• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.177-187
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to acquire a better of how creativity center is perceived among students, teachers and parents by administering a questionnaire. A total of 320 people participated in this survey. We developed the questionnaire which as categorized by four specific areas: 1) people's overall perceptions of creativity education; 2) the way of using the creativity center 3) programing of creativity center 4) space composition of the creativity center. The summary of survey results included; firstly, people had paid attention to creativity education and creativity education; secondly, they want to make use of creativity center with informal learning and extra-curriculum; thirdly, they prefer to participate in many experience activities such as camp or experiments; lastly, they more need creativity experience program and utilization of DIY education. In conclusion, students, teachers and parents recognized creativity center is needed. Therefore, more intensive research and follow-up study on building creativity center should be highly considered.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.483-500
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to explore what kinds of science communication are ongoing in formal and informal settings for learning about nuclear energy, which is very important issue domestically and internationally. The researchers collected and analyzed data from science textbooks at elementary and middle school levels, from exhibitions in Y informal hall that belongs to one nuclear power plant, and from 40 bestselling books about nuclear energy in order to explore the kind of science communication. The same process was used to explore Japanese case so that we could compare the results with Korean cases and draw implications for enhancing science communication about nuclear energy. The science communication of nuclear energy in Korea included implicit and indirect content espoused in science textbooks; two opposite views displayed in bestselling books, and positive aspects mainly displayed in exhibition of information hall in nuclear power plant. It is suggested that both direct and explicit science communication along with the neutral viewpoints including positive and negative ones be provided for the public to form a good understanding of nuclear energy.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.10-26
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• 2013

Domain transfer is a widely recognized problem for machine learning algorithms because models built upon one data domain generally do not perform well in another data domain. This is especially a challenge for tasks such as opinion classification, which often has to deal with insufficient quantities of labeled data. This study investigates the feasibility of self-training in dealing with the domain transfer problem in opinion classification via leveraging labeled data in non-target data domain(s) and unlabeled data in the target-domain. Specifically, self-training is evaluated for effectiveness in sparse data situations and feasibility for domain adaptation in opinion classification. Three types of Web content are tested: edited news articles, semi-structured movie reviews, and the informal and unstructured content of the blogosphere. Findings of this study suggest that, when there are limited labeled data, self-training is a promising approach for opinion classification, although the contributions vary across data domains. Significant improvement was demonstrated for the most challenging data domain-the blogosphere-when a domain transfer-based self-training strategy was implemented.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.188-196
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• 2012

Science festivals have occupied a very important axle in informal science education that enables students to experience the amazement of scientific experiments to think over scientific principals beyond the formal education in the classrooms. Among the concerned person, the most benefit-taken group may be the assistant who help the participants experience the activities in the festival. In order to find out the ways to make the student assistant's participation into a meaningful education experience, we analyzed the types of the activities in the science festival as well as the characteristics of the interaction between the student-assistants and the participating students are studied. The research findings are as follows: First, most activities in the science festival had related to the scientific concepts or principals; however, the understanding of the concepts and principals didn't highly affect the procedure of the activities. In many cases the students operated and made results without checking the related concepts or principals. Second, the student-assistants showed the consistency of operation in guiding their activities. They were explaining mainly the process of the experiments without giving a chance to think of related concepts or principles. We suggest that teacher should consider the student-assistants' learning in the festival as well as that of the participants.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.127-140
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to explore the characteristics of children's interactive learning focusing on the Vygotsky's ZPD (the zone of proximal development) in a natural history museum as a representative free-choice learning context. We focused on the understanding of peer dyadic discourses and data were collected from 13 peer groups of children (3rd and 4th graders) who were videotaped all conversations occurred as they visited around the exhibits with no predetermined path. The transcribed data were analyzed by the developmental level of ZPD system and the discourse within an ADL (an actual developmental level) was overwhelmingly common in the conversations between child-child dyads. The representative discourse by discourse types were parsed according to three constructs of ZPD. Children formed the intersubjectivity through semiotic mediation such as conversations and exhibits and ended up with the similar situation definition. In conclusion, the details of discourses of the most impressive dyad were looked into focusing on the scientific concept. The study implies that a natural history museum becomes a meaningful resource to offer a deeper understanding of the nature of children's learning as an informal learning setting.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.65-72
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• 2016

In allowing visitors to manipulate objects or models with their hands, science museums can become informal education institutions. However, little research has been conducted analyzing the specific interactions of visitors at museums and the effects that specific characteristics of interactive exhibit have on visitors. This research classified exhibits according to the three characteristics: the presentation of concepts, interaction with exhibits and concept levels. Further, relationships among engagement behaviors, visitors'attraction to exhibits, and the holding power of exhibits were analyzed. Using the three characteristics, 55 exhibits were classified into five styles. The results suggest that intriguing content and novel interfaces, maximizing information on science and technology, should be developed for the educational purpose of encouraging visitors to engage in active learning with interactive exhibits. The results of this study provide useful data that planners, designers, and instructors of science museums can use to maximize visitors' participatory learning and interactions.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.130-139
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• 2006

Natural history museums used to be called an "informal learning institute". It is based on the assumption that their exhibition and exhibits are supposed to reflect school science curriculum and support school science programs. This study is to explore how this assumption is verified in terms of content-wise connections between school science and museum exhibits. In this study, 461 Earth Science related exhibits were selected from the Smithonian Museums and the American Museum of Natural History in the U.S. and analyzed with several instruments. The instrument targeting on Earth Science curriculum was framed based on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (1993) and the National Science Curriculum Standards (1996). Other than content-wise connections, this study investigated exhibition characteristics related to better learning of science: these characteristics were types of activities, exhibition media, exhibition technology, and presentation methods. The nature of science shown in exhibits were examined as well. Natural history museums were reconsidered for their relevance and potential as informal educational venues from this study.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.30 no.7
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• pp.909-927
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• 2009

Inquiry became an essential methodology in science education. Recently, argumentation becomes more important in inquiry, but inquiry-based teaching in school science would not provide enough opportunities for students to have voluntary and active interactions during inquiry activities. Informal science learning can be an alternative for authentic inquiry. Accordingly, this study aims to find interaction patterns in dialogic inquiry of junior high school students in small groups in the natural history gallery. Inquiry elements and interaction patterns are analyzed with 42 dialogues of 13 small groups. As a result, seven interaction patterns are identified. First, five major interaction patterns were drawn as follows; Sharing questions, asking questions and simple response, asking questions and simple explanation, asking questions-simple explanation-(collecting data)-data based explanation, and asking questions-collecting data-data based explanation. Second, pattern 2, 'asking questions and simple response', is subdivided into three categories; passive and/or evasive response, inaccurate response, and repeated patterns of asking questions-simple response. The results of the study provide different patterns of dialogic interactions in a small group inquiry in informal contexts from formal contexts, and provide foundations to understand middle school students' interactive dialogues of inquiry occurred in the natural history gallery.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.391-398
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• 2005

Recent studies say that informal learning is influential to students as much as formal teaming. Nowadays we can see various informal teaming inside and outside of the country. In 2004, it was the first attempt in Korea that engineer had gone to the elementary school fur activity that included scientific experiment and engineering work with students. National Academy of Engineering of Korea (NAEK) progressed activity with companies and elementary schools for students' making sense of engineer and what they are doing. To do that, NAEK had developed the network that company could support its local school's science education circumstance by engineers' visiting program. In 2004, seventeen companies including both large and small ones took part in the program called' Korea Junior Engineering Achievement (KJEA)'. In this program, engineers played the role of teacher (we call them company teacher), elementary school teachers played the role of organizing classes as a mediator. Elementary school teachers and company teachers' recognition is very important to make students' activity meaningful. The aim of this study was to give implication for informal science education activity for which engineers visit their local school. We got the result by survey and interview of company teachers and elementary school teachers. This study's result shows that almost company teachers and school teachers were in favor of purpose of this informal science education activity and satisfied with their participation. But some company teachers were not satisfied with worksheets, materials provided and relationship between school and company). Elementary school teachers and company teachers, both of them believed students' program as the key factor of success of informal science education activity. To make informal science education grow, school administrator and teacher need to have a will to utilize the activities more actively.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.122-139
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• 2017

The purposes of this study are to develop the STEAM program grounded on curriculum and to investigate educational effects of the developed program on students' attitude of science and science self-efficacy by application to elementary informal science education environment. In order to develop this program, the literature reviews were conducted and then STEAM education program based on the theme 'light' is developed. The developed program was revised and complemented through preliminary applications and consulting with experts, and applied to 65 students. A single group pre-post paired t-test was conducted through the students' attitude of science and science self-efficacy test. The semi-structure interviews were used to gather focused and additional data. The results of this study were as follows: firstly, STEAM education program was developed with the theme 'light' for elementary students in order to increase their interest related to real life. Secondly, the results indicated that the program was statistically significant on the attitude of science for the group of third and fourth graders. However, the effects of science self-efficacy did not appear a significant result for the third and fourth graders. They expressed one possible reason. The theme of light was not familiar with them because the theme was scheduled to teach in the second semester of the fourth graders. Some of students in this group did have a chance to learn the theme. Thirdly, the program was very effective for the fifth and sixth graders on their attitude of science and science self-efficacy. In conclusion, STEAM education program developed with the theme of light is contributed to elementary students' attitude of science in the informal science education. Students' learning experiences of relevant concepts can influence on students' science self-efficacy. It could be very important factor to consider students' grade level and previous learning experiences when the educational programs develop.