Conservation Education, Communication and Evaluation Course (Residential)
Foz do Iguacu, Brazil
Table of Contents
About This Course
Parque Das Aves
This 13-week training course is about how conservation education and communication can make a difference in people's lives to benefit wildlife. We will help you to integrate the best available knowledge on conservation education, communication and evaluation into your practical plans for engaging your audiences.
The Iguaçu Waterfalls
To help you achieve your objectives, this course offers you access to global experts who will present the state-of-the-art in research and practice in conservation education, environmental communication and evaluation. To provide hands-on support in developing your plans, tools and methods, this training course includes a week-long residential period in the Atlantic Rainforest at Parque das Aves in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, on the doorstep of one of the natural wonders of the world: The Iguaçu Waterfalls. Here, you will be working directly with experts and conservation education and communication professionals to extend and sharpen your practice and skills. The course is being organized by Parque das Aves, one of the leading zoos in Latin America with a strong ‘one biome’ conservation focus on the Atlantic Rainforest in collaboration with the non-profit educational charity The Institute for Methods Innovation, which runs the ZooWise audience research project.
Global experts contributing to this training course
- Rachel Lowry (WWF Australia)
- Dr Judy Mann (Ushaka Marine World)
- Dr Eric Jensen
- Professor Alessandra Bizerra (University of São Paulo)
- Dr Silvio Marchini (University of Oxford / University of São Paulo)
- Dr Andrew Moss (Chester Zoo)
- Professor Brady Wagoner (University of Aalborg)
- Dr Joseph Roche (Trinity College Dublin)
- Parque Das Aves Education Team
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Course objectives
This course provides participants with a firm grounding in up-to-date research, practice and theory in conservation education and communication, with evaluation integrated into all aspects of the course. After completing this course, participants will be able to:
- Understand how the best available knowledge across relevant fields of research and theory applies to conservation education/communication practice.
- Learn from some of the top global experts and professionals in conservation education, communication and evaluation, with opportunities for direct, live engagement.
- Gain a broader view of the diversity of conservation education/communication approaches across different contexts.
- Evaluate strategic needs that can be addressed with conservation education or communication activities.
- Gain a wider understanding of strategies, approaches, tools and techniques you can use in your conservation education and communication activities.
- Develop a strategic plan for conservation education/communication.
- Prepare impact logic models and theory of change plans for your education/communication activities.
- Design a high-quality evaluation plan for your education/communication activities.
- Develop survey instruments or interview/focus group guides to evaluate quality of experience and impact.
- Understand how to begin analyzing your evaluation data and integrating evaluation insights into your practices.
- Gain practical skills in program planning and evaluation.
- Understand how technology can be used to enhance the quality and efficiency of evaluation.
- Gain access to key publications and other resources for future reading and professional development.
- Develop an extended network with other conservation educators and communicators around the world, building relationships for future collaboration and sharing.
- Hands-on support and guidance from course instructors, including written feedback on your draft plans and evaluation instruments.
Is this course right for you?We welcome conservation professionals with active involvement in any institution and/or sector working to convey a conservation or environmental message, including conservation field projects with community or education dimensions. |
Can’t make it to Brazil for the residential part of the training? Take the online-only pathway
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Course topics
Course topics include the following:
- What do we know about best practice in conservation education?
- How can you develop effective conservation education and communication programs and evaluations?
- How do people learn from conservation education and communication?
- How can conservation education and communication make a difference in people's lives?
- What is the toolkit needed for effective evaluation?
- How can evaluation be integrated in conservation education and communication to develop evidence-based practice?
Course features
This course offers a masterclass on issues concerning conservation education, communication and evaluation, including:
- Online instructional videos, written content and podcasts by top experts in conservation and environmental education for each week, which can be accessed any time within the period of the course. A set of essential readings are provided for delegates to use in the future.
- Weekly live sessions with global experts in the field of conservation education, communication and evaluation.
- Opportunities to discuss the week’s content with other conservation professionals from around the world and global experts and course instructors, gaining both expert and peer feedback on practical plans or concerns.
- Course structure encourages discussions between other delegates taking the course to build social and support networks and integrate perspectives from a broad range of backgrounds throughout the course.
Course structure and timing
This is a 13-week hybrid (online and face-to-face) training course. The course runs from 11 February 2019 to 10 May 2019 (Face-to-face: 8-12 April 2019)
Part of Program | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
Part 1 | 8 weeks | Online training, including weekly live chat webinars with global experts. |
Part 2 | 1 week |
Face-to-face Atlantic Rainforest Residential Training in Foz do Iguacu, Brazil
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Part 3 | 4 weeks | Online training, including weekly live chat webinars with global experts. |
Course description
To help you get the most from this course, it will begin eight weeks before the face-to-face Atlantic Rainforest Residential Training in Foz do Iguacu. There will be weekly online training (in both Brazilian Portuguese and English) delivered to participants through a virtual learning platform (including videos, readings, quizzes) and weekly live chats with guest global experts.
Atlantic Rainforest Residential Training (Foz do Iguacu, Brazil)
In Part 2 (Week 9) of the training, you will bring your current strategic plans, instruments, logic models, and data with you to the Atlantic Rainforest Residential Training in Foz do Iguacu. You will focus within this week on developing and refining the following practical assets for your conservation education and/or communication activities and conservation projects:
- Strategic plans.
- Educational and communication content.
- Impact logic models.
- Theory of change.
- Evaluation plans.
- Specific evaluation survey instruments or interview/focus group guides.
- Advocacy and funding application content and plans.
- Evaluation data collection skills
Running alongside the development of these practical assets, you will participate in skill-building sessions, such as educational and communication strategy development, survey design and establishing integrated evidence-based approaches to conservation and communication. |
Can’t make it to Brazil for the residential part of the training? Take the online-only pathway
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Participants
This training course is designed to enable field conservation projects in Brazil and internationally and other professionals to develop effective plans for the education and communication aspects of their projects. The focus is on preparing strategies, detailed evidence-based plans and tools for conducting high quality conservation-oriented educational and communication interventions. There is a strong emphasis on evaluation, which is introduced as an integral part of this training. Participants are expected to bring existing plans and evaluation instruments to the face-to-face part of the course and develop new plans or activities to be implemented in their conservation projects or institutions. This course is underpinned by state-of-the-art research and theory, but it is designed for professionals to develop their practice and skills.
Places in this course are limited to 30, with priority given to those who apply earlier.
International Participation: There will be a mix of Brazilian and international participants in the course. Sponsorship is available for a limited number of Brazil-based participants.
Course languages
In order to allow full participation of Brazilian and non-Brazilian professionals, the course is full accessible in both English and Brazilian Portuguese.
Tuition fee
Cost of registration for this 13-week course is as follows (accomodation costs are not included in the course fee):
Early Bird:
- $985 USD
- Registration deadline: 1 November 2018
Regular:
- $1285 USD
- Final registration deadline: 2 weeks prior to course start date (28 January 2019)
Brazilian participants Participants from Brazil are eligible for a significantly reduced course fee of 1000 Brazilian Reias, payable in up to 10 installments (limited places available).
In the application form, you can apply for a reduced tuition fee scholarship if you are based in a low-income country.
Dr. Andrew Moss Conservation Social Scientist
Dr. Andrew Moss (Conservation Social Scientist, Chester Zoo) has over a decade of visitor research experience in world zoos and aquariums. He has led over fifty evaluation research projects and has numerous publications, in journals such as Conservation Biology, the Journal of Environmental Education, Visitor Studies and Nature.
Specialising in quantitative research methods, particularly the structured observation of visitors, Andrew is interested in the ‘real-time’ effects of zoo animals and exhibits on their visitors. Most recently, Andrew was commissioned by the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) to lead the largest ever zoo and aquarium visitor impacts study (30 institutions; n>6,000).
Andrew is a respected peer-reviewer for ten journals, as well as for funding bodies such as the National Science Foundation. His expertise is valued both within the zoo community and in academia – he is an Associate Fellow at the University of Warwick and a member of the research and education committees for British and European zoo accreditation organisations.
Rachel Lowry Chief Conservation Officer
Rachel Lowry is Chief Conservation Officer at WWF-Australia, where she leads and support a team committed to making our world a better place. She was Director of Wildlife Conservation and Science at Zoos Victoria and President of International Zoo Educators Association. Rachel led a team at Zoos Victoria that oversees the organizations wildlife captive breeding and recovery projects, eco-socio projects, environmental sustainability, collection planning, research and animal welfare. Rachel is also advisor to Australia’s Threatened Species Commissioner, and Past Chair and Director of the Centre for Sustainability leadership.
Rachel has developed award-winning programs that have tackled conservation and sustainability issues both locally and globally, with the ‘Don’t Palm us Off’ campaign being one that has helped raise the profile of what zoos can achieve through community conservation campaigns. In 2010 Rachel was awarded Sustainability Leader of the year by WME within the Government and NGO sector. In 2011 she was profiled in Melbourne’s Top 100 most influential people through The Age newspaper. In 2012, Rachel led a team whose sustainability initiatives secured Zoos Victoria the title of the world’s first carbon neutral zoo. Rachel is currently working to raise the profile of Victoria’s most threatened terrestrial vertebrates.

Dr. Eric Jensen
Dr. Eric Jensen is an internationally-recognised social scientist specializing in innovative methods of conducting impact evaluation research in informal learning and public engagement contexts.
Dr Eric A. Jensen is a social scientist with a PhD from the University of Cambridge in sociology. Author of Doing Real Research: A Practical Guide to Social Research (SAGE), Dr Jensen brings extensive methodological expertise in quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods social research and evaluation. Jensen has been working in science communication research and practice since 2001, beginning with a National Science Foundation-funded project on International Ethics and Equity Issues Relating to Biotechnology. ensen has delivered hundreds of training workshops on evaluation methods and evidence-based science communication, as well as leading and consulting on projects large and small on public engagement with research, impact evaluation, socially responsible research and environmental communication. Jensen’s latest book is Science Communication: An introduction. He works on the Responsible Research and Innovation Networking Globally social research project as a Senior Research Fellow at ICoRSA. He is part-time professor at the University of Warwick and visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Psychological Research of Sigmund Freud University. |
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Alessandra Bizerra Professor
Professor at the University of São Paulo, Alessandra holds a bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences, a Master’s degree in Biological Sciences (Zoology) and a PhD in Education, all from the University of São Paulo.
She is currently a professor at the Institute of Biosciences of the University of São Paulo and treasurer of the Brazilian Association of Teaching of Biology (SBEnBio - National).
She has experience in Education, working mainly in the following subjects: non-formal education, scientific dissemination, learning and teaching of science, production of didactic materials.

Judy Mann Conservation Strategist
Judy is passionate about marine conservation and has focused her career on helping people to care for the oceans. She has worked for the South African Association for Marine Biological Research (SAAMBR) in Durban since 1992. She was the Director of Education for 10 years, the uShaka Sea World Director and the first woman Chief Executive Officer of SAAMBR.
She is currently the Conservation Strategist of the Association. Judy holds a PhD from the University of Queensland in Australia, where she studied how best to inspire visitors from multiple cultures to care for the environment. She holds a Master’s Degree in Ichthyology (Fish) and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration. She was the international advisor to the American Zoo and Aquarium Association Conservation Education Committee and serves on the IUCN Commission on Education and Communication. Judy is currently the President Elect of the International Zoo Educators Association.
Dr Silvio Marchini Research Associate
I am interested in the human dimensions of human-wildlife interactions and, ever since my doctoral work at the WildCRU on the “Human Dimensions of the Conflicts between People and Jaguars in Brazil”, I have been dedicating to the dissemination and strengthening of conservation social science and its application to conservation practice.
My work has involved a variety of human-wildlife conflict issues, including big cats and ranchers in Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina and Mexico; sea lions and fishermen in southern Brazil; wild boars, capybaras, tapirs and farmers in agricultural landscapes; and coatis, marmosets and visitors in urban parks and protected areas of the Atlantic Forest. I am currently based at the Laboratory of Wildlife Ecology, Management and Conservation of the University of Sao Paulo in Piracicaba, where I supervise students and teach a graduate course on Human Dimension of Wildlife Management and Conservation. I have taught this course to graduate students and wildlife professionals also in other parts of Brazil besides Oxford, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Bolivia.
In the last few years, I have turned my interest to the integration of social sciences, spatial modelling, and big data analytics, and how to apply this to decision-making and systematic planning and policy, bridging the gap between researchers, planners, managers and policy-makers. As a Research Associate under the Chester Zoo / WildCRU Partnership, I am exploring ways to upscale the analysis and management of human-wildlife conflict, and developing a unified framework for understanding conflict and coexistence in South America, taking advantage of a set of project partners in a wide cross-section of ecological, cultural, socioeconomic and political contexts in Brazil and Bolivia.

Dr. Joseph Roche Assistant Professor
Dr. Joseph Roche is an astrophysicist and Assistant Professor in science education at Trinity College Dublin. He has worked for NASA and observed symbiotic stars using the Hubble Space Telescope.
He teaches Science & Society and Communicating Science on a Master in Science Education programme at Trinity College and is course coordinator of a Postgraduate Certificate in 21st Century Teaching and Learning. His current research interests include: informal science education, citizen science and evaluating public engagement in science.

Brady Wagoner Professor
Professor Brady Wagoner (University of Aalborg) is a world-leading expert in idiographic methodology and memory. He is Director of the Cultural Psychology MA programme at Aalborg University. He did his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he developed innovative new methods to study cultural and constructive processes.
In particular, he has done work on conversational remembering, impact evaluation in zoos and art museums, therapeutic encounters, among others. Additionally, he has devised research strategies that synthesise qualitative and quantity methods by using the latter to situate and contextualise cases analysed qualitatively.
Camila Martins Coordinator of Education Department
Coordinator of the Education Department at Parque das Aves (Brazil). She leads a team of educators and mediators that engage in connecting people with nature through educational activities based on social learning. She is a biologist, with a master’s degree in Wildlife Conservation from the Federal University of São Carlos/São Paulo Zoo (Brazil). She has a Ph.D. in Science Education at the University of São Paulo (Brazil), where she investigated the connection between zoos and school through environmental education training programs for teachers.
She is a biologist, master in Wildlife Conservation by Federal University of São Carlos/ São Paulo Zoo (Brazil) and currently a Ph.D. student in the Science Education Post-Graduation Program at University of São Paulo (Brazil), investigating the connection between zoos and school through environmental education training programs for teachers. Contributes as a member of the Environmental Education Department of São Paulo Zoological Society and has great interests in environmental education research and learning process in informal contexts. She is part of the GREEN Group – Research Group on Environmental Education and in 2014 she created the Research Group on Environmental Education at Zoo.
Jessica Norberto Research Fellow
Jessica has a Ph.D. in Education from the University of São Paulo (USP) and a Master's Degree in Scientific and Cultural Communication from the University of Campinas (Unicamp). Currently, she is a Science Communicator at the Foundation Science Centre and Higher Distance Education of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Cecierj Foundation), Research Fellow of the Institute for Methods Innovation (IMI), and Researcher of the National Institute of Public Communication of Science and Technology (INCT-CPCT / Brazil).
She has practical experience in science outreach programmes, such as in the management of mobile science centres and museums and as a teacher in training courses, and in the works developed at the Centre of Science Dissemination from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), at the projects of implantation Espaço do Conhecimento da UFMG and of PONTO UFMG Itinerant Museum, at the Natural History Museum in London, and as a member of the organizing and judge committees of several National and International Science Fairs.
Participation notes
Places in this course are limited to 30, with priority given to those who apply earlier.

Dr. Andrew Moss (Conservation Social Scientist, Chester Zoo) has over a decade of visitor research experience in world zoos and aquariums. He has led over fifty evaluation research projects and has numerous publications, in journals such as Conservation Biology, the Journal of Environmental Education, Visitor Studies and Nature.

Rachel Lowry is Chief Conservation Officer at WWF-Australia, where she leads and support a team committed to making our world a better place. She was Director of Wildlife Conservation and Science at Zoos Victoria and President of International Zoo Educators Association. Rachel led a team at Zoos Victoria that oversees the organizations wildlife captive breeding and recovery projects, eco-socio projects, environmental sustainability, collection planning, research and animal welfare. Rachel is also advisor to Australia’s Threatened Species Commissioner, and Past Chair and Director of the Centre for Sustainability leadership.

Dr. Eric Jensen is an internationally-recognised social scientist specializing in innovative methods of conducting impact evaluation research in informal learning and public engagement contexts.

Professor at the University of São Paulo, Alessandra holds a bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences, a Master’s degree in Biological Sciences (Zoology) and a PhD in Education, all from the University of São Paulo.

Judy is passionate about marine conservation and has focused her career on helping people to care for the oceans. She has worked for the South African Association for Marine Biological Research (SAAMBR) in Durban since 1992. She was the Director of Education for 10 years, the uShaka Sea World Director and the first woman Chief Executive Officer of SAAMBR.

I am interested in the human dimensions of human-wildlife interactions and, ever since my doctoral work at the WildCRU on the “Human Dimensions of the Conflicts between People and Jaguars in Brazil”, I have been dedicating to the dissemination and strengthening of conservation social science and its application to conservation practice.

Dr. Joseph Roche is an astrophysicist and Assistant Professor in science education at Trinity College Dublin. He has worked for NASA and observed symbiotic stars using the Hubble Space Telescope.

Professor Brady Wagoner (University of Aalborg) is a world-leading expert in idiographic methodology and memory. He is Director of the Cultural Psychology MA programme at Aalborg University. He did his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he developed innovative new methods to study cultural and constructive processes.

Coordinator of the Education Department at Parque das Aves (Brazil). She leads a team of educators and mediators that engage in connecting people with nature through educational activities based on social learning. She is a biologist, with a master’s degree in Wildlife Conservation from the Federal University of São Carlos/São Paulo Zoo (Brazil). She has a Ph.D. in Science Education at the University of São Paulo (Brazil), where she investigated the connection between zoos and school through environmental education training programs for teachers.

Jessica has a Ph.D. in Education from the University of São Paulo (USP) and a Master's Degree in Scientific and Cultural Communication from the University of Campinas (Unicamp). Currently, she is a Science Communicator at the Foundation Science Centre and Higher Distance Education of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Cecierj Foundation), Research Fellow of the Institute for Methods Innovation (IMI), and Researcher of the National Institute of Public Communication of Science and Technology (INCT-CPCT / Brazil).