Informal Learning

Science Alliance and informal learning

To contrast informal learning with formal learning, or informal education with formal education, illuminates the difference between structured, graded, credited, accredited classroom learning and the kind of free-choice, self-driven, painless learning people do in museums, at science centers, during visits to campus, and anywhere in life where an experience leads them to retain a new understanding of the universe they live in. Making the distinction is important because formal education institutions such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison are not perceived as sources of informal learning The irony is that research at the university is an excellent example of informal learning: the individual pursues an interest and inquires and investigates.

Land-grant Universities such as UW-Madison are also major sources of information and experiences for the informal learner. UW-Madison serves informal learners through on-campus experiences and mass media, including press releases to newspapers and magazines, radio and television, and websites.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced a new program within the Child Development and Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development which encourages both basic and intervention research in the areas of mathematics and science learning and cognition.

Our challenge is to make the University of Wisconsin-Madison a more welcoming place for the informal learner. The UW-Madison's research mission can be viewed as a process of informal learning: the researcher independently investigates a question of interest. Ultimately, we envision UW-Madison as a model for an intentional process of leveraging the formal resources of a major educational and scientific research institution into a thriving resource for informal science education for learners of all ages.

Other pages on this site describe ideas for this leveraging process, such as "Campus as a Destination," and "Learning Lobbies", the successful"Science Expeditions" series of events, the idea of a Science Museum for Madison, and the Forum on the Future of Science Outreach in the 21st Century. What follows here is a brief discussion of some of the cognitive differences between informal learning and formal learning, and useful links for further study on the topic.

How different is informal learning?

In the University environment, we've all seen students raise their hands and ask "Will this be on the test?" The obvious implication is, if the topic of the question is not going to be on the test, the student isn't going to bother to learn it. This illustrates one important difference about informal learning -- the learner is a volunteer, is self-driven, and wants to learn the subject matter to integrate it into his or her own world view. Informal learning is less likely to be forgotten after final exams are over, in part because there is no final.

Cognitive science is just beginning to be able to quantify the differences between informal learning. It may be that directly comparing informal and formal learning is not useful because they differ so profoundly. The Science Alliance intends to contribute to knowledge about informal learning, and into how outreachers can better organize experiences for informal learners. Below are a few stimulating web sites on informal learning. Please, if you know of or find others, let us know so we can make this resource even more valuable.

—contributed by Ken Smith

Museum Learning .com The Museum Learning Collaborative (MLC), funded by a consortium of public agencies under the direction of the Institute for Museum and Library Services, has been established to further theoretically driven research on learning in museums. These are links to research papers.

Informal Science .org The purpose of www.informalscience.org is to promote and advance the field of informal learning in science and other domains. This site is a place to share knowledge and support a community of learners to inform informal science learning standards and practices. It is being developed by the University of Pittsburghês Center for Learning in Out of School Environments (UPCLOSE) at the Learning Research and Development Center. Some parts of the site look like links but are not yet linked. Cute acronym.

The Institute for Learning Innovation , a not-for-profit established in 1986, is committed to better understanding the nature of free-choice learning and its role in a Learning Society. Includes a page on The Contextual Model of Learning , which grew out of a framework that John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, the Institute's principal partners, developed in the 1990's.

National Science Foundation's Informal Learning Unit Initiated in FY 1983, the Informal Science Education (ISE) program promotes public interest, understanding, and engagement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through voluntary, self-directed, and lifelong learning opportunities.

The San Francisco Exploratorium's list of core readings in informal learning. These are not links, but bibliographic listings.

Playful Invention and Exploration (PIE) Network , a group of museums working with the MIT Media Lab to help people learn to use new technologies for creating, inventing, and exploring. The PIE Network brings together the hands-on inquiry approach of science museums with the learning philosophy from the MIT Media Lab known as "Constructionism." The term "Constructionism" refers to two kinds of construction: constructing ideas and constructing personally-meaningful projects.

The Informal Learning Environments Research SIG is a special interest group within the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The purpose of Informal Learning Environments Research SIG is to further educational research in informal learning environments such as science centers, museums, zoos, aquariums, and nature centers, and to promote a community of practice interested in establishing and maintaining informal learning environments conducive to better understanding of teaching and learning.

UK-based infed.org calls itself "the encyclopedia of informal education " Search and browse hundreds¾of pages on key thinkers, theories and themes in informal education and lifelong learning.¾

This page, on UK's reviewing.co website, provides a myriad of links on Experiential Learning. David Kolb wrote a book by that title in 1984 exploring the cyclical pattern of all learning from Experience through Reflection and Conceptualizing to Action and on to further Experience. This page has support and criticism of this model. The reviewing.co website itself promotes methods of work that enable people of all abilities to use their experiences (in life, education, training or work) as a major source of learning, development and empowerment.

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File last updated: September 18, 2003

Feedback, questions or accessibility issues: kennethsmith@wisc.edu