Zombies are on the attack. Victims' organs must be replenished to save humanity from the undead. But only players with an understanding of cells, tissues and organs — even the latest techniques to induce pluripotent stem cells — can regenerate the lost body parts.

This is the challenge set forth in Progenitor X, a problem-solving video game in which players learn how to reprogram more than 200 human cell types. “People play Progenitor X because it is fun to learn some things about science as they play,” says game developer Kurt Squire, who works at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Credit: BJORN RUNE LIE/GETTY

Squire is one of a growing number of informal-science-education (ISE) researchers, who focus on providing learning experiences outside of the formal classroom environment. The field encompasses a diverse group of talents, including video-game developers, as well as people who design, develop and evaluate science-education experiences for museums, television shows, after-school programmes, science festivals and national parks. “The learning that takes place in museums and science centres is the same learning as in school — brains generally work the same no matter the location,” says Justin Dillon, an ISE researcher at Kings College London, which is launching a bachelor's degree in science engagement and communication in September. “But those experiences can reinforce or deepen the learning.”

We are really interested in understanding what motivates and sustains interest in science.

ISE is increasingly gaining traction: both government and non-profit funders are supporting activities; some museums are hiring more research staff; and the number of training opportunities is increasing. Attempting to organize the field is the Washington DC-based Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE), which was formed in 2007 with support from the US National Science Foundation (NSF). CAISE aims to raise the field's profile by bringing together diverse sectors under the ISE umbrella to garner more funding, formalize training opportunities and establish methods to assess the success of various outreach projects.

However, in the face of strained science budgets, this budding field has been prone to funding ups and downs. Government agencies might perceive their activities as lower priorities. Practitioners have increasingly forged partnerships with industry or private foundations that are eager to cultivate a science-savvy citizenry and workforce. Although diverse job opportunities exist, seizing them requires connections, flexibility and creativity.

Academic research

The diversity of career tracks may be the field's biggest perk. Science centres, zoos, aquaria, video-game companies, television shows and non-profit organizations are all looking to develop new materials to keep visitors and users engaged. Research-oriented jobs are among the fastest-growing areas of employment. “Funders want people to fundamentally look at the learning question — it's not just about building an exhibit any more to get NSF funding,” says Rhiannon Crain, who trained with Dillon and is now leading a citizen-science project called Yard Map. Run from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York, Yard Map asks users to provide data about the effect of landscape changes on wildlife, and teaches them how best to create a bird habitat.

ISE practitioners might quantify, for example, how access to scientific instruments or engaging in hands-on exploration — through laboratory experiments or forensic-investigation simulations — can spark curiosity and strengthen someone's comprehension of science. Kevin Crowley, an education researcher at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, has partnered with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh to help the museum to enrich civic debates that involve scientific evidence. For example, to increase climate-change literacy in urban communities, the museum is breaking down the huge, complex topic into small pieces, focusing on how climate change will affect Pittsburgh itself.

Approaches to ISE, and therefore to training options, differ. A group led by Lynn Dierking at Oregon State University in Corvallis focuses on what motivates people to seek learning experiences in daily life, a concept she calls “free-choice learning”. Dierking's group studies how to create opportunities that pique human curiosity, such as during visits to state parks.

The university offers a six-course certificate programme, an online master's degree and a formal PhD. Trainees can have a science or social-science background. The online master's is designed to provide the skills to enhance visitor learning at museums, national parks or nature centres. PhD candidates typically conduct research at an ISE outlet (such as a museum or an after-school programme), and recipients generally go into academia or become evaluators.

But the academic track often offers little job security. “Unfortunately, most of those are not tenure-track positions,” says Crain. Those who do find university-based work are typically adjunct faculty who rely heavily year-to-year on grant money. Squire's students end up not only in academia but also in the entertainment industry or starting their own companies.

Outside academia

Museums, meanwhile, particularly larger ones, are building up internal research and evaluation teams to track, for example, visitor experiences through surveys. The Science Museum of Minnesota in St Paul and the Exploratorium in San Francisco, California, have teams of 12 to 14 who use this visitor feedback to hone exhibits. Larger museums have programme or exhibit departments — many of which are staffed by scientists with doctoral degrees — that develop and design exhibits, a process that can take two to three years from conception to completion. Smaller museums often have to hire external evaluators or companies to design and fabricate their exhibits. (Although some museums, notably The Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, are facing harsh budget realities that have meant cuts affecting researchers and other employees (see Nature http://doi.org/j6q; 2012).)

The zombie video game Progenitor X helps players to learn how cell types are formed. Credit: WISCONSIN INST. DISCOVERY

The increasing demand for consultant evaluators is a bright spot that seems poised to continue. “The need for evaluators in ISE is growing even when, and perhaps because of, decreases in funding,” says Kirsten Ellenbogen, senior director of lifelong learning at the Science Museum of Minnesota. It's more urgent to demonstrate impacts than in past years, she adds. Evaluators collect data about the learning experiences of museum visitors to show whether the programme or exhibit has effectively educated or enlightened. Evaluation is often crucial to satisfying grant requirements. “In the current funding environment, accountability is critical,” agrees Ellen McCallie, programme director with NSF's division of research on learning in Arlington, Virginia.

As a result, evaluators can find work as project-based consultants or join evaluation firms that are popping up. The research institute SRI International, headquartered in Menlo Park, California, continues to grow — hiring people with social-science skills and a passion for communicating science. A few universities, notably Boston College in Massachusetts, the University of California, Berkeley, and Claremont Graduate University in California, offer PhD-level training that specializes in designing quantitative-research studies to analyse visitor data.

Funding fluctuations

Regardless of the track, funding is a challenge. The NSF cut its funding request for the Advancing Informal STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Learning programme for the fiscal year 2013 by 22% from 2012 numbers, to US$43 million. Funding is equally uncertain outside the United States. It is not yet clear whether 'Science in Society' — one of the two main ISE funding schemes under the European Framework Programme — will continue to exist in 2014.

Yet, at the same time, funders such as the NSF broadly encourage the use of ISE outreach and evaluation techniques across other NSF programmes and centres. For example, the NSF's Centers for Chemical Innovation programme requires a robust effort in informal science communication or ISE. The programme's director, Katharine Covert, says that there is a supplemental funding opportunity of up to $150,000 for the centres to develop collaborations with an ISE organization. And a new NSF-funded initiative — Science Education For New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER) — will establish partnerships between higher education and ISE organizations to find innovative ways to share research and interact with the public. The next round of SENCER funding, as part of a “Civic Engagement Partnership” programme, will provide six $50,000 partnership awards (applications are due by 15 March) to ISE–higher-education collaborations.

“These days, informal-science educators have to be flexible and imaginative about how to obtain funding in this research area; ideally, they are able to piggyback onto existing activities,” says Karen Bultitude, director of research in the department of science and technology studies at University College London. She expects that the UK's new Research Excellence Framework, which requires researchers to demonstrate the impact of their research outside academia, will encourage other groups to collaborate with ISE outreach projects. “Almost all of academia in the UK is desperately interested in demonstrating impacts of their work on wider groups,” says Bultitude.

In some cases, private funders have stepped in. The Wellcome Trust in London has spent upwards of £50 million (US$80 million) over the past decade on schemes that include media fellowships for scientists and, most recently, engagement fellowships to support senior researchers who are developing a programme or projects to share their expertise with the public. One recipient, Roger Kneebone, based at Imperial College London, is a surgeon-turned-public-engagement fellow who plans to use live surgical simulations to engage the public. Clare Matterson, director of medical humanities and engagement at the Wellcome Trust, hopes that two reports published by the trust in November 2012 — Analysing the UK Science Education Community: the Contribution of Informal Providers and Review of Informal Science Learning — will prompt more grant submissions in the United Kingdom, and for ISE in general, of which there is a dearth at the moment, she says. “What is needed is a greater number of high-quality research-based proposals so we have a better understanding of how children learn through informal science experiences,” she adds. “These don't have to be education groups; they could be people working in psychology or neuroscience, studying how people respond to different types of learning.”

In the United States, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Noyce Foundation, both in Palo Alto, California, are funding ISE efforts ranging from citizen-science engagement to helping teachers in training learn how to develop their own interactive science-lesson plans. “We are really interested in understanding what motivates and sustains interest in science,” says Janet Coffey, a programme officer at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Industry is also experimenting with ISE in an effort to reach the public. Novo Nordisk, headquartered in Bagsvaerd, Denmark, for example, finances the Steno Health Promotion Centre in Gentofte, Denmark, which runs a 33-million-krone (US$5.7 million) project called PULSE at the Experimentarium in Copenhagen, to promote healthy lifestyles for families. The project will engage and track families with children aged 6–12 years old from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds as they design and develop healthful eating and exercise strategies. The museum is increasingly “looked at as a serious partner instead of simply an institute for kids,” says Sheena Laursen, director of international projects at the Experimentarium.

Many hope that continued research efforts that document how ISE increases scientific literacy or encourages students to pursue STEM careers will help the field to grow. “Anyone who cares about scientific literacy and STEM workforce development,” says Ellenbogen, “should pay attention to ISE.”