Draft 1. Cat House Zoo Lab Proposal.
This topic submitted by Lauren Bangert, Avery Leslie, Christy Lodico, Danielle Nye (
bangerlr@muohio.edu ) on 10/10/06. [Section: Myers]
Natural Systems Zoo Lab Proposal
(Lauren Bangert, Avery Leslie, Christy Lodico, Danielle Nye)
A zoo, like any other functioning establishment, needs specialist for the particular service being provided as well as other specialists that donÕt necessarily have anything to do with the service.
Crossing disciplines has often been used to help business run more efficiently and more smoothly. For this particular experiment, the Cincinnati Zoo has allowed us to study the interests of young
children and how to get them engaged in each exhibit as well as help them to learn something about each animal. The exhibit at the zoo, in this particular case, the cat house, is being focused on. Big cats are very interesting animals because of their power, speed, grace, agility, appearance, and many other things. On television stations like the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet these animals are shown in their natural habitat as well as displaying their unique skills that everyone is interested to see (Discovery Channel). This is not so in a zoo. Many times when you go into the cat house or to cat canyon the cats are lounging around and are rarely active as most people would like to see. People, especially children, tend to be more interested in learning when they are visually engaged and/or entertained with what they are being taught about. ÒProbably the greatest
obstacle to high quality education at zoos and aquariums was that the animals themselves were seldom exhibited in a manner conducive to learningÓ (Turkowski). This is apparent at places like Sea World and other specialized animal amusement parks. There are many more people that visit these parks to see these animals because the animals are always highly active whether they are just swimming around in a tank or doing tricks at one of the many shows they have to show off the talents and intellect of the animals. People are always interested to see something happen rather than read about it when possible. Furthermore, people like to read about animals also. The magazine called ZooBooks produces a non-fiction, picture filled, information rich book that allows children to both be interested in the pictures and wanting to learn more about what they are seeing the animals do in the books (ZooBooks). Many of the pictures in this book display the animals in an action pose or show some abstract comparison of things in order to give the children an idea of an amazing characteristic. For example, one picture in a book about elephants depicts the amount elephants eat by showing the amount of food they eat in piles. This picture has both an elephant and a person in it and the mounds of hay, fruit, and other things that are several times the size of the elephant and many times larger than the human. Jack Hanna is a well known wildlife expert and conservationist that use the same mix of amazing facts and demonstrations with animals to both inform and entertain people in order to make people care about the animals. He shows both the fierce animals and the cute and cuddly animals that no one would like to see become extinct because of the mass consumption of their habitats. This allows people to feel personally involved and feel like they have something to lose if they donÕt learn something while these animals are around. Another person of similar practice is the recently deceased Steve Irwin. He was more so interested in filming the animals in their natural habitat rather than in a man made environment like in zoos. This focus on the mix of teaching and entertaining is what the experiment is more or less about. It is believed by us that the cat house at the Cincinnati Zoo as well as other exhibits would benefit from this combining of efforts by not only putting on shows with the animals in them but making the actual exhibits more entertaining.
Purpose/Problem: The situation our group has decided to focus on is how to hold the interest of people, specifically children, to each of the cat exhibits and get them not only to read and learn a little information but to be entertained as well so they stay longer at each exhibit.
Hypothesis: Visitors to the Zoo will stay longer in an exhibit if they are engaged through observation rather than just facts. We believe that by giving the kids an activity sheet while they go through the exhibit that they will learn and be more interested in each animal which will cause them to not only stay at each exhibit longer but to hopefully learn something about each animal before they leave the cat house. This activity will be presented as somewhat of a scavenger hunt of cat characteristics where the children are both meant to read about the animal and look at its physical traits.
Methods: After brainstorming different hypothesizes, our group decided to focus on visitor involvement, and if visitor involvement increases enjoyment of an exhibit. At the Cincinnati Zoo, we focused on the Cat Exhibit. In order to measure enjoyment of an exhibit, we are going to use two methods to discover how long visitors spend in the exhibit. We are assuming that people will spend more time in an exhibit if they are more engaged. The first method is to see if people learn any more from the exhibit if they are forced to engage themselves. In order to discover this, we are creating an interactive challenge worksheet for visitors to fill out, mostly geared towards children. This worksheet will ask them to find an animal in the exhibit, and answer an observation question about the animal they find. At the end of the worksheet, we will have a few questions asking the visitor to rate whether or not they enjoyed the exhibit and if they learned anything from the exhibit. We will have a group member pass this out at the entrance to the exhibit, and a member collecting them at the end. The second way we will measure visitor involvement is by recording the time they spend in the exhibit. On each worksheet, we will put a number in the corner. Then, when we pass them out, we will record what time each paper was distributed on a sheet containing the corresponding number. At the end of the exhibit, we will collect the sheets and record what time each sheet was turned in. In order to compare the data we will have a controlled set of data. We will give people who do not to take a challenge sheet a paper with a number on it. They will turn this in at the end of the exhibit as well, and we will record the time they turned it in. This way, we can see how long people stayed in the exhibit with a sheet and without, and see if the challenge sheet increased the amount of time spent in the exhibit.
Since group members are passing these papers out, people will be more apt to take them. We want to see if people engage themselves in the exhibit without prompting as well. In order to do this, we will have a stack of the challenge sheets sitting by the entrance with a sign asking people to take one. We will have a box for them to turn them in to at the end of the exhibit. They will be asked to record their time begun and the time completed on the sheet, but the rest of the sheet will be the same as the ones we handed out. We will use the data collected in the first step to discover how long people stay in the exhibit without prompting. We feel that this can be done, since whether someone is passing something out or not, people who do not take a sheet will stay approximately the same amount of time. By doing this extra step, we will discover whether or not people will engage themselves in the exhibits, or if they need prompting to become actively involved in the exhibit.
We are going to have two different types of Interactive Challenge sheets. Type A will be geared towards observations. The kids who fill out the sheets will be asked questions that will make them observe the animals. We are also going to include pictures of children engaged in science, as well as pictures of the animals which will perhaps make visitors more interested. Type B will focus more on fact-based questions. Kids will be asked to read the signs next to each cat exhibit and answer questions based on the facts presented on the signs. Type B sheets will only include pictures of the animals.
Assignment of Tasks:
While at the zoo: We have decided that Christy and Danielle will man the entrance; Christy will pass out the papers and explain to people what we are doing, while Danielle will record the times each sheet is passed out. Lauren and Avery will man the exit; Avery will collect the papers and Lauren will record the times the sheets are turned in.
While analyzing Data: Every group member will get together to analyze data and split it up as needed.
Research Timeline:
- 10/6 Ð proposal rough draft due
- 10/13 Ð Peer review due
- 11/3 Ð Group project final proposal
- 11/2 Ð 11/7 Ð Group project report
- 11/11 Ð 11/12 Ð Zoo research days
- 11/13 Ð 11/19 Ð Analyze the data collected
- 11/20 Ð 11/26 Ð Compile Data for final report
- 11/27 Ð 12/1 Ð Begin working on final report based on Final Report fomat
- 12/2 Ð 12/5 Ð Finalize Final Report
- 12/6 Ð Project presentation
- 12/8 Ð Final report due
Materials:
45 Numbered Cards: For the first part of our experiment, we will give visitors numbered cards as they walk in the front door of the Cat House exhibit. We will ask them to return the cards to us as they exit the exhibit. The point of these is to determine how long visitors will stay in the exhibit without being engaged by our Interactive Challenge Sheets. This will be recorded on the Data Sheets.
90 Observation Based Interactive Challenge Sheets: 45 of these will be passed out to the zoo visitors who walk in the front door of the Cat House exhibit. The other 45 will sit in a tray at the entrance of the exhibit with a sign for visitors to pick up as they enter, rather than being handed out by one of our group members. All 90 sheets will be numbered so that we can easily record when people came in to the exhibit and when people turned the sheets back into us at the end of the exhibit. The sheets will ask visitors, specifically children, to find 5 different cats that are in the Cat House. In addition, the children will be asked to answer a few questions regarding things they observed each cat doing, whether itÕs sleeping or pacing or eating, or what the cat looks like. The purpose of these sheets is to engage visitors more and hopefully make them not only stay longer in the exhibit, but learn something from their time spent there as well. Since it will specifically ask the children to visually make observations of the cats themselves, we are hoping that they will learn more than if they were to simply walk by and glance at the cats.
90 Fact Based Interactive Challenge Sheets: 45 of these will be passed out to the zoo visitors as they enter the Cat House Exhibit, while the other 45 sheets will be sitting in a tray at the front, as described above. Again, all 90 sheets will be numbered so that we can record when they were picked up and turned back in. These challenge sheets will also ask visitors to find 5 different cats in the Cat House. Instead of making visual observations about the cats, they will be asked fact based questions that they can read about on the signs provided for each cat in the exhibit. These will also engage visitors, but in a different way.
Box/Tray: One box or tray will be sitting at the front of the exhibit holding challenge sheets to pick up, while one box will be sitting at the end of the exhibit for people to turn them back in.
Crayons: Since we figure that most people will not bring their own writing utensils to the zoo, we will provide crayons for the kids and parents to write on the challenge sheets with. We also hope that this will get the children more excited about filling out this sheet if they have crayons to do so with.
Clock/Watch: This will be used when recording the times people are given sheets and when they turn them back in.
Official Shirts: We thought it would be a good idea to look professional while conducting our project, so we want to wear official matching shirts.
Data Sheets: We will keep a chart with a list of numbers corresponding to the numbers on the corner of each Challenge Sheet. This is where we can write down the times we gave the visitors the sheet and the times they returned it to us at the end of the exhibit. We will also have a separate chart for the visitors not participating in the challenge sheets and just turn in the numbered cards. The purpose of this is to determine how long each visitor stays in the exhibit.
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Observation Sheet Number Time Handed Out Time Collected
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Card Number Time Handed Out Time Collected
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Example Observation Based Challenge Sheet:
CAN YOU FIND ME?
(Picture of Cat 1)
(Name of Cat 1)
*What am I doing in my cage?
(Picture of Cat 2)
(Name of Cat 2)
*Am I bigger than a house cat?
(Picture of Cat 3)
(Name of Cat 3)
*What do my ears look like?
(Picture of Cat 4)
(Name of Cat 4)
*What pattern is my fur?
(Picture of Cat 5)
(Name of Cat 5)
*What color am I?
How much did you enjoy this exhibit? 1 2 3 4 5
How much did you learn from this activity? 1 2 3 4 5
Example Fact Based Challenge Sheet:
CAN YOU FIND ME?
(Picture of Cat 1)
(Name of Cat 1)
*What area of the world am I from?
(Picture of Cat 2)
(Name of Cat 2)
*What do I eat?
(Picture of Cat 3)
(Name of Cat 3)
*How tall am I?
(Picture of Cat 4)
(Name of Cat 4)
*How much do I weigh?
(Picture of Cat 5)
(Name of Cat 5)
*What environment do I live in?
How much did you enjoy this exhibit? 1 2 3 4 5
How much did you learn from this activity? 1 2 3 4 5
Citations
Anderson, Kay. "Culture and Nature At the Adelaide Zoo: At the Frontiers of 'Human' Geography." The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) (1995). JSTOR. 5 Oct. 2006.
"Animal Planet :: Animals a to Zoo." Animal Planet. 5 Oct. 2006 .Conway, William G. "Zoos: Their Changing Roles." American Association for the Advancement of Science (1969). JSTOR. 5 Oct. 2006.
Ramey-Gassert, Linda. "Learning Science Beyond the Classroom." The University of Chicago Press (1997). JSTOR. 5 Oct. 2006.
Rumbaugh, Duane M. "Zoos: Valuable Adjunts for Instruction of Animal Behavior." American Institute of Biological Sciences (1971). 5 Oct. 2006.
Sommer, Robert. "Experience and Education." Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, Inc. (1974). JSTOR. 5 Oct. 2006.
Turkowski, Frank J. "Education At Zoos and Aquariums in the United States." American Institute of Biological Sciences (1972). JSTOR. 5 Oct. 2006.
ZooBooks Magazine. Wildlife Education, Ltd. 5 Oct. 2006 .
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