AUTHORS: Cary Chadwick*, David Dickson, Chester Arnold, Laura Cisneros, John Volin, Todd Campbell, David Moss, Laura Rodriguez, Jesse Rubenstein, Emily Wilson – University of Connecticut
ABSTRACT: A team of educators from the University of Connecticut obtained National Science Foundation (NSF) funding to create the Conservation Training Partnerships (CTP) program, a new branch of the University’s Natural Resources Conservation Academy (NRCA). The CTP is an innovative program in conservation and land use planning that engages intergenerational learners - high school students and adult conservation volunteers - in informal geospatial STEM learning. A two-day, immersive workshop focuses on intergenerational teamwork and learning and employs geospatial technologies to teach practical approaches to conservation stewardship. The workshops introduce free smartphone apps (Track Kit, Epicollect5) for collecting field data including GPS data and digital field surveys. Participants are also taught how to showcase their data on interactive web maps and story maps. The teams then go on to complete a conservation project together in their community. Both the projects and participants benefit from intergenerational partnerships because of the different approaches to learning and varied skill sets each age group contributes. This poster describes the methods used in the program to bridge these two groups of learners to produce effective, efficient conservation and education outcomes.
