Abstract:

The covid-19 pandemic has become a major impediment to develop outreach activities in the disciplines of Earth sciences, normally carried out in person in the field and/or laboratories. Several important outreach events are held annually in Spain at the national and state level. Among them, and since 2001, the Madrid Science and Innovation Week is a very relevant event, in which Geodivulgar (Educational Innovation Project of the Complutense University) offers activities since 2013. Workshops, routes, talks and gamification events are designed under the Universal Design of Learning. The circumstance of this call has been a challenge for the Geodivulgar team, since we did not want to stop carrying out these educational activities, but a new approach was needed to adapt to health requirements.

From the beginning, and to avoid the loss of direct contact with the participants in the transition from a face-to-face model to a virtual one, it was decided to carry out synchronous online activities. The reason for this decision was that the public would be in close contact with the organizers all the time, and would not be limited to passively watching a recorded activity. Thus, the applications of the eight activities that should be evaluated for being offered at the Madrid Science and Innovation Week were posted for development under virtual format. This approach took into account that prior work would have to be carried out to collect the physical data from the beginning of its planning-organization. The budget requested on the proposals for virtual activities would have to accommodate this circumstance.

Under this attitude and after the acceptance of the proposed activities by the organization that manages and coordinates this event (Fundación para el Conocimiento madri + d, dependent on the Department of Science, Universities and Research of the Community of Madrid), this year it was necessary to make new adaptations to be able to develop the offered activities. By accessing the official website with all the offers, the person potentially interested in our activities got information of their development.Considering that, they made the inscriptions according to their preferences.

Two persons coordinated each one of the eight activities, which were developed by a specific team of several members. In each proposal, the team made the necessary changes for adapting the activities to an online dissemination format, while the coordinators made the corresponding development and evaluation modifications.The adjustments to the online format were carried out at different levels (with both the monitors and the audience in mind) and from the programming of each activity to its development and evaluation.

In this work, all these adaptations are analyzed from the point of view of the organizers but also taking into account the assessment of the participants in order to detect the weaknesses and strengths of applying this format. The results show that both parts were satisfied with the virtual format.

The age of the participants ranged from 9 to 73 years, and of monitors from 22 to 52. Referring to “How much have you missed touching materials such as relief maps, rocks, fossils, etc.?” 52.1 %of the participants expressed that nothing at all, and up to 32.4 % said the explanations were fine but haptic material would be welcome. Finally a 45.1 % of the attendants and 65.5 % of the monitors valued with a 10 (0 the minimum and 10 the maximum) the online format.

Keywords:

COVID-19, scientific dissemination, Earth sciences, virtual Geology, Universal Design for learning, online activities, online format.