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Free-Choice Learning: Year in Review

Free-Choice learning explores how people learn in informal settings when they perceive they have a choice in what, how, and when they learn. While last year firmly introduced and established the effort, this year further anchored this cutting-edge concept throughout Oregon Sea Grant and the Oregon State University campus with the hiring of Free-Choice Learning pioneers Drs. John Falk and Lynn Dierking into a Sea Grant professorship position. Response to this innovative approach to informal education continues to be positive. This year the entire Science and Math Education department is responding to Free-Choice Learning by revisioning itself completely along the lines of lifelong learning and the role that plays in a community. (more)

Oregon Coast Quests

Questing is a place-based education program that uses outdoor clue-directed hunts to encourage the general public to explore local areas of natural and cultural significance. Those who go on Quests follow directions and a map to find hidden clues that ultimately lead them to a hidden Quest box. The box contains a log book to sign and a unique stamp imprint to collect. Questers then return the box to its hiding spot for the next person to find. Quests help participants learn how to follow directions, read maps, solve puzzles, and find out about the “treasures” in the local community.

More information can be found at the Oregon Coast Quests Website.

Holt Marine Education Fund supports work toward new Oyster Exhibit

Christine Smith, a graduate student in the Department of Science and Mathematics Education's Free-Choice Learning master's degree program, received a Holt Marine Education Fund Award for her master's project aimed at using community collaboration to redesign an exhibit in the HMSC Visitor Center. Her project will update a current exhibit showcasing shellfish research by HMSC scientists. Christine's project is based on research that shows that collaborations around exhibit design can increase the sense of community among participating members, which in turn can lead to continued learning, action, and further involvement. Specifically, Christine will be using questionnaires, interviews, and prototyping to gather ideas about the exhibit from local scientists, businesses, consumers, and visitors in the community. The goal is to develop a new exhibit on oysters and aquaculture that is relevant, representative, and meaningful to the local public. Furthermore, it is anticipated that the public will value and identify with the exhibit and utilize the facility more as a result of their involvement in its creation.

Communicating Ocean Sciences to Informal Audiences Class

Oregon Sea Grant's Free-Choice Learning Program has teamed up with The Lawrence Hall of Science Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence -- California (COSEE CA), at the University of California, Berkeley and with other universities and informal science institutions around the country on the National Science Foundation funded Communicating Ocean Sciences to Informal Audiences (NSF ESI 0540417) project.

The goals of the project are for students in sciences to learn valuable outreach skills by providing families and children visiting partnering informal science institutions with classes, guided tours and interactive learning experiences. A three-day partner workshop last summer was followed by materials development and offering the COSIA class at 5 universities nation wide.

At OSU, Shawn Rowe and Celeste Barthel co-taught the Communicating Ocean Sciences to Informal Audiences class as a graduate class cross-listed between Oceanography and Science and Mathematics Education. Students enrolled from Oceanography, Marine Resource Management, Science and Math Education, and Engineering. With this balance of backgrounds, the instructors were able to pair future teachers with future scientists to go out to informal education sites together and to create learning activities for free-choice learning audiences together.

The 18 students in class carried hands-on activities on marine biology and physical oceanography to audiences at HMSC and Oregon Coast Aquarium, high-school students at OSU's Salmon Bowl, middle-school students at The Science and Math Investigative Learning Experiences (SMILE) Middle School Challenge and Saturday Academy's Winter Wonderings, Lincoln Elementary 3rd graders, and engineering undergraduates at Wilson Hall on campus in Corvallis. Guest presenters in class included Bryan Rebar, a graduate student in environmental sciences who taught an entire lesson in Spanish, and Jim Richman, a COAS oceanographer who taught an entire lesson on dead zones. In addition, thanks to his participation in the COSIA summer training OSU's Jim Richman had his undergraduate oceanography class develop presentations on current ocean sciences research for audiences at HMSC March 17th. Two groups of oceanography undergraduates prepared auditorium presentations including demonstrations on dead zones.

Free-Choice Family Learning at Las OLAS Family Science Nights

One of the most exciting new projects of this year has been a research project headed up by Heidi Schmook to help determine and document what kinds of short and longer-term impacts there are for Spanish-speaking and bilingual families who attended the Las OLAS program overseen at HMSC by Sea Grant's Melissa Feldberg and AnnaMaria Smith. Thanks to a $6,000.00 Holt Marine Education Fund Award, she was able to not only gather videotape and observational data during the April, May and June 2006 Las OLAS family science nights, but she was also able to carry out interviews with some of the families to document their experiences in more depth. This data has become the basis for her masters' thesis in Environmental Sciences and will hopefully be useful in on going attempts to secure longer-term funding for the Las OLAS program. Heidi’s project is part of a relatively small body of university-sponsored research on Hispanic families use and learning in aquariums nationally.

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