Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Free Choice Learning, Social Science, Exhibit Proposal

I am in the middle of putting together my exhibit proposal and my power point presentation for the final symposium on Friday and I had to take a quick break to geek out.

I'm going through all the data I collected by talking with people in the visitor center here, and I find myself feeling so excited!  I'm so loving this.  I think this kind of work is the perfect marriage of my passions for science, education, and psychology!  I get to think about how the brain works, how it learns, how people interact with things based on their beliefs and values, and also some sociology of how they do all this in the context of participating with their family, sharing their opinion with others, etc.  This is so cool!

I think I'm also really going to enjoy the research I'll be doing this fall with Dr. Heath Ogden.  We're going to do a study on how college Biology students learn and accept or reject evolution.  I'm super excited for this!  Once again, it's that marriage of science, education, psychology, and even some religion on that one.  Perfect.

I think the other wonderful thing about this project is that it's not just one of those research projects where you find some data and present it and you're done.  No, I got to collect the data, interpret it, and immediately apply it into an exhibit proposal that is catered to the wants and needs of people based on that data I collected!  It's data collection with an immediately applicable purpose!  And creating the exhibit proposal is just such a powerful thing.  To think that my work and ideas will be taken, tweaked and fleshed out, and made into an actual thing that people will use.  That's very exciting to me.  I wish I could be around for that tweaking and fleshing out process.  It would be so awesome to see a project like this all the way to the finish.

Having a blast!  Okay now back to work.


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