How does one long-term, statewide field trip program influence a community’s learning ecosystem?

This presentation "Revealing Impacts: How does one long-term, statewide field trip program influence a community's learning ecosystem?" was shared as showcase at the 2021 Connected Learning Summit (https://app.clowdr.org/conference/clsummit2021/) held virtually from July 7-30, 2021. 

In the showcase session, we shared details of an NSF funded collaborative project between the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Oregon State University and TERC to understand how a longstanding, statewide field trip program, LabVenture, influences a community’s learning ecosystem. The project uses the construct of learning ecosystems as a framework for understanding intersections within and across the local community, including connections between informal learning during the LabVenture field trip and formal classrooms. Learning ecosystems model posits that learning is a distributed process that takes place across multiple settings, timescales and activities. In our work, a learning ecosystems model guided our study design and the development of our research methodologies, as well as provided an analytic framework to interpret the ways in which ideas and values taught during the field trip program may have spread from participants to the broader Maine community. During the showcase session, we provided an overview of the program, described our learning ecosystem model, shared details of our study approach and emerging findings, described how we have engaged community liaisons across Maine to support study activities, and concluded the session by engaging participants in discussions about application of learning ecosystems approaches.