Today, one day after the Spring break 2011 is over, I want to write on the importance of communicating scientific information and educating people through nonformal educational activities (i.e., activities that do not form part of a formal class or classroom educational program) related to environmental education actions.
We have heard through several mass media, our peers, colleagues, friends, neighbors, and coworkers that environmental education activities are important actions in informing and educating people in several aspects with the end of engaging them into a more friendly behavior, attitude, and knowledge towards the environment, flora, and fauna and their interrelationships. Additionally, we know and heard every passing day about the rapidly increasing concerns on our environment problems (e.g., pollution, climate change) and biodiversity conservation (e.g., loss of habitats and species).
We have also heard that there are diverse financial sources for funding (perhaps not big enough!) such type of actions in favor of increasing the awareness in and actively engaging the society into hands-on actions. We have visited Zoos, Aquaria, Centers for Environmental Education, State parks, Museums, and the like providing materials, conveying information, and motivating people to engage into local activities in favor of the environment or biodiversity.
My academic and personal point for today’s topic is, how many of these activities are being assessed in their level of success? Are they really meeting their goals set a priori? I do not want to create a false image on nonformal environmental education activities are not worth at all, but to hit another specific nail on its head. If over the last three decades informal environmental education activities have been increasing in number and frequency, and getting more economical support from the government, private agencies, donors, stakeholders, and volunteers, why we don’t add a little piece more to this puzzle to make it more complete , more effective and real? This tiny piece that I am trying to reach is the evaluation process. There are several techniques, depending on the audience and preestablished goals that we can use to assess how well our environmental education efforts are meeting our planned goals. Starting with simple predesigned surveys and interviews, we can have some evidence on the effectiveness of our efforts in educating and changing attitudes and behaviors.
A few days ago, I read a scientific paper by Barney et al. 2005 (Journal of Environmental Education 36:41-55) where they developed a study on how nonformal environmental education activities can be assessed in their success and further provide evidence on which direction to go after the first evaluation. In other words, it shows how we can estimate our success in our environmental activities, get feedback towards the “primary” concerns are and allow us to redirect our efforts towards them. By using a “megafauna” example (a charismatic species of dolphin) they illustrate a case study and induced me to go to check one popular place with informal environmental education activities during my Spring break; The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum!
My surprise started and went through the roof when looking at the facilities, top quality educational material, qualified people, animals and plants, and number of volunteers participating into it. In addition to the amazing Natural Museum, displays, aviaries, bird and reptile shows, etc that work continuously during the year, it was hard to believe not to have found a systematic way to assess the effectiveness of this “incredible educational natural center”.
Although people in charge of activities of this Museum do run some quick evaluations in a few activities, most of them are not being assessed. From now on, every time I visit an environmental educational center, I will be more interested and active in asking about their ways of assessing the effectiveness of their goals and exchange ideas about how to do it … and not just eating, and taking pictures and walking along!
How cool. Sounds like a great stop on spring break. You figure the museums/zoos must work on some level in terms of people's willingness to visit & pay, but it really would be interesting to know what the people are learning. We visited the Discovery Boonshaft Children's Museum in Dayton over the break...and I was underwhelmed. It didn't seem very engaging and there were tons of small print things to read, which doesn't seem effective. But...maybe it is! That would be a great study.
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