Journey through the Universe l Build Your Program

A hallmark of Journey through Universe programming is its breadth of content across grade levels and the diversity of programming options. This allows the program to be tailored to a community’s unique education needs and interests.

What you have already read about Journey through the Universe may have prompted you to think about how to put this program to work in your community. Your thinking likely involves the recent impact of No Child Left Behind on science education in your community, and the need for enhanced content, professional development, and increased student achievement. Read about how Journey may be able to help.

While only you know what your needs might be, we have significant experience helping to craft programs for a broad range of communities. The Journey through the Universe program staff will work with you to customize a program profile that meets your community’s needs and minimizes cost. Even if you provide us just a rough idea of your strategic objectives and how you think they might be addressed by Journey, the size of the student audience you have in mind, and the breadth of professional development programming, we can suggest a number of program options, and determine the costs.

There are typically two different strategic approaches to consider:

Content Driven Model (grade level specific): where the goal is to address a specific grade level or levels where Earth and space science are taught, and the program provides added curricular content, professional development, and experiences with real Earth and space science researchers.

Process Driven Model (grade level independent): where the goal is to provide a broad student audience, and the teaching staff, an authentic window on the process of scientific inquiry, and the lives of researchers, using the disciplines of the Earth and space sciences and space exploration as the captivating interdisciplinary vehicle.

The pedagogy for programming associated with both models is the same, embracing a seamless fusion of content and process.

The choice of strategic approach often defines the potential size of the student audience, and the depth and breath of the professional development—both of which define the program cost. The choice of strategic approach also typically defines the content to be addressed (choice of Education Modules or a customized curriculum), and when programming should take place.

Think of the Classroom Visits and the Family and Public Programs bundled together, and a Professional Development Program implemented separately. You may have a preference for defining the scope of one of these first, and laying out the second in a way that maximally leverages the synergy between all program components.

Classroom Visits and Family and Public Programs: The number of Classroom Visits (typically 60-150 presentations) always far exceeds the number of Family and Public Programs. The size of the National Team of Visiting Researchers that travels to your community, and the duration of their stay, is therefore defined by the total number of Classroom Visit presentations necessary to address the student audiences you want to reach. When the Visiting Researchers are in your community for the Classroom Visits, they are also available to conduct the small number of possibly very high attendance Family and Public Programs in the evenings and on weekends.
The National Team can be sent in for a single large-scale, and celebratory week of activities—Journey through the Universe Week—or smaller teams can be sent in throughout the year.
Professional Development Program: The suite of workshop options allows your school district to tailor a Professional Development Program to need. It may be a series of workshops distributed across the academic year to address when Earth and space science are taught, or it may be a single workshop a month in advance of a National Team conducting a Journey through the Universe Week of Classroom Visits.

This page addresses the fundamental design of a Journey through the Universe program. The rich content and nuance in programming explored across this web site can now be used to color your program as uniquely yours.

Let us help you explore a Journey through the Universe for your community. Contact us anytime.