One of the most important outcomes of our new Lab’s efforts will be in expanding our collaborations in order to advance the field. To that end, we started with the Sea Grant Education retreat that Harrison wrote about, outlining where the Lab fits in with the new vision of an education program and the Hatfield Visitor Center. We continued our discussions by having the Education team join in with the Sea Grant Extension folks this past week as they retreated for their own planning (though they got to go further away than just across the Bay, as Education did). For those of you unfamiliar with Sea Grant Extension, they’re similar to the Agricultural Extension programs that are the community outreach arm of Land Grant university programs: “The primary role of Oregon Sea Grant Extension is to be a trusted broker that provides the interface among scientists, managers, and the public, including stakeholders.’ – from the Oregon Sea Grant Extension website.
We met, first of all, and each took a few moments to explain what we do. As with the education retreat, there was a mix of who knew a lot of people from working together before, and who didn’t. The other task we took some time on was one we’d worked on as an Education team: 1) defining what “free-choice learning” means, 2) figuring out what we already do that is or isn’t “FCL,” and 3) deciding if and how to proceed to incorporate more FCL practices into our work. In both groups, we found that a lot of ways we are already working with our constituents use free-choice learning techniques. Moreover, both groups (Education and Extension) felt that these were effective styles to use whenever possible. The sticking point came with how much choice and control learners could have; for Extension, often, and especially K-12 school group programming, attendance is either mandated by regulation changes or by a teacher, neither of which situation was felt to provide the learner much choice or control. However, we felt that the more we could structure our delivery to center around the learner, the more effective and more positive the experiences could potentially be. Of course, all of these changes will require careful planning and ongoing evaluation. Good thing our Education and Extension programs are well-versed in these ideas. Now we just need a more coordinated effort so as to keep on top of things and not duplicate efforts.
Some choice quotes: Pat Corcoran describing his work as “feral-choice learning,” and Cait Goodwin noting that creating Quests “sounds like it should be easy, but it isn’t.” How apropos both of these were to the conversations as a whole. All in all, it was obvious that we have a lot of areas where we can (and often already do) help each other out. Here’s to continuing those relations as we all share the mission of supporting coastal and ocean resource research, outreach, and conservation.
