May 1, 2004

SeaTrekfinal04.pdf

Educators and policymakers share significant interest in leveraging the quality educational resources of the nation's informal learning institutions (e.g., museums, science centers, and aquariums) within the nation's schools via distance education. "Today's education system faces irrelevance unless we bridge the gap between how students live and how they learn" (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2003, p. ii). However, bridging the gap between theschools, where the educational focus falls internally on mandated improvement of academic standards for all children and informal settings, where the external opportunities and learning resources exists, has proved challenging.

As an educational strategy, distance education involves learning in a different place from teaching, where the learner can be a child or adult (including teachers). It relies on quality learning materials and an effective management system. Although distance education has suffered an undeserved reputation as an inferior form of learning, its potential benefits, numerous if adequately designed and managed, include the following:

• Distance education programs can adapt to specific student needs or work requirements because of their design and delivery systems.




• Distance education can reach learners who are economically marginalized groups and can't afford to visit informal settings like museums, aquarium, etc.




• Distance education can allow an interactive, learner-centered environment.




• Distance education can operate at much more efficient staff-to-student ratios.

Museums, aquariums, and other informal learning institutions are increasingly providing broader public access to their resources using technology. These institutions have become aware of the benefits they offer schools, and as a result, are using interactive learning systems to bridge the formal-informal gap by providing schools with rich educational resources and experiences. These educational programs expose students to scientific research as conducted by "real" people they can see and interact within the field, help students adopt new attitudes toward learning in formal settings, engage them in new types of learning activities, and help them explore new forms of social interaction with peers and adults. Examples of such programs include the JASON Project, founded by scientist and oceanographer Dr. Robert Ballard; the NASA CONNECT program; and San Francisco's Exploratorium museum's live webcasts and digital library. This study focuses on one such program: The SeaTrek Distance Learning Project, housed at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida.

About the SeaTrek Distance Learning Project
An outreach educational program based at Mote, the SeaTrek program draws upon the Lab's more than fifty years experience in marine science research, which focus on raising awareness of Marine life and the field of marine science research (www.mote.org). The educational goal of the SeaTrek project is to spark student interest in science and communicate information about real-world research and conservation work at Mote to students and teachers in Florida. According to its Director, "What it does is to give students in their classrooms an exposure to something exciting and interesting in the real world we're creating this interconnectedness that will enable students to have not just Internet, but live resources to get across how cool science is when you see it working in the world." To accomplish this goal, the program uses interactive video conferencing technology and the Internet to deliver science courses to 4th through 8th grade students in schools across Florida, and in Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Missouri.

Each SeaTrek videoconference session is supported by a content package, free and downloadable in PDF form from the website: (www.seatrek.org), fully aligned with Sunshine State Standards. SeaTrek's educational focus is on southwest Florida's coastal region and current program themes include "Mammals, Mammoths, Manatees!," "Sharks - Devouring the Myths," "Mission See Deep: Remotely Operated Vehicles," "Sea Turtles - Amazing Reptiles of the Sea," and "Coastal Habitats." According to Freeman and Sokoloff (1996), thematic approaches are a powerful tool for teaching and learning with application for museums and informal institutions, and thematic learning works best when it is interdisciplinary, built around a central question, and rooted in an approach that links experience and reflection. The SeaTrek online instructional materials are free and available to download, and are to be used in the classroom both before and after the live program.

The SeaTrek videoconference sessions are conducted from a studio at Mote Marine Lab, and are facilitated by two Mote education staff, a dynamic program presenter and a technology coordinator. The program presenter provides up to six 50-minute-programs each day, and is responsible for interacting with the students and keeping the program dynamic and on time. The technology coordinator manages the "behind the scenes" video and technology. Videoconferences incorporate a mix of live feed, PowerPoint slides, pre-recorded video segments, Internet and blue screen throughout the 50-minute presentation. The SeaTrek videoconference courses are designed to be highly interactive, with a goal of sparking student interest in science, communicating information about real-world research and conservation work at Mote; and are designed to be point-to-point, although they may be bridged, and include one or more live presenters, video of scientists and animals, PowerPoint, sound effects and music, document camera and chromakey. The presenter uses skulls, animals, and other artifacts as visual aids; and demonstrates general science concepts with experiments in the studio connected to both scientists' field research and basic scientific concepts students are learning in school.

Through three consecutive Florida State Department of Education Technology Literacy Challenge Fund grant awards and in partnership with Sarasota County Schools, the SeaTrek program (1) expanded from the original seven Sarasota schools in 1998, to 43 schools across the state (as of the end of the 2003 school year) ranging from Bay County in the panhandle to Monroe County in the Florida Keys; (2) installed videoconference systems in participating schools, trained participating teachers and students, and delivered science programming; (3) served more than one hundred teachers and three thousand students, as well as worked with more than 30 Instructional Technology Facilitators (ITFs) across Florida; (4) collaborated with Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, NASA Kennedy Space Center and Florida State University. The rapid expansion of the program in the last six years has warranted the need for an external evaluation looking at program implementation issues and program impact on teachers and students.

Education Development Center's Center for Children and Technology (CCT), a technology and education research and development organization, conducted an evaluation study of the SeaTrek program from May 2003 through September 2003. CCT examined the program's overall usability, the relevance of its instructional materials, and the effectiveness of its live presenters, technology tools and infrastructure in increasing student perceptions of science as an engaging discipline as well as student reaction to inquiry-based learning approaches. This report describes findings from this research.

The report contains the following sections: First, it describes the Evaluation Design and Research Methodologies. Second, it presents the Major Findings, organized within two subsections: Project Impact on Teachers and Students, and Implementation of Program Components (program content and program delivery). Third, this report includes a Discussion section. Finally, the research team draws its Conclusions and Recommendations.