Learning animal welfare and conservation at the zoo:

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this research is to explore theories of learning animal welfare and conservation at the zoo using digital media. Hence, theories mainly focusing on animal welfare and conservation and learning will be discussed in order to suggest a possible prototype for a mobile app that could be used to teach animal welfare and conservation at the zoo. Theory: Connectivism theory and theory of affordance are used for this capstone project. Method: This capstone project is divided in three parts: A systematic literature review, project design and project evaluation. The data collection was conducted in the form of zoo visit observation, documents acquired from Norderns Ark zoo and interviews with students and teachers. Results: The result of this project gives an insight on how users interact with a mobile app without the presence of a zoo guide around. The students were clicking on the different tabs to get more information about the specific animal. Using digital media may not be as interactive as face to face communication between the teacher and pupil. However, carefully designed mobile apps can be efficiently used to teach animal welfare and conservation at the zoo. Consequently, making the teaching and learning process collaborative and engaging experience might be effective to teach animal welfare and conservation at the zoo. Though there was also a plan to do the prototype test with multiple students, as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic, finally it is decided to do it with two students only. Therefore, the results are inconclusive and they are not reliable enough to improve the proposed mobile app prototype.