Santa Barbara Zoo Field Trip - Danielle

Both MOXI and the zoo are very self-driven in regards to what the visitor wants to experience and learn about. The differences between the way MOXI and the zoo facilitate their exhibits are interesting, at the zoo, visitors could read or ignore the signs, and observe as much or as little of the animals as they want to. At MOXI, visitors can engage with exhibits in the same way, they don’t have to see every exhibit MOXI has and they can stay at any exhibit as long as they want. MOXI has almost no signage, while the zoo has more than one sign for every exhibit. At MOXI, if a visitor has a question, they can find a Spark and ask questions and engage with them, but the zoo had almost no floor staff, which could be normal or could be because we went on a Tuesday morning when they didn’t expect many visitors.

During our visit, we saw one volunteer answering questions about the elephants, otherwise the only staff we saw were facilitating the booths and kiosks, or were janitorial staff. One of the exceptions where I engaged with floor staff and an exhibit was when I got to feed the giraffes! That was definitely my favorite part of our field trip. Outside of the giraffe feeding, the zoo did have a few interactive parts of their exhibits, like a poster making activity on a touch screen with the gorillas, and a very basic escape room. It was obvious however that these activities are not that important to the zoo because both had a lot of glitches and no staff around to ask for help. There were a few more interactive exhibits and experiences that were closed as well.

I liked trying to view the zoo through the eyes of an informal educator and paying attention to the space I was in and how the zoo facilitated informal learning. As a child I never thought of the zoo as a place to actually learn much, I just loved seeing the animals. I probably did learn a lot, but I think that if the zoo had more floor staff instead of just signs, more children visiting the zoo would engage with their own informal education more by asking lots of questions.

It was also interesting to compare the levels of accessibility at the zoo and at MOXI. The zoo is somewhat more physically accessible, there are almost no stairs, and since there are few things to interact with hands-on, there isn’t a physical limitation on the exhibits guests can enjoy. However, all of the signs at the zoo were only in English, which imposes a limitation on people who don’t speak English fluently. This is the opposite of MOXI, where there may be a few physical limitations on what people can do with limited mobility, but we have signs in English and Spanish, and Sparks who speak other languages as well.

Overall, the zoo and MOXI are both awesome informal learning spaces, but I like the way MOXI engages with guests and facilitates the informal learning better than the zoo. The only problem is, the exhibits at the zoo are way cuter!