Why Nothing Matters: A Study Designed to Explore the Community-Level Impacts of a Field Trip

• In Event: When Nothing Is Something: Null Results in Informal Learning Research

Abstract

This poster will describe a project designed to understand the community-level impacts of a longstanding, statewide field trip program within a learning ecosystem, and conversely, study community member attitudes towards out-of-school learning as part of a learner’s overall learning ecosystem. The study context is the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s (GMRI) LabVenture field trip program which has hosted ~70% of the state’s 5th/6th grade cohort annually for over 15 years. This program posed an opportunity to understand whether or not, and if so how a shared, consistent out-of-school learning experience delivered over a decade in one community results in broader, systemic impacts at the community level.

Specifically, the study explores the following research questions: What are aspects of the ongoing field trip program that might embed it as an integral element of community culture? To what degree does an experience that is shared by an entire generation within a community lead to a traceable change that can be measured for those who participated and across the broader community? In what ways, if at all, can one out-of-school experience have an influence on the larger learning ecosystem (e.g., the Maine education system)?

The project was designed to explore an assumption that the culturally embedded nature of the program might have a “ripple effect” beyond those directly involved in the program, i.e., that it leads to a traceable signal ranging from those who directly experienced the program – participating students and their teachers – out to the broader community (Figure 1). However, it is also reasonable to assume that a short-term (2.5-hour program, plus sponsored bus ride of up to 7 hours) field trip might not result in a signal that is traceable at the community level, or that we as researchers might not be able to discern the nature of the signal.

Our research explores this “ripple effect” through data collection at the various levels of connection to the direct experience of the field trip: interviews with former student and teacher participants and school administrators; a retrospective survey with former student and teacher participants; a representative statewide survey of Maine residents; and a community-based intercept study (interviewing community members in select Maine communities where schools showed sustained participation in the program). The study expects that the phenomenon may or may not exist in the community and therefore, learning that there is no signal or impact in the community is as important a finding as learning that the concepts did flow out in to the community.
This poster will consider why it can be important to pursue research when the likelihood of finding a phenomenon is unknown at the outset of the study, and what we're learning more generally about the difficulty of discerning signals of impact from informal learning experiences.

Authors

• Kelly Riedinger, Oregon State University

• Leigh Peake