News archive

 

2007

Free-Choice Learning: Year 3 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 to be featured during SeaFest

Students of all ages will have the opportunity to experience one of eight Oregon Coast Quests at this year's SeaFest, scheduled for June 23 at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, OR.

Exploration and learning join forces in this self-guided activity in which participants are challenged to follow a map and find a series of clues designed to help them locate a hidden box. Those who successfully find their way to the hidden box get to sign the guest book inside the box to record their find. Also to be found inside is a unique rubber stamp that Questers can use to stamp the back of their clue book as proof of accomplishment. And the hidden box contains more information about that particular Quest site.

The 2007 Oregon Coast Quests book will be available for purchase at bookstores and gift shops throughout Lincoln County beginning in June.

 

2006

Workshop+Zoos+Aquarium=Informal Math Learning

Hatfield Marine Science Center in partnership with the Phoenix Zoo will host an informal educators workshop on Thursday, October 12 that will explore how informal educators at zoos and aquariums can implement programs to teach important mathematical elements and how they work in animal collections. The workshops were developed by the Phoenix Zoo in Phoenix, Ariz. and TERC, an educational research and development company specializing in math and science education. The workshops are funded by a $440,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences.

There is a natural, critical, and largely untapped connection between mathematics and the study of animal characteristics and behavior. The connections are especially strong in mathematics involving data and the ways data are gathered through measurement. The aim of the workshop is to empower educational staff to deepen the quality of their work by incorporating math into their programs and making the connections between data analysis and animal conservation explicit in their work with visitors. Understanding data is critical to success in mathematics and in all science related areas. Scientists collect, categorize, interpret and make use of data, and they usually gather this data through measurement. Naturalists, field biologists, and animal husbandry specialists at zoos and aquariums who care for and study animals base a great deal of their work on careful data gathering. Aquariums, zoos, and wildlife centers view themselves as "data rich" (e.g., data are collected daily by animal behaviorists), yet few make use of data in their educational programs. In other words, visitors rarely learn about the multiple and deep uses of mathematics in working with animal collections. The workshop is available for informal educators that work with live animal collections including zoos, aquariums and nature centers.

There is no fee to attend the workshops, but registraion is necessary.  The workshop will focus on ways of involving visitors, especially families and children in exciting, mathematical, data-rich activities that make full use of live animal collections. Connections between math in the zoo/aquarium and math at school will be made, with an emphasis on ways that live animal collections can make school math come alive. One workshop activity will be using specially-designed templates to make a set of "Guess My Animal" cards (much like baseball cards), where the animals are the stars! For example a set of cards on penguins might include the weight and age of each, where its mother/father is living, how much it eats in a typical day, and its endangered status. We will show how the cards can be used to play a variety of data games involving sorting and categorizing, and will talk about the math underlying the fun. The workshop will also show ways of examining and adapting an animal program for school visits that involves children in charting the behavior of animals, much as scientists do. In this activity, children take turns "role playing" scientists (complete with clipboards) and animals (whose job it is to choose and display several salient behaviors.) Data collection, in this activity, involves a great deal of play as well as significant work with data! These activities have been developed and prototyped at the Phoenix Zoo and at TERC.

To make the workshop have a continuing impact, coordinators ask that institutions send staff members in teams of two or three. There will be time in the workshop for teams to consider ways to use what they've learned at their own facility and following the workshop we ask that each team commit to designing and implementing at least one activity at their own facility. Staff from Phoenix Zoo and TERC will be following up with each team to provide assistance with this activity and to track their progress. For more information, contact Julie Howard at 541-867-0367.

Free-Choice Learning leaders join OSU

Dr. John H. Falk and Dr. Lynn D. Dierking, national leaders in the growing field of free-choice lifelong learning have been named to a new faculty position at Oregon State University. The two have been hired jointly to fill a tenured professor position within the OSU College of Science's Department of Science and Mathematics Education.

Falk and Dierking, who are married to each other, are president and associate director, respectively, of the Institute for Learning Innovation, in Annapolis, Maryland. Founded by Falk in 1986, the Institute, a not-for-profit research and development organization, works to understand, facilitate, and advocate for free-choice (informal) learning. They will continue their roles as part-time senior researchers at the Institute, but will move to Oregon this summer and join the faculty in the fall, each working half-time.

July 26, 2006 the university over the last three years as courtesy faculty with the department and working closely with the Oregon Sea Grant program. Sea Grant is jointly funding the new professorship with the department through the position’s first five years. (Read entire news release)

Free-Choice Learning: Year 2 in Review

Our new educational program, Free-Choice Learning, has hit the ground running this year and firmly established itself not only as a cutting-edge force within Oregon Sea Grant, but also within OSU and beyond, onto the national level.

At its most basic, Free-Choice Learning explores how people learn in informal settings and Dr. Shawn Rowe leads the way in this new area. Two new innovative free-choice learning courses were created and taught this year. The Communicating Ocean Sciences course, taught by Rowe and Melissa Feldberg, is designed to teach science undergraduate and graduate students how to communicate and teach about their own research and basic science concepts using hands-on, inquiry-intensive activities. It included a practical application section that placed each of the 20 students into a variety of K-8 classrooms and informal educational sites, including SMILE clubs, family science nights, Las OLAS and HMSCVC activities, the Corvallis Public Library, and the Saturday Academy classes to gain experience in communicating ocean sciences. The Department of Science and Math Education liked the course so well that they've asked us to teach it again in the summer for incoming students as an introduction to inquiry, and also as a science content class. The department has also embraced a related course, Communicating Ocean Sciences to Informal Audiences.

The second new course, Social Aspects of Free-Choice Learning, was co-taught by Rowe along with Dr. Olga Rowe as an online course, with two face-to-face meetings of the class. As far as we know, this is the first online course offered for graduate students in Science and Math Education. In examining the sociology of informal, free-choice learning, it is perhaps the only class of its kind anywhere. There was such a high interest in this class among students and professionals from around the country (Kentucky, Louisiana, California) and within Oregon (Portland, Bend), that we may develop an eCampus version to offer once a year and/or a 4-6 week version for professional audiences.

Free-Choice Learning students conducted evaluation work in the Hatfield Marine Science Visitor Center and Whale Watch Spoken Here! program this year and worked with satellite data to determine how best to contextualize that imagery in order to facilitate learning and meaning-making. A new full-time Free-Choice Learning professorship position was created and filled within the Department of Science and Math Education, and Free-Choice Learning partnerships were explored with the Science Museum of Minnesota, the Gulf of Maine Research Facility, University of Wisconsin Extension, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Phoenix Zoo, and the Lawrence Hall of Science at Berkeley. In addition, the Guardians of the Forest exhibit began to take shape and continues to progress. A traveling version of this exhibit is under development. Evaluation work associated with the Invasion of the Habitat Snatchers exhibit also continued and we were able to do a comparative analysis of a similar, but smaller exhibit that was installed in 2000 at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma, WA.

Free-Choice Math at HMSC

Free-Choice Math at HMSC Dr. Olga Rowe has begun a project working with graduate students in math and math education as well as marine educators and volunteers at HMSC Visitors Center to create family-friendly activities that firmly integrate mathematical concepts with marine and aquatic sciences in the context of the Visitors Center exhibits.  This year-long project aims to create activities and additions to existing exhibits at the center.  Drawing on the Visitors Center logo, Rowe hopes to create a "mariner's rose" of views on math.  Dr. Rowe's work is supported by Oregon Sea Grant.

 

2005

Holt Award Funds Student Research

Alicia Christensen was awarded a Holt Marine Education Fund Award at Hatfield Marine Science Center to support her work on the Whale Watching Spoken Here program.  Run by the Oregon State Parks, the 27 year-old Whale Watching Spoken Here is the largest land-based whale sighting program in the United States, and is staffed almost exclusively by volunteers.  In connection with Oregon State Parks and with the support of Oregon Sea Grant, Christensen is creating and testing a set of evaluation tools for understanding what and how the 30,000 plus visitors a year learn from the outdoor educational program.  The Holt Marine Education Fund award of $6,000.00 dollars for 2005-2006 will be used to complete the project Christensen began in January 2005.  For more information, contact Shawn Rowe, 541-867-0190

Tribal Grant Supports Exhibit Development

On May 13th, 2005, Oregon Sea Grant Extension was awarded $3,500.00 from the Siletz Tribal Charitable Fund for ongoing work on the Guardians of the Forest exhibit.  Jessica Cardinal who heads up the Guardians of the Forest project joined the Oregon Sea Grant staff in 2004 as part of the Free-Choice Learning Initiative project to work with community groups in the planning, development, and installation of marine science and cultural exhibits at the HMSC Visitors Center.  Cardinal received an M. S. in Marine Resource Management in 2004 from Oregon State University.  Her project involves working with an advisory board from the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz in developing an exhibit on the history of the Tribes in Oregon, the extinction of Sea Otter on the Oregon Coast, and Tribal-led efforts at conservation and reintroduction.  The exhibit combines Tribal history, information about the role of sea otter in the health of kelp forests, and efforts by the Elakha Alliance toward eventual reintroduction of sea otter in Oregon.  This three-year project will culminate in a traveling version of the exhibit, and is part of an initiative commitment to seek to involve local communities in developing and using free-choice science learning activities.  For more information, contact Jessica Cardinal 541-737-1583.

Free-Choice Learning in Hawaii

Alicia Christensen, Jessica Cardinal and Shawn Rowe traveled in July to the annual meeting of the National Marine Educators Association in Kahului, Maui, Hawaii to present current evaluation research being conducted by the Free-Choice Learning Initiative at Hatfield Marine Science Center and Oregon State Parks. Their 1 hour and 45 minute presentation “The Whys and Hows: Learning to Build Research and Evaluation into Marine Science Exhibit and Program Design.” was attended by a combination of university researchers, informal educators, and specialists in museum evaluation. 

Watching Whale Watchers

Alicia Christensen, a graduate student in Marine Resource Management at OSU, spent her spring break piloting evaluation tools for Oregon State Parks and Recreation's popular Whale Watch Spoken Here! program. In its 19th year, Whale Watch Spoken Here! helps visitors to the Oregon coast spot migrating whales while learning about whales and ocean habitats. Using a combination of questionnaires, concept mapping, and observation, Alicia is helping to develop tools for evaluating visitor experiences in outdoor wildlife watching programs. Alicia's work strengthens the long-term partnership between Oregon Sea Grant and Oregon State Parks and Recreation as well as provides the basis for her own research on how people learn in outdoor educational activities

Shawn Rowe is teaching a Doctoral Seminar for the Department of Science and Mathematics Education focusing on Qualitative Research Methods. For more information see the January 2005 issue of Currents, the HMSC newsletter.

2004

"Free-choice learning" focus of New Sea Grant Marine Educator (OSU News Service, May 2004)

2003

"Free-choice" learning focus of new OSU collaboration (OSU News Service, October 2003)