Tag Archives: engagement

P-PhD (post-PhD): Now what?

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I finished the edits and all the various fee-paying and archiving that come along with completing a dissertation. My transcript finally reflects that I completed all the requirements … so now what? I have a research position waiting for me to start in July, but as I alluded to before, what exactly do I research?

In some ways, the possibilities are wide open. I can stick with visualizations, sure, and expand on that into animations, or continue with the in situ work in the musem. I may try to do that with the new camera system at HMSC as a remote data collector, as there is not a nearby spherical system of which I am aware in my new position.

I could also start to examine modeling, a subject that I danced around a bit during the dissertation (I had to write a preliminary exam question on how it related to my dissertation topic). Modeling, simulation, and representation is big in the Next Generation Science Standards, so there’s likely money there.

Another topic of interest dovetails with Laia’s work on public trust and Katie Woollven’s work with nature of science, broader questions of what is meant by “science literacy” and just why science is pushed so hard by proponents of education. I want to know how, when, and most importantly, why, adults search for scientific information. By understanding why people seek information, we can better understand what problems exist in accessing the types of information they need and focus our efforts. A component of this research also could explore identity of non-professionals as scientists or as capable consumers of academic science information.

Finally, I want to know how all this push toward outreach and especially toward asking professional scientists to be involved in or at least fund outreach around their work impacts their professional lives. What do scientists get out of this emphasis on outreach, if anything? I imagine there are a range of responses, from sheer aggravation and resentment to pure joy at getting to share their work. Hopefully there exists a middle ground where researchers recognize the value and even want to participate to some extent in outreach but are frustrated by feeling ill-equipped to do so. That’s where my bread and butter is – in helping them out through designing experiences, training them to help, or delivering the outreach myself, while building in research questions to advance the field at the same time.

Either way, it’s exciting! I hope to be able to blog here from time to time in the future as my work and the lab allows, though I will be officially done at OSU before my next turn to post on my research work. Thanks for listening.

Fish Stick Boyfriend

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I’d like to introduce you to a type of Science Center visitor I call “Fish Stick Boyfriend.” Here’s a common demographic profile, based on my own experience:

-White

-Male

-30-35 years old

-Visiting with a female companion (and sometimes children)

The interaction generally follows a simple pattern. Fish Stick Boyfriend frowns and paces while his companion darts from exhibit to exhibit. I’m siphoning a tank, and she is too engaged with the surrounding interpretive content to notice I’m there. Fish Stick Boyfriend notices me, though. He wants to talk.

“So,” he says, pointing at an equally disinterested rockfish, “can you eat those? What do they taste like?”

He’s being sarcastic—at least that’s what he thinks he’s doing. Fortunately, I’ve seen many Fish Stick Boyfriends before, and I know what’s going on. I tell him what rockfish tastes like and where to get it. Then I tell him why it tastes the way it does, and how that relates to the animal’s life history. Then I show him an animal that tastes different, explain why, and tell him where he can go to buy it.

Fish Stick Boyfriend is now usually smiling and looking at some exhibits, and occasionally we actually start talking. His initial comment reveals some useful things:

1. He feels out of place

2. He’s familiar with fish as food

3. He wants to interact with somebody, but he chose an aquarist over a designated interpreter

On the exhibit floor, I’m “just a guy.” Visitors sometimes feel comfortable talking to me when they might avoid an interpretive volunteer or education staff member. Part of the reason may be that I’m usually facing the same direction they are—a small but significant proxemic distinction. I’m talking with them, rather than at them. I’m having a conversation, rather than giving a lecture. It’s not even much to do with what I say—the visitors’ perception makes all the difference.

When it comes to engaging the peripheral learners in a group, I’ve found that the most effective interpreters are often not interpreters at all. Fish Stick Boyfriend doesn’t think he likes Science Centers, but he’s comfortable talking to “the guy who cleans the tanks.” He sees me as a peripheral figure, too.

Over the past few years, I’ve developed a rough, conversational interpretive plan for just about every object in the Visitor Center. The octopus sculpture at the front desk can be used to talk about anatomy. Laura’s footprint decals can be used to talk about population genetics via variations in calcaneal pitch. Exhibits under construction can be used to talk about interpretation itself.

Whether you’re a trained interpreter or not, it’s important to recognize your relationship to the visitor experience. If you’re not perceived as a representative of the institution, you can use that as a position of power on behalf of the visitor. You’re “just a guy” or “just a girl,” changing a light fixture or measuring a table or feeding a frog or miming the destruction of an uncooperative video player. Some visitors may see you as the only approachable person in the building, and your response is crucial.

Fish Stick Boyfriend is bored, and only you can help him.

Holding us “accountable” – jargon board introduction

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A reader just asked about our post from nearly a year ago that suggested we’ll start a “jargon board” to define terms that we discuss here on the blog. Where is it?, the reader wanted to know. Well, like many big ideas, sometimes they get dropped in the everyday what’s in front of our faces fire to put out. But astute readers hold us accountable, and for that, we thank you.

So, let’s start that board as a series of posts with the Category: Jargon. With that, let me start with accountability, then. Often, we hear about “being accountable to stakeholders.” Setting aside stakeholders for the moment, what does it mean to “be held accountable”? It can come in various forms,  but most often seems to be providing proof of some sort that you did what you said you would do. TA few weeks ago, for example, a reader asked for the location of the board that we said we would start, and it turns out, we couldn’t provide it (until now). For other times, it may be paying a bill (think of the looming U.S. debt ceiling crisis, in which we are being held accountable for paying bills), or it may be simply providing something (a “deliverable”) on schedule, as when I have to submit my defended and corrected thesis by a particular date in order to graduate this spring, or when you have to turn in a paper to a professor by a certain time in order to get full credit.

In the research world, we are often asked to provide progress reports on a yearly basis to our funders.  Those people or groups to whom we are beholden are one form of stakeholders. They could be the ones holding the purse strings or the ones we’ve committed to delivering an exhibit or evaluation report to as a contractor, making our client the stakeholder. This blog, actually, is the outreach we told the National Science Foundation we’d do to other stakeholders: students, and outreach and research professionals, and serves also as the proof of such outreach. In this case, those stakeholders don’t have any financial interest, but they do want to know what it is we find out, and how we find it out, so we are held accountable via this blog for those two purposes.

All too often accountability is only seen in terms of the consequences of failing to provide proof.

But, I feel like that’s really just scratching the surface of who we’re accountable to, though it gets a lot more murky just how we prove ourselves to those other stakeholders. In fact, even identifying stakeholders thoroughly and completely is a form of proof that often, stakeholders don’t hold us to unless we make a grievous error. As a research assistant, I have obligations to complete the tasks I’m assigned, making me accountable to the project, which is in turn accountable to the funder, which is in turn, accountable to the taxpayers, of which I am one. As part of OSU, we have obligations to perform professionally, and as part of the HMSC Visitor Center, we have obligations to our audience. The network becomes well-entangled very quickly, in fact. Or maybe it’s more like a cross between a Venn diagram and the Russian nesting dolls? In any case, pretty hard to get a handle on. How do you account for your stakeholders, in order to hold yourself or be held accountable? And what other jargon would you like to see discussed here?

More prototyping at the wave tanks…it’s lego-tastic!

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This past week at HMSC, we have been getting back to my old favorite – exhibit design and prototyping. Katie and I have been planning the prototype of the video booth that will go in to the new wave tank area, which is intended to capture visitor reflections when they test out their wave-resilient lego structures in the large tsunami tank.

 

 

 

The idea behind the booth is visitors will build and test their lego structures in the tank, and then have the chance to review footage of their “crash” via an overhead camera above the tsunami tank. The video booth will encourage visitors to reflect on their footage and video record their response. Eventually, the reflections we capture will be used to research how visitors reflect on design and test activities in an ocean engineering context.

Depending on the application interface that is being designed for us to run the video review and record capabilities, the prototype will start simple with a touchscreen device behind a curtained booth. We are hoping that “curtaining” the booth will give it an element of mystery for visitors, and hence a hook to use the exhibit – inspired by our lab group’s visit to the Science Factory last summer, where we played for a long time in a darkened booth that allowed us to explore photosensitive materials.

With the help of Becca and Susan’s interpretive expertise, myself and Allison are also in the process of working on some signage to help visitors explore how different construction materials will affect their lego structure wave-resilience. Mark had the idea to weaken different color legos to represent different materials resistant to wave impact, an idea which Harrison began experimenting with last spring. In this way, the weakened legos are models of different construction materials and, in essence, are weakened using a drilling tool so they have less “cling” to the base plate their fixed to during tank testing. Some are heavily weakened to represent wood, some only moderately to represent concrete, and some not at all to represent steel. The idea is to encourage visitors to experiment with differing “materials” and to generate hypotheses about material effect on design as they build and test their structures.

I love exhibit prototyping, so these tasks have been very enjoyable for me so far! I’ll post some pictures once these get out on the floor.

 

Creating Outreach Activities

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When thinking about creating outreach for a public audience, who should the target audience be? What types of questions can you ask yourself to help determine this information? If is ok to knowingly exclude certain age groups when you are designing an outreach activity? What setting is best for my outreach setting? How many entry or exist points should my activity have? Should there be a take-away thing or just a take-away message? How long should the outreach activity run? How long will people stay once my activity is completed? What types of materials are ok to use with a public audience? For example is there anything I should avoid like peanuts? Am I allowed to touch the people doing the activity to help them put something on to complete the activity? What types of things need to be watched in between each activity to avoid spreading germs? How much information should I “give away” about the topic being presented? What type of questions should I ask the participants in regards to the activity or information around the activity? How much assumed knowledge can I assume the audience has about the topic? Where do I find this information out? What are some creditable resources for creating research based educational activities?

These are some of the questions that I was asked today during a Pre-college Program outreach meeting by another graduate student who works with me on OSU’s Bioenergy Program. Part of our output for this grant is to create and deliver outreach activities around Bioenergy. We plan on utilizing the connections among SMILE, Pre-college Programs and Hatfield Marine Science Center since there are already outreach opportunities that exist within these structures. As we were meeting, it dawned on me that someone who has not ever been asked to create an outreach activity as part of their job may see this task as overwhelming. As we worked through the questions, activities and specific audience needs of the scheduled upcoming outreach, it was both rewarding and refreshing to hear the ideas and thoughts of someone new to the field of outreach.

What are some questions you have when creating outreach? What are some suggestions about creating outreach to the general public verse middle school students verse high school students? Do you have any good resources you can share? What are your thoughts?

What’s your recruitment style?

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Last week, Dr. Rowe and I visited Portland Art Museum to help assist with a recruitment push for participants in their Conversations About Art evaluation and I noticed all of the education staff involved have very different styles of how they recruited visitors to participate in the project. Styles ranged from the apologetic (e.g. “do you mind if I interrupt you to help us”), to incentive-focused (e.g. “get free tickets!) to experiential (e.g. “participating will be fun and informative!”)

This got me thinking a lot about  the significance of people skills and a researcher’s recruitment style in educational studies this week. How does the style in which you get participants involved influence a) how many participants you actually recruit, and b) the quality of the participation (i.e. do they just go through the motions to get the freebie incentive?) Thinking back to prior studies of FCL alum here from OSU, I realized that nearly all the researchers I knew had a different approach to recruitment, be it in person, on the phone or via email, and that in fact it is a learned skill that we don’t often talk too much about.

I’ve been grateful for my success at recruiting both docents and visitors for my research on docent-visitor interactions, which is mostly the result of taking the “help a graduate student complete their research” approach – one that I borrowed from interacting with prior Marine Resource Management colleagues of mine, Abby Nickels and Alicia Christensen during their masters research on marine education activities. Such an approach won’t be much help in the future once I finally get out of grad school, so the question to consider is what factors make for successful participant recruitment? It seems the common denominator is people skills, and by people skills I mean the ability to engage a potential recruit on a level that removes skepticism around being commandeered off the street.  You have to be not only trustworthy, but also approachable. I’ve definitely noticed with my own work that on off days where I’m tired and have trouble maintaining a smiley face for long periods of time at the HMSC entrance, recruitment seems harder. All those younger years spent in customer service jobs and learning how to deal with the public in general seem so much more worthwhile!

So fellow researchers and evaluators, my question for you is what are your strategies for recruiting participants? Do you agree people skills are an important underlying factor? Do you over/under estimate your own personal influence on participant recruitment?