Abstract:

National parks represent the largest natural science learning “laboratories” accessible to anyone in the world. In the U.S. alone, over 424 unique sites, equivalent to the size of Kansas, span the U.S. The parks’ mission is to preserve unimpaired “the natural and cultural resources and values for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.” In addition to protection for the sake of protection, the parks are natural conduits for teaching and learning about geology, flora, fauna, climate change, hydrology, astronomy, archeology, and the human connection to these biomes. Learners are more likely to remember information when they have a personal connection that makes them care about the resource (Brochu & Merriman, 2015). Learning with understanding, in this sense, is a generative process of constructing meaning from one’s memories, knowledge, and experience, and from incoming sensory information (Osborne & Wittrock, 1983). Furthermore, we know that new information can only help or lead to new perceptions when the individual does something with the information to generate deeper understanding. For the captive science classroom audience, this would mean connecting the information via an experiential activity such as laboratory experiments, or more importantly connecting to a memorable shared experience beyond the classroom. Audiences in national parks, however, are often noncaptive, requiring park rangers to combine effective communication practices with scientific information to provide a more engaging experience for the participant (Ham, 2013). Recent societal increases in technology use and mobility pose challenges for maintaining visitor attention in parks. Mobile phones and social media play a central role in how we experience the world around us; using these technologies to facilitate learning about our environment is a natural fit (Eppley, 2019). Today digital tools offer more interactivity and can include demonstration, storytelling, facilitated dialog, analogy, role playing, and audience participation. National parks are attempting to embrace technology to facilitate teaching and learning about the natural world. Digital interactivity is changing the way scientific content is discovered, accessed, communicated, and explored (Host, Schonborn, Frocklin, & Tibell, 2018). In 2022-2023, park rangers working a non-digital outdoor touch table in Yellowstone National Park noticed a significant difference in geologic engagement by visitors who had prior experience with the Minecraft App vs those who did not. This study analyzed a pattern that arose among visitors at a geology and wildlife touch table that supports the potential for apps to be used as latent learning tools prior to visitors’ experiential learning onsite in parks. “Latent learning is a type of learning which is not apparent in the learner's behavior at the time of learning, but which manifests later when a suitable motivation and circumstances appear” (McLeod, 2018). Tolman (1948) argued that humans engage in this type of learning everyday as we drive or walk the same route daily and learn the locations of various buildings and objects. Only when we need to find a building or object does learning become obvious (as cited in McLeod). This research synthesizes the prevalence of visitor interacting at the touch tables, the prevalence of prior experience with geology via the Minecraft app, and its impact on them as a latent learning tool for geology.

Keywords:

Science, technology, latent learning, Minecraft, national parks, geology.