Designing For Intergenerational Community Conservation
CTP promotes lifelong STEM learning through a focus on conservation, geospatial technology and community engagement. We represent an innovative collaboration between the natural resource and education departments at the University of Connecticut. Our goal is to engage youth and adults in intergenerational teams to apply conservation science and geospatial technologies in the design and implementation of authentic conservation projects that benefit their communities.
Our educational research seeks to understand how these innovative partnerships can support STEM learning and the development and maintenance of STEM identities. To date, our research and experiences have led us in crafting specific design principles and communication pillars that we have worked to embed into our workshop materials and follow-up support throughout the program. As we begin our fourth year of CTP, we are especially interested in discussions surrounding:
What design and communication principles others have found to be important in intergenerational work.
Ways in which others have thought to share the programmatic designs from their work more broadly.
How to make our program more accessible to underrepresented populations in STEM - both adults and youth.