The Exploration Station

Content

The content of an Exploration Station is the scientific research about which you are most passionate, but it is expressed in a fundamentally different way from how you express it in academic circles. Instead of using specialized terminology you and others in your field have developed to be specific about what you mean, you will use the most accessible language for reaching the general public.

Instead of assuming your audience knows the background of why this research outcome is important, you will explain the background. Instead of working your way around to the conclusion and discussion, as in a scientific publication, you BEGIN with the conclusion. But other than HOW you communicate your content, your content stays the same. The same aspects of your research which continue to fascinate you should be what you are trying to relay to the public in your Exploration Station.

Family Science Night

Interactivity

Interactivity, especially for children, but even for adults, means using as many senses as possible, including touch, smell, hearing, and sight, to gain access to new ideas. Interactivity in an Exploration Station means people can pick up, handle, try, feel, see movement, sense temperature or generally get a grip on something that fires their imagination.

CALS Day for Kids

What we've learned, however, is that the things people interact with don't necessarily have to be the exact same things as your content; they don't have to pick up mitochondria; but if they could pick up models of mitochondria, it helps them get the idea. In the photo here, horticulture students get kids to think about vegetables by racing them on cars on a sloped track. After the kids are involved, you can get them to think about which vegetables might have important nutrients that act as anti-oxidants or anti-cancer factors.

Staffing

Exploration Stations need to be staffed. We know from experience that an Exploration Station that does not have a person on hand to invite participation will be glanced at, but largely ignored. Planners of Exploration Stations should plan to have at least one person on hand at all times. The good news, however, is that the person present does not have to be a research group leader or senior faculty member.

CALS Day for Kids

Often students, even undergraduate students, can do a bang-up job of interacting with visitors. This is partly because students can remember what it was like to learn the scientific content for the first time. The process of remembering what it is like to acquire intellectual content for the first time we call "Lucid Learning". Lucid Learning allows a person to craft their interaction with the public so the content is most accessible.

Word Choices

Perhaps the key to understanding how to choose wording for signs, posters, handouts, brochures and other materials is to think of the Exploration Station as "Idea Marketing." Yes our ideas come with specific terminology which helps us be accurate in scientific discussions with colleagues. But no, some of these terms do not help us market our ideas to the public. In the poster on somatic fusion in plants to the right, "Cool Fusion" works a lot better at marketing the idea and is not actually incorrect.

Click on the image to get a much larger image file of the poster.

The other part of word choices issue is to look for words that have power and appeal. In the poster example, "Cool Fusion" takes advantage of other terms such as "Cold Fusion," that have been in the news, to add appeal. In scientific publications, it's considered bad form to overly tout or hype your topic. The key word is "overly;" there's nothing wrong, in communicating science to the public, with using words that appeal to the imagination. In our process for Science Expeditions, were using a "mentor/guide" system to help researchers find good marketing words for their posters and other information at an Exploration Station.

Take-home Items

It's really good to give visitors something they can take home, both to remember their experience, to know how to make further contact, and to stimulate further exploration and learning. The most effective thing to give them is something they've made themselves; when people extract DNA at some biotech workshops for example, they get to take home a small tube with their extracted DNA inside.

For Science Expeditions' kickoff "Whys and Wows" event April 3, we're guessing that you should have at least 500 give-away items.

Hands-on Concepts

If you think about it, hands-on science learning is more like "real" science than classroom learning is. In addition, the latest cognitive research points out that different people process information in different ways; not everybody learns best by receiving information from text or lectures. Additionally, hands-on science reinforces the idea that scientific conclusions are only as good as the data; most scientific conclusions are contingent upon the data from which they are derived.

Click here to go to a website with a longer list of reasons why hands on learning is important in science. In Project 2061, the long-term initiative of the American Association for the Advancement of Science working to reform K-12 science, mathematics, and technology education nationwide, the science education model emphasizes experiential learning [takes you to a chapter on learning science].

Funding

Funding is always a problem in science outreach, but the Exploration Stations in Science Expeditions all receive $200 from our limited resources. Exactly how this will be done remains to be determined. Please check back to this page for further information. (When you check back, be sure to "refresh" or "reload" your web browser.)

Resources

How will you build your Exploration Station? The Science Expeditions working group and the Engineering School will provide each April 3 Exploration Station with an 8 foot table, a chair, and a four by eight foot poster stand. The table will have paper skirting and a paper cover. Just about everything else you will need to

• Pay for through your own funds
• borrow
• scrounge or
• innovate.

Old computers in use at an exploration station

One of the not-hidden goals of the Science Expeditions process is to create greater coordination between departments, centers and research laboratories on outreach to the public. As part of this, we seek to "scare up" resources. Each poster that is printed, quicktime movie developed for a computer display, brochure or handout that is printed, sign that is hand- drawn, or other resource that is enlisted in Science Expeditions Exploration Stations April 3 becomes part of the campus's repertoire of tools for science outreach, and many can be used over and over again. Often times, for example, old computers that have not yet been recycled and serve to display graphics at your exploration station.

Target Audience

One key part of any communications effort — and creating an Exploration Station is a communications effort — is understanding your target audience. Some Station planners have asked what ages they should plan to address. We'd like to see each Exploration Station have something which appeals to kids. We're asking that you assume that the public in Madison is on the level of a high school graduate. And although of course many people in Madison have advanced degrees, they may not have much knowledge in your field. And for some it's been a long time since they've had any formal education.

Guide/Mentor

To aid with development of attractive and interactive Exploration Stations, we've assigned a guide/mentor to each Exploration Station. It's fine with us if you never talk to your guide or mentor about your plans, but we're imagining that the guide/mentor can provide the voice of experience. When you put your material up in front of the public, you can learn something about how to do it better next time. If you've never done it before, consider running your ideas for an Experiment station by your Guide/Mentor during planning. Guide/Mentor names are at the bottom each Exploration Station's entry on the spreadsheet.

Posters

We've got information on how to develop and print posters on a separate page. Click on the words to go there.