PLUM LANDING Explore Outdoors Toolkit: Scale-Up Study

"PLUM RX: Researching a new pathway for bringing active science exploration to urban families" is a project that makes use of public media resources to create innovative opportunities to bring environmental science learning to the hard-to-reach audience of urban families. As part of this project, media producers at WGBH and researchers at EDC worked together to: (1) develop a new pathway for bringing active environmental science exploration to urban families with children ages 6-9; (2) expand PLUM LANDING’s media assets to support urban families and informal educators when engaging in environmental science activities; and (3) inform the field about the institutional circumstances and educator practices that support effective integration of digital media and science activities to spark and sustain urban families’ exploration of core environmental science concepts in natural environments. The result of this participatory research and development process is the PLUM LANDING Explore Outdoors Toolkit, a collection of digital media resources, hands-on activities, and implementation guidelines for informal education programs that wish to get urban children and families outside, physically active, and investigating science. As a part of the project’s final research phase, EDC conducted a scale-up study of the PLUM LANDING Explore Outdoors Toolkit. The goals of the scale-up study were to assess the applicability and appeal of the Toolkit to a broad range of informal education organizations, as well as to inform revisions in preparation for national dissemination of the Toolkit. Included in this report is information about the PLUM LANDING Explore Outdoors Toolkit, the scale-up study, and its findings.