Mobilising the Geoscience Community behind an Education/Outreach Initiative
Strategy Document
Background
This document follows a ‘mobilising the community’ workshop held with a wide range of participants
on Thursday, 17th November, 2016, followed by a Survey Monkey questionnaire survey to gather
the further views of participants. The strategy below was devised following the follow-up Earth
Science Education Forum meeting held on Tuesday 6th December, 2016.
The questionnaire feedback showed:
 Greatest support for reaching as wide a public as possible (preferably 10,000+), followed by
great support for involving the greatest possible number of geoscientists across the country
 Strongest support for the ‘Geolodays’ approach of running simultaneous fieldtrips across the
country on a certain day; strong support for the Earthcaching idea and the Ottawa approach
(‘manning’ a series of sites across the city on a certain day to explain their geoscience to the
public)
 The biggest ‘barrier’ to involvement was ‘other work priorities’ followed by ‘lack of knowledge or
training’
 The best months for such an initiative were May and July (29% of the data each). 21% of
respondents thought that Earth Science Week in October was the best month.
 There was strong enthusiasm for the Earthcaching approach
 Both individuals and organisations offered strong support for the initiative.
Strategy
Following the workshop discussions, the questionnaire feedback, the following strategy was
determined at the ESEF meeting of 6th December.
Following build-up activities, a national initiative will be piloted on one day in the summer of 2018
based on introducing the public to a series of EarthCaches in the local area; this will be evaluated
and further developed in following years
The advantages of this approach are:
 There will be a ‘one day’ focus in the summer on local field excursions across the country that, in
due time, would seek to emulate the success of the Spanish Geolodays
 Many of the sites visited will have been EarthCached so that the educational potential of each
site will have previously been explored and documented
 These sites will remain as a permanent record of the field excursion, that can be re-visited by
participants and are available to others as well
 The participants will have been introduced to Earthcaching and may wish to continue their
interest elsewhere
 The end-of-field excursion evaluation will provide feedback to further develop the initiative
Activity timeline
 Permission will be sought from the Geological Society of America (GSA) which oversees the
Earthcaching initiative, for a preliminary ‘EarthCache your patch’ initiative across the UK, which
may involve posting hundreds of EarthCaches
 A simple guide to Earthcaching will be written, incorporating the published Earthcaching and
Geocaching guidelines, but providing extra guidance on the amount of information provided and
the quality of the questions asked (see draft below)
 All those who attended the 17th December meeting will be asked, before June 2017, to:
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ask for the ‘Mobilising’ strategy to be an agenda item on the next meeting of their group
at the next meeting, take the participants outside to introduce them to Earthcaching,
explore the local area for a potential EarthCache site, develop a site and, hopefully, post an
EarthCache
o discuss the whole strategy, following the outside visit
o give feedback to ESEF on the discussions
A date for the Geoloday (or alternative name) for the summer of 2018 will be decided
A field excursion evaluation strategy will be determined
Between the summers of 2017 and 2018, groups across the country will be encouraged to:
o introduce their members to the Earthcaching approach (thus providing the training
deemed necessary by the questionnaire feedback)
o prepare a local field excursion for the public
o EarthCache the main sites on the field excursion
o advertise the field excursion locally and regionally as widely as possi ble
On the agreed date in the summer of 2018, groups across the country will be asked to:
o run the field excursion for members of the public, involving as many members of their
group as possible
o gather evaluation data at the end of the excursion
Following the excursion, the groups should:
o collate the data and return all the evaluation data for ESEF
o discuss the outcomes of the field excursion at their next group meeting – with a view to
planning ‘a bigger and better’ field excursion the following year, or maybe more than one
Draft guidance on setting up a ‘Geoloday’ field experience
 Each field experience should be based on a series of EarthCaches – although not all sites visited
need to be EarthCached
 The field experiences could be of any appropriate length of time or distance, since different
types of approach will fit different needs
 Motor transport to and between localities can only be provided if this is funded by your group
 Try to broaden each experience beyond ‘rocks’ so that it becomes a wider social experience of
walking in the local area; thus the experience might include other types of GeoCache or
considerations of the processes active today, the terrain, geomorphology, industrial history, art,
music, etc.
 Try to bring rock exposures ‘to life’ for participants, using some of the Earthlearningidea
approaches
 Please end each experience with a resume of what has been found and experienced, to
consolidate the ‘learning’
Draft guidance on setting up an EarthCache
 Follow the guidance on Geocaching and Earthcaching published on the GSA website
 Note that EarthCaches all have one fundamental goal — to educate the visitor
 Each EarthCache should present information on how that place or rock exposure formed, about
why that place is important scientifically or what that site can tell us about our planet.
 EarthCaches need to cater for those people who do not have scientific training. The language
should not contain scientific jargon or terms unless these terms are explained. However, once an
educational explanation of the site is written to meet these guidelines, more detailed or
technical information is very welcome
 Each EarthCache needs a 'link bait' title, an engaging phrase that will make a visitor click on your
cache rather than another close by, e.g. the Geol Soc wall could be ‘Caribbean cocktail’. The
nearby granites setts could be ‘Hot rocks’ or ‘Crystal clear’
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The most important part of each EarthCache will be the educational questions, inviting
participants to develop their knowledge and understanding of the site. To this end, the
questions should:
o include some measurement or observation that is relevant and purposeful and will show
that the participant has visited the site, e.g. measuring the diameter of a fossil tree to try
to estimate its height.
o ask a ‘what’s the point’ question – that highlights why this particular feature is worth
studying and what it tells us about the planet and its value
o if possible, ask a question to build scientific imagination on the observations made, that
may prompt further questions
You might like to include gif images that show a movie of the process you are trying to illustrate,
such as this one:
The BGS should be able to help with the creation of these images if individuals are willing to
write them up - a gif uses fewer words and space because one image is used and not three or
four
You could, in one of your questions, ask participants to take a scaled photograph of the feature,
e.g. photographing the sample with a £5 note for scale (see attached), where each gradation/
rule on the note is roughly equal to .25mm.
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Photographing with a camera phone will aid the observations by enabling zooming into detail
not visible to the naked eye and without the aid of a hand lens.
The BGS should be able to provide a selection of stock images to use, such as the BGS timechart
which can be copied from the website if acknowledged.
Finally, check your EarthCache write-up is as jargon-free and simply written as possible. Even
better, test it on a member of the public such as a family member!
Submit your EarthCache to GSA for formal validation.