Educate to Keep It Great: The Long-Term Successes of a Virtual Great Barrier Reef Education Program

Abstract

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is under pressure from climate change and other threats, and part of the solution is to raise awareness of the GBR and its threats beyond a local audience (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, 2019). Reef HQ Aquarium (the national education centre for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority) implemented a virtual marine education program focussed on the GBR in 1998. The program uses videoconferencing technology to connect real-time marine biology experts to participants around the world. We report on > ten years of participant trends for this program to assess whether the program is a mechanism for increasing community educational outreach. Since 2005, the program increased the Aquarium's community and educational outreach by 4.8% by connecting an additional 83 388 participants from 19 countries worldwide. While the videoconference technology has evolved overtime, the program content remains a unique, interactive virtual experience that has proven to be an effective way for an informal learning institute to increase their outreach on a national and international level, particularly as there has been a transition to online learning and educational programs due the recent global Coronavirus pandemic.