Send message to Authors

Short Abstract

Training activities have become a core activity of museums, with an increasing interest for outdoor and citizen science practice. The experience at MUSE highlights the great potential of museums to meet this need, but also challenges and the importance of networking and competency framework.

Abstract

Nowadays, natural history museums are complex organizations that pursue various missions: conservation of scientific collections, scientific research, higher education, knowledge dissemination, social inclusion, increase scientific and ecological literacy. In line with this view, educational and training activities have become a core activity of this institutions that can rely on experienced staff, specific equipment and huge collections that make the learning experience more effective and meaningful. Today, MUSE-Science Museum of Trento provide trainings on a variety of topics, ranging from temporary exhibitions, STEM subjects, outdoor education and citizen science. Our targets include a vast majority of teachers, but also nature professionals, academic students and project’s participants. For each target different training programs have been developed, providing an insight on the aspects they are more interested in: citizen science integration in school curricula and informal learning (for teachers), project-oriented planning (for nature professionals), species identification and sampling protocol application (for volunteers). Interestingly, since the end of Covid restrictions we have observed a significative increase (+30%) in demand for trainings based on citizen science and outdoor experience and the need of finding a balance between requests, internal availability and further support provision has soon emerged. At the same time a serious assessment of the impact on participants is missing. Networking initiatives, like those supported by ECS Academy, can provide useful tools, shared standards and opportunities to cope with these challenges and support, through citizen science, the accomplishment of most of the functions of a modern museums.