Bats and Beyond: Communicating Wildlife and Climate Change Empathy to Youth through an Electronic Field Trip
Keywords:
Electronic Field Trips, Wildlife Empathy, Agricultural Communications, Environmental Literacy, Youth EducationAbstract
Today’s youth must take decisive action to maintain and improve the world by being environmentally literate through understanding, interpreting, and applying information and media about the environment and human interactions. Ample room exists for science communicators and educators to work together to develop real-world programs for connecting youth audiences with scientists and science research to impact environmental perceptions, attitudes, and learning. Universities, Cooperative Extension, museums, and schools can use electronic field trips (EFTs) as a vehicle to connect youth audiences to scientists globally. Sixtyfour classrooms in the United States and Trinidad and Tobago participated in an EFT at the University of Florida Bat Houses with three mammalogists from the Florida Museum of Natural History. The study examined students’ attitudes toward wildlife and climate change through pre/post-surveys, before and after participating in the EFT.
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