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If Voyage is sited on campus, there
are many approaches for putting it to work. Here are a few:
- Voyage offers an opportunity for community outreach,
and a sustainable collaboration on programs across relevant
schools and departments, e.g., the departments
of physics, astronomy, and geology, the school of engineering
and the school of education.
- Instructors can provide tours of Voyage to non-science
major classes in astronomy, geology, and general science;
and to majors in the physical sciences and engineering.
Tours provide a wonderful context for content covered in
particularly the non-science major courses.
- Instructors can use Voyage lessons as part of
non-science major courses in astronomy, and in support of
pre- and post-tour activities.
- An entire non-science major course can be built around
the Voyage exhibition and the Voyage lessons.
The curriculum could be shared with other colleges and universities
with an exhibition on their campus.
- An ‘explainers program’ can be created where
majors in the physical sciences and engineering departments,
and in the school of education, are trained to give tours
on campus for local area elementary, middle, and high school
classes. It’s a great introduction to campus for prospective
students, and the tour guides serve as exceptional role
models. Becoming a tour guide might also fulfill a community
outreach requirement for an undergraduate student.
- Training for tour guides can be done jointly by a member
of the school of education and member of one of the content
departments. The training can be based on the tour and activity
brochures, the grade K-13 lessons, and the professional
development workshops that have already been developed for
Voyage.
- University educators and researchers can provide regular
professional development for the community's grade K-12
teachers on a suite of Voyage lessons that can
be used before and after an on-site tour of the exhibition,
and are comprehensive enough to be used by the school district
as some or all of their space science curriculum.
- Tours can be conducted on weekends for the public, together
with a presentation by a researcher on relevant research
conducted at the university.
- Public and or family evenings can be held regularly, with
a tour of the exhibition, family science activities, a talk
on Solar System exploration by a researcher, and night viewing
of the sky. This could be advertised to the public, or done
as a family field trip for area schools.
- A high school explainers program can be created where
area high school students are recruited and trained to provide
public tours throughout the summer.
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