

As with any research, or project in general, there are highs and lows with trying to get things done and working. Ideally, everything will work the first time (or when plugged in), there are no delays, and moving forward is the only direction. Of course in reality there are tool constraints, pieces to reconsider and reconfigure, and several starts and stops in an effort to figure it out. There is no Cyberlab “manual” – we are creating it as we go – and this has been a great lesson for me personally when it comes to my approach to both personal and professional experiences, particularly with future opportunities in research.

Speaking of research, this past week I started the data that will go towards my Master’s thesis. As I am looking at family interactions and evidence of learning behaviors around the Ideum touchtable, I am getting the chance to use the tools of the Cyberlab, but also gain experience recruiting and interviewing visitors. My data collection will last throughout the month of August, as I perform sampling during morning and afternoon hours on every day of the week. This will allow for a broad spectrum of visitors, though I am purposively sampling “multi-generational” family groups, or at least one adult and one child using the exhibit. After at least one minute of table use, I am interviewing the group about their experience using the touch table, and will be looking at the footage to further analyze what types of learning behaviors may be occurring.

During my observations, I have been reflecting on my time as an undergraduate conducting research in marine biology. At that point, I was looking at distribution and feeding habitats of orange sea cucumbers in the Puget Sound. Now the “wildlife” I am studying is the human species and as I sit and observe from a distance, I think about how wildlife biologists wait in the brush for the animal they are studying to approach, interact, and depart the area. Over the course of my sampling sessions I am waiting for a family group to approach, interact, and depart the gallery. There are so many questions that I have been thinking about with regards to family behavior in a public science center. How do they move through the space, what exhibits attract particular age groups, how long do they decide to stay in any particular area, and what do they discuss while they are there? I am excited to begin analyzing the data I will get. No doubt it will likely lead to more questions…

The Free-Choice Learning Laboratory at HMSC

Informal science education research

Cyberlab Adventures in Brazil (Part I)

STEAMing Ahead at Full Speed

Adventures in Data Collection

The science communicator as an “agent of change”

Observing the “wildlife” (aka the family group) inside the Visitor Center

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