Every day, visitors come into MOXI by the hundreds, and immediately begin acting as scientists. They become motivated by interesting phenomena, create experiments, collaborate, and build consensus. They become surprised and delighted by unexpected results. However, I suspect that many guests leave MOXI not having realized that they just acted as scientists, and possess the skills and curiosity necessary to engage with what they conceive science to be. Many visitors, especially children, do not know any scientists, and have no context with which to connect the fun time they had to the possibility of confidently practicing scientific inquiry in their daily lives.
My goal is to pilot a program at MOXI that partners the museum and its Education staff with local researchers and practicing scientists, with the ultimate result of creating interactive scientific activities at MOXI developed and facilitated by local scientists that relate to their work and research. The intended outcome of this program will be to connect the learning process at MOXI to the daily practice of science by members of the community. This will bolster visitors’ awareness of their own capacity to understand and grapple with science, whether its at MOXI, in school, or in other aspects of their lives.
This project will consist of several phases. First, I will reach out to scientists at UCSB to recruit no more than six interested scientists, willing to commit a small amount of time over the summer and develop an interactive learning tool related to their work. Next, I will conduct an evaluative survey of MOXI guests to determine baseline levels of science engagement and expectations. Then, I will develop a series of correspondences, meetings, and workshops to ensure similar goals in outreach, to design learning activities, and to develop inquiry-based facilitation strategies for scientists. Finally, I will organize and plan a small number (no more than 3) of showcase events for scientists to facilitate their activities. I will conduct another survey to assess if visitor attitudes have changed after meeting scientists and engaging with activities explicitly highlighting the scientific process. I will also interview participating scientists and museum staff to determine outcomes - both successful and in need of improvement.
Such a program would correspond with MOXI’s mission and format of encouraging learning through interaction and inquiry. It would also have the added benefits of creating and strengthening partnerships with the scientific community in the Santa Barbara area, raising MOXI’s profile as a scientific learning institution, and exporting MOXI’s educational model to early career scientists, who are or will be teaching in some capacity. I hope to ultimately build this partnership into a long term, sustainable program that will showcase the work and process of local scientists in an ongoing manner, and will shrink the gap between the MOXI experience, and the tangible and important practice of scientific inquiry in the real world.
I have no idea how to successfully insert a google docs table here, so here's a link to my logic model:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I9Zhh3PRKBj0Jj3nOtBUqF3JJqNSX8rJELK9voa60D0/edit
No comments:
Post a Comment