Oregon State University Free Choice Learning Lab

Oregon State University

I’ve started trying to recruit subjects, including first-year undergraduates and oceanography faculty, for my dissertation work. And it’s a slooooow process, partly due to poor timing, partly due to everyone being busy.

It’s poor timing because it’s finals week here at OSU. Not only are students consumed (rightly) by those end-of-term tests, it’s finals right before summer break. So on top of everything, people are scattering to the four winds, frantically moving out of apartments, and scrambling to start summer jobs or summer classes. So, I’m being patient and trying to think creatively about recruiting a fairly broad, random sample of folks. So far I’m posting flyers in classroom buildings and dining and residence halls, but my next step may be standing in front of the library or student union with all the folks trying to get initiatives on the ballot for November.

The faculty are another story, of course. I can easily get contact information and even fairly detailed information about their experience with visualizations. However, they are also quickly scattering for summer research cruises – two I called just today are leaving early next week for 10 days to 3 weeks. Luckily, I got them to agree to participate when they get back. I’m still getting several brush offs of “too busy.” So my tactic to fight back here is to find other professors they know who can make me less of a ‘generic’ grad student and thus somewhat harder to say no to.

All in all, it’s rejection the same as in exhibit evaluation, just with different excuses.

Stay tuned!

What have we done today?

– Renovated the Ocean Today kiosk and installed new drivers for the touch screen

– Installed a new TV for the wave energy video display

– Installed new solid state video players on wave energy display and hypoxia exhibit

– Drained the smaller wave tank after its prototype test

– Begun installation of research cameras (nine to start with)

– Threw a pizza party to say goodbye to Jordan and Will, who are leaving us for other pastures (if the pastures are greener, the ozone isn’t working)

– Other things I can’t keep in my head right now

Things are in motion. That’s how we like it.

Laura and Katie are getting ready to collect their dissertation data this summer. Laura will be studying volunteers at Hatfield Visitor Center to see how they interact with visitors. Katie is studying scientists and non-scientists to see how they make meaning from images like those projected on the Magic Planet.

Each has navigated the proposal process and is in the midst of the Institutional Review Board approval for their projects. In the meantime, they are piloting data to make sure what they thought in their heads works in real life; Laura’s been ensuring that the looxcie cameras that visitors will wear will not get dropped in the touch tanks or record too much video in the restroom. Katie’s been making sure her images show up correctly and that the eyetracker doesn’t burn anyone’s eyeballs.

Each of them has been interviewed about their projects. You can listen to the podcasts:

Laura

Katie

We’d love to hear your thoughts, questions, and comments here!

As Mark noted, all three wave tanks are now in. Months of planning and design come to fruition … almost. Unfortunately, the two-dimensional layout failed to account for the placement of the table legs under the tanks. The proposed situations of the tanks put their legs right on top of the trenches in the floor, which won’t work due to a need to access the trenches for drainage and other water issues.

Source: Uploaded by user via Free-Choice on Pinterest

Whoops! So, things were quickly rearranged on the spot, which is pretty much always the way of things in the museum exhibit world.

The one tank that we let visitors play with revealed a host of issues of its own, including kids climbing onto the tank table and kids vigorously slamming the wave-making handle back and forth. No major injuries, but plenty of “alternative affordances” – creative, unanticipated use of the exhibit. So we’ve pulled it from visitor use for now for a bit of redesign.

In other planning news, we are replacing a well-planned video exhibit that had three vertical screens with the video stretched across them with one. Again, planning called for a cool three-screen timed animation that never came to fruition, so we are retrofitting, as it were.

Source: Another failed experiment via Free-Choice on Pinterest

Call it “make it work” Monday?

After long months of planning, and designing, the wave tanks have arrived! The deep water and shore tanks are both equipped with manual wave makers – allowing visitors the opportunity to get a feel for how stroke and frequency immediately affect the shape of a wave.

Waves in the large, dual flume tank will be controlled by a computer kiosks that drive two very powerful motors, able to create any precise wave form, multiple sine forms, and a very impressive tsunami wave. Graduate students and faculty have been scrambling all week to prepare activities for each tank. Some of the activities will include:

Shore tank – revetment and erosion strategies. Lincoln logs, gravel, plants, and Lego sea walls.
Deep water tank – understanding wave physics. ping pong balls, neutral buoyant rubber ducks, food dyes, and wave energy buoys
Flume tank – tsunami resistant structures. Lego and Lincoln log building challenges .

We are setting up everything just in time for the summer rush. We will have 3 interns manning the tank areas and working all the activities with the public – working out what is successful and what needs modification. This whole tank area is one of the largest prototypes the Visitor Center has every deployed. There are lots of questions to answer, and design modifications in the fall.

Peeling the protective paper off the plexi revealed transparent layers of sparkling, clear wonder – We owe a special thanks to James Steele of Envision Acrylics for some beautiful craftsmanship.

While we’ve been working on the tanks our visitors have been very curios, and are full of questions. We opened the deep water tank for use yesterday and watched with a mix of delight and horror the variety of wave making strategies 10 year old boys chose to employ.

The Japanese dock on Agate Beach has been the leading topic of conversation in town since it washed ashore some days ago. Lots of people have gone down to the beach to visit it, and for different reasons. At least one left flowers. Many took note of the exotic creatures that rode the battered hulk across the Pacific. Some tore off pieces as souvenirs (and some of these were caught and turned back by state police).

The potentially invasive species have now been removed from the dock, and a trans-Pacific conversation is underway to determine exactly what to do with it. Should it be taken apart as scrap? Should it be converted into a memorial for those lost to the tsunami that displaced it? Should it be left where the sea saw fit to release it?

That dock carried more than sea stars and barnacles from its home. What meanings did it bring with it, and to whom do they belong?

The Free-Choice Learning Laboratory at HMSC

Informal science education research

Recruitment Woes

Go!

Grad students on the loose!

The best-laid plans

Wave tanks arrive!

The Dock

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