ABSTRACT CREATING AN ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION WEBSITE AT THE SMITHSONIAN ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH CENTER By Anna Maria Henrica van der Heijden This report describes my 16-week internship at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) in Edgewater, MD, where I started on 29 January 2001 as an “Education Specialist/Web Developer” at SERC’s education department. I was responsible for the website for the Education Department and for a website related to Watershed Radio, an environmental education project about the Chesapeake Bay watershed. In this report, I describe the five phases of the development of the website, namely the 1) Information Planning Phase; 2) Content-Specification Phase; 3) Implementation Phase; 4) Production Phase; and 5) Evaluation Phase. I also discuss the difference between education and advocacy and how the combination of a non-contextualized model and a website-specific tutorial provides a good basis for developing a website. The internship report ends with the conclusion that my internship was successful; although I could have done a better job of planning and managing my project, I delivered a well-received product, learned a lot, and worked with great colleagues at an interesting organization. Creating an Environmental Education Website at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center An Internship Submitted to the faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Technical and Scientific Communication Department of English by Anna Maria Henrica van der Heijden Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2002 Internship Committee: Dr. W.M. Simmons (Chair) Dr. K. Durack Dr. G.E. Willeke Contents Lists of Figures, Tables, Boxes.............................................................................................. iii Acknowledgements................................................................................................................. iv Chapter 1. Introduction to Internship...................................................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction to Smithsonian Institution and Smithsonian Environmental Research Center 1 1.2 SERC’s Education Department and my Position 2 1.3 Organizational Structure and Culture 3 Chapter 2. Overview of Internship........................................................................................... 5 Chapter 3. From Idea to Site: Developing the Watershed Radio Website ............................ 8 3.1 Introduction to Watershed Radio and Overview of Development Phases 8 3.2 The Information Planning Phase: Defining Goals, Objectives, and the User Experience 10 3.3 The Content Specification Phase: Defining Site Content and Structure 16 3.4 The Implementation Phase: Designing the Site and Writing the Content 21 3.5 The Production Phase: Finalizing and Publishing the Site 29 3.6 The Evaluation Phase: How Did I Do and Does the User Like It? 30 Chapter 4. Evaluation............................................................................................................. 33 4.1 Evaluation of Developing the Watershed Radio Website 33 4.2 What About Next Time? 37 4.3 Overall Evaluation of Internship 37 Appendixes............................................................................................................................. 38 Appendix A: SERC Open House Website 38 Appendix B: Watershed Radio Website Plan 42 Appendix C: Short Description of Website Goals and Ideas 52 Appendix D: Finished Watershed Radio Website 56 Appendix E: Press Release Watershed Radio 76 Appendix F: Watershed Radio Fact Sheets 78 Appendix G: Comparison of Website-Development Models 80 References.............................................................................................................................. 82 ii Figures Figure 1. Organizational structure of SERC 3 Figure 2. Time spent on various categories of activities during the internship 5 Figure 3. Homepage of the website for SERC’s Open House in May 2001. 6 Figure 4. Timeline of the development of the Watershed Radio website 10 Figure 5. Architectural blueprint of the Watershed Radio website 20 Figure 6. Example of two Watershed Radio web pages 24 Figure 7. Example of a Watershed Radio story page about the Anacostia Watershed Society 25 Figure 8. Time spent on different aspects of developing the Watershed Radio website 36 Tables Table 1. Overview of four categories of activities during internship 7 Table 2. The Information Planning Phase 11 Table 3. Goals and objectives for the Watershed Radio website 13 Table 4. The Content Specification Phase 16 Table 5. The Implementation Phase 22 Table 6. The Production Phase 30 Table 7. The Production Phase 31 Boxes Box 1. Example of the text of a Watershed Radio spot 8 Box 2. Example of a user scenario 15 iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Mark Haddon, for his guidance during my internship, and thank him, Catie Drew, and Dottie Klugel, for being great colleagues. I had (and have) a great time at SERC and not in the least because of the fun and excitement that is part of our office spirit. And I want to thank Jim DeLorbe and the Sierra Club ducks Chris Bedford, Robin Jung, Janis Oppelt, and Andy Roberts for working with me on Watershed Radio and without whom the Watershed Radio project—and my internship—would not have existed. Although it has been a year since I left the campus of Miami University, I still, every day, benefit from the intense course work that was part of our Master of Technical and Scientific Communication (MTSC) program at Miami University, and I would like to thank Jean Lutz and the MTSC faculty for helping me develop the skills to undertake an internship like the one described in this report. Special thanks go to my internship committee and its chair person Michele Simmons, for always being helpful and for providing constructive feedback on my draft report. And to Katherine Durack, in whose class I learned the basics about web design and who brought my attention to the important issue of developing websites that are accessible for people with disabilities. iv Chapter 1. Introduction to Internship This report describes the internship I carried out at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) as part of the Master of Technical and Scientific Communication (MTSC) program at Miami University, Ohio. On 29 January 2001, I started as a full-time employee at SERC, and in this report I will describe and analyze my activities in my 16-week internship, which began 29 January 2001 and ended 18 May 2001. In this first chapter I will describe the organization, my position within SERC, and how my work fit with the overall goals of the organization. After this introductory chapter, chapter 2 will discuss how I divided my time between various activities. As we will see, I spent most of my time on developing the Watershed Radio website, a project that I will discuss in more detail in chapter 3. Finally, in chapter 4, I will evaluate this project, as well as my overall internship at SERC. 1.1 Introduction to Smithsonian Institution and Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) is part of the Smithsonian Institution, a widely known organization that consists of the National Zoo, 16 museums and several research centers. The Institution was founded in 1846 with a gift from the British scientist James Smithson “for the increase and diffusion of knowledge” (Smithsonian Institution 2002). The museums, most of them located along the Mall in downtown Washington, D.C., cover a wide range of subjects including art, architecture, American history, and natural history. While the Smithsonian museums focus on museum exhibits and research, the Smithsonian research centers focus almost exclusively on scientific research, varying from astrophysics and materials research to conservation and, last but not least, environmental science. The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center originated in 1965 when the grounds of an 365-acre dairy farm in Edgewater, MD, were bequeathed to the Smithsonian Institution (Correll 1991). The Institution decided that the area—which included a wide variety of habitats suitable for terrestrial, wetland, and estuarine field biology—could be used for field collecting trips, and it established the Chesapeake Bay Center for Field Biology. Over the years, the center acquired more land, established on-site facilities, and developed research and education programs. In 1983, after being taken over by the Smithsonian Radiation Biology Laboratory, the center was renamed the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Today, the Center has formulated 1 its mission as “increasing knowledge of the biological and physical processes that sustain life on earth” and 14 Principal Investigators and their assistants and interns participate in long-term studies of the aquatic, terrestrial and atmospheric components of the ecosystems around SERC and at other places around the world. The four main research areas that SERC scientists are involved in are typically referred to as the areas of global change; landscape ecology; ecology of coastal ecosystems; and population and community ecology (SERC 2002). 1.2 SERC’s Education Department and my Position Although SERC primarily focuses on research, the Center offers a variety of education programs for schools and the general public. SERC’s Education Program, according to its mission statement, is “committed to broadening society’s understanding of the environment,