The Lawrence Hall of Science
The public science center of the University of California, Berkeley.
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What can effective virtual outdoor science experiences look like? Amid school closures and the suspension of in-person programming, this is a pressing question in the field of outdoor science and environmental education. Like many others, we are just starting to dip our toes into best practices in distance learning. While we know distance learning can’t replicate every aspect of an in-person experience, we can still use research on how people learn to guide our design of virtual offerings. The insights below are from our experiences and expertise in teaching and learning in general, doing distance learning with adults, watching lots of videos aimed at learners, and talking to many folks about their distance learning experiences with kids. This document is a work in progress as we, like many of you, get more and more familiar with emerging best practices in distance learning.
Note: When we say “distance learning”, we are referring to learning offered at a distance, including videos, online discussions, interactive virtual discussions, printed materials distributed, etc.
In this blog, we’ll:
What are the goals and intended audience(s) of your distance learning or online communication? Thinking about the purposes or goals and the intended audience(s) is an important first step. The format, content, tone, and focus of the distance learning experience may look different depending on your goals. Focusing on the intended audience(s) as you’re designing a virtual learning experience can guide you in making sure your offering will be accessible to those you hope to reach. Some possible purposes or goals for distance learning:
If you’re designing distance learning experiences and hope to primarily engage an audience of individuals who would have attended in-person programming, think about how to equitably and effectively engage that audience. What are existing pathways of communication, or established groups who are already communicating with families, with whom you might collaborate? If you are an organization that typically coordinates with classroom teachers or school districts to bring learners to your program, you’ll probably be able to reach your intended audience more effectively and more equitably by reaching out through schools and districts, rather than by reaching out to individual learners and families. Schools and districts have systems in place for distance learning. How can you build on what schools are already doing to support equitable access to distance learning? Some organizations are working with their county offices of education to engage learners through interactive “classroom visits,” pre-recorded video content, or live streams on social media pages. Working with schools, teachers, districts, or community organizations can benefit your audience by streamlining how they are receiving distance learning; promotes equity by building on distance learning methods and systems already being designed to meet the needs of a community, and can benefit you by offering a direct connection to the audience you hope to engage. Additionally, consider equity in terms of what learners will need in order to participate fully. Consider what a learner might need in order to access your learning experience, including guidance/support from an adult, and how you are going to ensure equity of access to those resources.
Distance learning is an emerging and new horizon for the field of outdoor science and environmental education. In an Education Week article summarizing research on the effectiveness of online learning, Susanna Loeb writes: “Some students do as well in online courses as in in-person courses, but, on average, students do worse in the online setting, and this is particularly true for students with weaker academic backgrounds.” (Loeb, 2020). This research highlights the importance of making online learning experiences as effective as possible, and designing learning experiences that especially reflect the needs of learners who have been historically marginalized by education systems. Even though distance learning isn’t the same as in-person experiences, we can still apply fundamentals of creating quality outdoor science teaching, research on how people learn, and effective pedagogy when we design distance learning experiences. BEETLES has five design principles that we use to guide us as we create any learning experiences:
BEETLES Design Principles are focused on making learning experiences learner-centered and nature-centered. It’s easy, especially in a video format, to fall back into primarily instructor-centered instruction, sharing facts about a subject instead of inviting learners to make observations and engage in critical thinking and discussion. When teachers are stressed, they often fall back on teaching in ways they’ve been taught as learners– and for many, that’s primarily in a lecture-based format. In a video or distance learning setting where it’s not possible to interact and see in-the-moment responses from learners, it’s also easy to revert to sharing information in a fun and entertaining way, but this lecture-based/instructor-centered approach doesn’t reflect what we know about effective learning and teaching. BEETLES Design Principles help our team put research on effective teaching into practice, to strive to be “guides on the side” instead of “sages on the stage” or “entertainers,” and to use student-centered and nature-centered approaches. And yes, distance learning can still be learner and nature-centered! In a distance-learning format, learners can still make observations of natural objects in their area, or through video footage, nature documentary footage, and photographs; can engage in science practices to learn; and can discuss and share ideas with others. We’ll delve into each of the design principles below and share some considerations for what this might look like in a distance learning format.
Learners can still engage directly with nature in distance learning settings, but you might need to get creative about what that looks like. You can either bring the learner to nature or you might need to bring nature to the learner. You can bring the learner to nature by giving instructions on making observations of their surroundings, inviting learners to look at the window at the sky or passing birds or down at a tree, investigating houseplants or ants on the counter. You can also bring nature to learners by inviting them to engage with “on screen” nature, like an organism or a part of nature you show over video, nature video footage, live stream videos, or photography. Spending time in nature has clear benefits for health and wellness (Twohig-Bennett and Jones, 2018) Spending time with nature on a screen has benefits too (Jo, Song, Miyazaki, 2019).
GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS **
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ENGAGING LEARNERS WITH “OFF-SCREEN” NATURE (learners observe nature from their surroundings)
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ENGAGING LEARNERS WITH “ON-SCREEN” NATURE** (learners observe nature in video or still images on screen)
In a distance learning experience, learners can engage in science practices as they engage directly with nature, on-screen or off-screen.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
Discussion is critical for learning. We use the word “discussion” to refer to any exchange of ideas. In a distance learning setting (or any setting for that matter), discussion can be multimodal and can include speech, writing, engaging through chats, or using other online forums for sharing ideas. Learners can engage in discussion with those around them at home, or with others online.
When planning out a distance learning experience, remember to use the learning cycle, just as you would any other kind of learning experience.
Many attributes of equitable, inclusive, and culturally relevant learning are integrated into the other BEETLES design principles, but here are some additional considerations for explicitly designing learning experiences for equity, inclusion, and cultural relevance.
If there is a playbook for distance learning in a pandemic, we haven’t seen it yet. Most of us are juggling many, often competing priorities with fewer resources than we did before! Most of us are doing the best we can, amid incredibly challenging, unpredictable, and constantly evolving situations. The BEETLES team is right there with you! We offer these thoughts and guidelines to support the ongoing delivery of outdoor science and environmental education with the goal of ensuring every learner still has access to the benefits of spending time with nature (even if it is virtual); and with the belief that every community benefits from the presence of young people with the knowledge, skills, and connections to improve quality of life, health, and social wellbeing for everyone.
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