Formal Education seems Attainable through Informal Learning Activities

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Education if made more informal can actually yield better results for both students and teachers. Probably, something similar was going on in the minds of the Wellcome Trust that inspired them to launch a brand new initiative on 10th April. They wanted to discover how informal learning activities could bring a positive impact on today’s young minds studying science.

Informal learning activities can be quite inspiring

An amount of £9 million would be provided by Science Learning+ that works in partnership with National Science Foundation (NSF) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). This amount would act as a huge monetary support to initiate research into the learning processes that are conducted outside classrooms. In other words, this would be a sincere effort towards inspiring institutions to take up informal learning activities to educate new age learners.

A report commissioned in 2012 by the Wellcome Trust taking the new initiative into consideration found that although there are crystal clear evidences that informal learning activities can be quite pleasurable and interesting for all those studying science, such evidences are actually negligible and hence further research is essential.

Attaining formal education through informal activities

Researchers with the funding option would therefore grab the opportunity to look into how informal learning activities like visiting museums, playing games or watching documentaries can help students gain formal education. These activities would be quite engaging and students would therefore take absolute pleasure in completing their lessons.

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The initiative would further meet the following objectives:

• Evaluate how informal learning experiences would bring a bigger impact
• Enhance the impact of informal learning experiences
• Enhance one’s understanding of how informal environments would help to improve access to science for young students coming from diverse backgrounds

NSF's Division Research on Learning’s programme director, Dennis Schatz, said that the most popular projects that can help science students remain engaged towards their lessons are:

• Programmes held after school
• Science exhibitions at museums
• Projects on citizen science
• Science cafes

Schatz moreover said that it would be now easier for them accumulate together all the resources of both UK and US, which would therefore help them understand better as how these projects have helped them in the learning process. Well, there will be a couple of phases through which the funding for the initiative will take place:

1. Development of ideas
2. Starting to make plans for grants in 2014 that can support initial partnerships

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With these, long-term partnership grants for would be initiated for 2015 that would be designed for research programmes up to 5 years.

Director of Medical Humanities and Engagement at the Wellcome Trust, Clare Matterson said, “If such ‘out of school’ experiences, such as trips to museums, theatres and galleries are important, we must make sure that they are available for young people of all backgrounds.”

The ex-chief inspector for Ofsted, Sir Michael Tomlinson, called for the STEM development just the previous month. The intention was to bring the same during the early years at the primary school where these subjects would be brought alive in daily contexts. In other words, sharing experiences with students outside classrooms in informal settings would always give rise to better results. 

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