Free-Choice Learning « The Free-Choice Learning Laboratory at HMSC

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!

“Hands-On Science Museums and Their Visitors” is the topic of a two-day conference coming up September in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Cyberlab will represent Hatfield Science Center/Oregon State University and will join other Science communication professionals from Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, United States, Mexico and the United Kingdom to engage in dialogue about visitor meaning making, basically the kind of conversation we are very enthusiastic about engaging in and promoting, especially in such a multicultural setting.

Luisa Massarani, who was a Cyberscholar this Summer and who is the Director of the RedPop, the Network for Science Communication for Latin America and the Caribbean, organized this event to discuss strategies Museums around the world employ not only to investigate learning but also how a diverse public construct meaning from their visits. Although a bit intimidated I will admit, I am supper excited to participate in this event because it strikes me as a place where paradigmatic shifts in learning research are possible and in fact welcome, as a place where we can make room to discuss strategies to capture and analyze meaning making, to look at visitors from their perspectives, to go beyond the traditional measures of learning outcomes in research, to really give our visitors a voice we can dialogue with in the academic written world.

We talk about this need for a new culture of learning in our Free-Choice Lab meetings, Luisa talked about that in her seminar presentation as a Cyberscholar and the need to understand “provocation” and build provocative exhibits. Shawn and I talked about this in an article just published in the NAI Magazine “Legacy”, which led us to an invitation to expand this thinking through a series of articles for the InterpNews Magazine next year. As these kinds of dialogues spread and increase (as it seems to be happening in my opinion), this discussion becomes highly related to current dialogues on learning research methods and applications in the world of practice. I have been recently involved with the new “Methods” Research Interest Group of NARST (National Association for Research in Science Teaching) and the current development of a broad scope dialogue on learning research that seems to be heading in the direction of valuing these paradigmatic discussions and the need to change.

Even though we are all trying to do this kind of more inclusive, learner-based research in our work, we need to see ourselves as important voices in the larger network of discussions, and commit to speak our mind in fruitful and inclusive ways. Meetings like this really allow us to reflect on how we are trying to do that in the context not just of our own lab and cohort here, but in the larger international context as well. It also gives us a chance to make things real, to move from discussion to actual application invigorated by the good work of others and motivated by our own growth and learning as professionals in the field.

To learn more about RedPop visit the following pages:

http://www.redpop.org/redpopasp/paginas/InfoPrensaDetalle.asp?SitioID=1&InfoPrensaId=90

http://www.redpop.org/redpopasp/paginas/pagina.asp?PaginaID=3

Last week, Katie Stofer and Lisa Anthony from the University of Florida spent a week in residence at Hatfield Marine Science Center as part of the Cyberscholars program. Here is their account of their week:

We are interested in investigating how people learn science in informal settings such as the science center, in this case, specifically through interactions with visualizations of global ocean data. During the week in residence, we observed users interacting with exhibits on an Ideum multi-touch table, the same multi-touch screen mounted on the wall, and a traditional touch screen kiosk that controls a 3-foot spherical Magic Planet display. We also conducted semistructured interviews with visitors to understand how the exhibits were working for them or falling short and how the exhibits could be improved. Lisa got acquainted with the Cyberlab setup at HMSC, including the camera system and its synchronized audio stream, and Katie got re-acquainted — she actually worked on the installation of the system as a graduate student. Jenny had created a custom view of the eight cameras focusing on the exhibits of interest. In all, we collected roughly 50 visitor observations and around 20 interviews, and we also created workable prototype exhibits to continue collecting data once we leave to supplement and compare with the in-person data we collected.

Our collaboration combines the traditions of informal science learning with human-computer interaction to investigate the whole exhibit experience from the touch interaction to the resulting meaning-making. After returning home to Florida, we will continue remote observations of the exhibits to analyze more patterns of use by a broader cross-section of users. Ultimately we may design new programs for these exhibits to harness the power of touch interaction to invite users to deeply investigate the patterns in these visualizations, while presenting the visualizations in forms that we know best facilitate meaning-making by many users.

Lisa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) at UF, and works on human-computer interaction questions of natural input modalities (e.,g., touch, gesture, and speech) for kids and learning. She is interested in designing for exhibits at HMSC because interfaces in public settings need to be very robust and intelligent to be able to handle the diverse visitors who may be using them. Information seeking, navigation, and understanding can be either enabled or challenged depending on the efficacy of the interaction. Lisa earned her PhD from Carnegie Mellon in Human Computer Interaction in 2008.

Katie is now Research Assistant Professor of STEM Education and Outreach at the University of Florida in the Department of Agricultural Education and Communication, after earning her PhD as part of the Free-Choice Learning Lab at Oregon State University in 2013. She wants to help publics gather, make sense of, and use the results of current research for decision-making at personal, societal, and global levels through public engagement with science. In particular, visualizations of data can harness the powerful human visual system if designed to make use of, rather than compete with, perceptual and cultural systems. Katie is also interested in agriculture as a context for engaging with many contemporary science and engineering issues.

Luisa Massarani is our guest blogger today. She was one of our cyberscholars, visiting Hatfield and Cyberlab from June 29th through July 4th, to learn our tools and resources in order to collaborate with us from the Brazilian Institution she works for, the Museum of Life (Museu da Vida), FIOCRUZ Foundation. Luisa is also the director of RedPOP-Unesco, the Network for Popularizing Science and Technology for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Over the last decade, Brazil has been systematically investing in public engagement in science and technology (S&T), both in pratical activity and in research. As someone who works in the field, I don’t need to be persuaded how much it is important to invest in it. In fact, other countries around the globe have been much more aware of the importance of supporting public engagement in S&T.

However, less effort has been put into understading the meaning different publics make of the public engagement in S&T actitivies – a challenge faced not only in Brazil but also around the globe. In my view, understanding the audiences is, in fact, the main question mark we face in science communication.

This was the main motivation that made our research group at the Museum of Life – a hands on science center in Rio de Janeiro, linked to the research institution Oswaldo Cruz Foundation – focus our attention to audience studies. Latin America has good scientific production in audience studies – mainly in soap operas. Very little, however, has been produced in science communication.

In 2009, we succeed in having a grant for designing a study on audiences and science coverage in TV news as result of a collaboration among 10 countries in “Ibero America” (Latin America plus Portugal and Spain). Since then, we began applying the methodologies we used for that study in the context of a science exhibition. In particular, we were very excited to understand further science exhibitions and 5-8 years old kids – which is a wonderful age for engagement in science due to their natural curiosity about the world around them. Furthermore, there is a substantial gap of literature focusing on this issue.

We feel that further methodologies are necessary for understanding in fact the meaning the kids make of the exhibitions.Thus, since the very begining, the connection with Cyberlab has been very exciting, due to the opportunity for opening new intellectual doors for us. Visiting Cyberlab in person during the week of June 30th was not only very useful and important from the point of view of developing new and more robust methodologies but extremely inspiring for new research and collaboration ideas.

I go back home prepared to start phase 1 of collecting data of the exhibition entitled Forest of Senses, which aims to foster curiosity of kids toward the Brazilian biodiversity. We will implement the methodology we designed together with the Cyberlab team, including installing the equipment that will allow us to transmit to Newport in real time what we will be observing in Brazil. We hope to, very soon, have results to share with all of you!

I am guest blogging for the ISTE (International Society for Technology that is happening this weekend and through Tuesday. ISTE is an organization interested in talking about and exploring Make and there are a number of events at the conference on the topic.

Here is a link to my first post:

http://blog.iste.org/making-connections-making-connections

The Free-Choice Learning Laboratory at HMSC

Informal science education research

Category Archives: Free-Choice Learning

Cyberlab joins Latin America Discussion on Visitor Meaning Making

Designing interactive data visualizations for learning (by Katie Stofer and Lisa Anthony)

Being a scholar at Cyberlab: views from a Brazilian (By Luisa Massarani)

Making Connections while Making Connections at ISTE2014

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