Planetarium Educator’s Workshop Series

Part 3: Organizational Patterns

Alan Gould

Video here.

If you watch the video and jot down notes connected with the workshop, you may send those notes to Alan Gould (agould [AT] berkeley [dot] edu) and he can add your notes to the partcipants' responses in the chat below.

Below you can find a list of attendees, AI-generated notes, and the chat. To see a description and schedule of all upcoming Planetarians' Zoom Seminars, visit https://www.ppadomes.org/events/online-seminars/pzs-schedule

Date and time for the next seminar:

Open Discussion: AI in Your Dome with Jeff Nee

2026 Apr 24 at 11am PDT (2pm EDT, 18:00 UTC)

Useful References:

• ips-planetarium.org/pass

• ips-planetarium.org/page/pass#1

• gss.lawrencehallofscience.org/planetariums

• pass.lawrencehallofscience.org

• Workshop slides:  HERE

Information Below

• Attendees

• AI-generated Summary

• Chat

Attendees

1. Alan Gould, Berkeley California USA (co-host) 

2. Rosemary Walling, Marie Drake Planetarium, Juneau, Ak (co-host)

3. Jon Elvert

4. Mary Holt

5. Waylena McCully, Champaign, IL

6. Omega Smith, Babula Planetarium, Fairbanks, AK

7. Nick Strobel

8. Karl von Ahnen, Santa Cruz Mountains

AI-Generated Summary

This AI-generated summary has been edited by Alan Gould for accuracy but does not replace watching the full video. If you find any incorrect or misleading information in the AI summaries, you can let us know. Our contact information is here.

Overview

Part 3 of this Planetarium Educators Workshop series focuses on six organizational patterns for audience participation programs: Didactic, Small Group Task, Individual Task, Informal Discussion, Group Meeting, and Socratic. Different patterns work better for different planetarium sizes and age groups.

This workshop series is based on the Planetarium Educator’s Workshop Guide which is volume 1 of PASS (Planetarium Activities for Successful Shows), available at multiple websites including International Planetarium Society (IPS - https://www.ips-planetarium.org/pass ) and Lawrence Hall of Science—University of California, Berkeley (https://gss.lawrencehallofscience.org/planetariums/ and https://pass.lawrencehallofscience.org/ )

Recap of the first two parts of the Planetarium Educator’s Workshop that took place in 2025 established terminology (audience/students/visitors, presenter/instructor/facilitator, topic/subject) and the value of audience-presenter-audience interactions. Although audience participation may not convey as much information or concepts as lecturing, it can result in higher retention, engagement, and perhaps most importantly, enjoyment.

Six Organizational Patterns

1. Didactic Organizational Pattern

One-way information flow from instructor to audience.

Advantages and disadvantages

• Rosemary: Presenter controls content delivery; disadvantage is lack of audience feedback.

• Mary: Useful for describing facts or as preface to interactive methods; can be boring if overused

• Waylena: Advantage is consistency (everyone might be on the same page); disadvantage is inability to assess audience comprehension

• Omega: Focuses attention on one topic but no way to know retention; easy to lose attention

Didactic method is absolutely necessary for explaining tasks, introducing concepts, and is essential for implementing most other organizational patterns.

Effectiveness depends heavily on presenter's skill and engagement.

It perhaps should not be the only method used in a presentation.

2. Small Group Task Organizational Pattern

Divide audience into small groups with specific tasks to accomplish.

Advantages and disadvantages

• • Mary: Advantages include better learning for conversational learners and comfort for shy participants; disadvantages arise when one person.

  • Omega: Broadens perspective and uses critical thinking; disadvantages include potential distractions, more time required, and more resources needed.

  • Karl: Increased possibility for individual input; some people feel less inhibited in smaller groups.

  • Alan: Example from Constellations show where students use star maps to find constellations.

  • Omega: Shared example of star clock activity used in Alaska above Arctic Circle.

  • Waylena: Suggested moon phases activity using light source and spheres.

Small group tasks take significantly more time than didactic approaches.

More engaging and fun for participants.

Requires clear task definition and adequate time allocation.=

Works well for hands-on learning activities.

An important consideration is to allow adequate time for having each group report/share results of their work to the whole audience. Representative from a group may not reflect all the important points brought out in the group, so sometimes it could be appropriate to have more than one representative summarizing the group’s work. For some activities, report from each group may not be needed.

3. Individual Task Organizational Pattern

Each person performs the same or different tasks independently.

Example: Variable star observation activity from Black Holes show. Each audience member plots the light curve of a variable star (eclipsing binary star)

Advantages and disadvantages

• Karl: Suggested drawing moon phases each night or marking shadow positions.

• Omega: Can take less time than group tasks; can lead to high retention; varying learning rates could be a problem.

• Mary: Example: students predicting sun movement with finger tracing; advantage is universal participation.

• Nick: [in eclipsing binary graphing activity] Audience could go in more depth, such as estimating mass in the binary star or teaching statistics concepts like mean and standard deviation.

• Rosemary: Example of having small kids walk like they would on the moon.

Individual tasks assure that everyone gets to participate.

Can require physical resources and corresponding logistics to distribute things during the activity.

Can be done with same task for all participants or with different tasks assigned.

4. Informal Discussion Organizational Pattern

Free, uninhibited discussion among visitors with instructor facilitating.

Advantages and disadvantages

• Mary: Most flexible approach of the four patterns discussed so far.

• Waylena: Agreed on adaptability.

• Omega: Allows time to explore ideas but takes time and requires checking each group for concept accuracy.

• Nick: Disadvantage for younger students who get distracted; middle schoolers may be prone to off-topic discussions.

• Karl: Suggested talking with neighbors allows organizing thoughts before sharing with larger group.

• Rosemary: Good technique for predicting what happens after showing part of a pattern.

• Alan: Recalled Jeff Nee's mastery of “think-pair-share” technique, where presenter stops and asks the audience to discuss a question or problem with their neighbor(s).

Allows students to test ideas with peers before sharing publicly

Requires monitoring to ensure misconceptions are avoided.

5. Group Meeting Organizational Pattern

Problem-centered approach with entire audience participating in facilitated discussion.

Advantages and disadvantages

• Rosemary: Questioned if this is the default when facilitator picks up a question

• Mary: May be challenging for planetarium space, especially in the dark. May be better suited for classrooms.

• Alan: Group meeting is easier in a small planetarium than a large one. Shared Benjamin Mendelssohn's experience with asking questions during shows at Morrison Planetarium with large audiences. The trick in either large or small domes is how to encourage responses from the audience.

• Karl: Noted that once one or two people speak, others often loosen up; emphasized importance of waiting for responses.

• Nick: Referenced 10-second rule for waiting.

• Waylena: Discussed encouraging audience to speak up in 50-foot dome with under 100 seats; practice saying answers at beginning of the show can make a big difference in audience responding.

More effective in smaller venues but adaptable to larger spaces.

Alan noted how he has sometimes asked the question "Does that make sense?" or "Is that clear?" to the audience and in retrospect that seems useless as a way to determine if the audience is getting the point. Nick suggested asking "what questions do you have" instead of "is that clear"

6. Socratic Method Organizational Pattern

Exploration of questioning strategy to lead students to particular ideas through justification and clarification.

Advantages and disadvantages

• Karl: Noted everyone does this to some extent naturally.

• Rosemary: Believes it takes training.

• Waylena: Initially fell flat but used successfully in Sun, Moon, and Stars program for young children; challenge is preventing parents from feeding answers.

• Jon: Used method by turning student questions back to the class for peer answers.

• Alan: Acknowledged limited personal experience with formal Socratic method.

Requires skill to implement effectively, involving asking questions and leading through responses.

Can be adapted for various age groups including preschoolers

Exploring questions in depth rather than skipping to next subject is valuable

Discussion of show length

• Rosemary: Activities may require more time but absorption is better.

• Karl: Ran programs over an hour even for young children by keeping activities moving.

• Waylena: More limited time with young kids unless back-to-back shows; more flexibility with college students.

• Nick: All shows are one hour with star tour first half and all-dome film second half.

• Alan: Shows at Lawrence Hall of Science were originally 50 minutes, often extending to an hour; over the years, we’ve trended toward shorter shows, like 20-30 min. No pre-recorded program.

• Karl: Typically ran hour and 15-minute shows including 20-25 minute pre-recorded portion.

Next Seminar and Planetarium Educator’s Workshops:

• April 24, 2026 on AI in Your Dome with Jeff Nee. Email questions or topics for AI discussion to Jeff Nee at nee@skyskan.com for this seminar

• Module 4 "How the Audience Sees It" for summer 2026

• Module 5 "Questioning Strategies" for fall 2026

[Note from Rosemary: interesting discussions happen after recording stops. The following parts of the summary are from after the recording stopped.]

Educational Standards?

Discussion of balancing curriculum coverage with meaningful engagement. Trade-off between coverage and depth of understanding. Alan noted audience participation activities may be inefficient for addressing many educational standards but can provide more in-depth valuable learning for select standard(s). In early days at Lawrence Hall sparking interest was more important than standards; come to think of it, there were no standards then. Those were the days. :^)

Star Maps and Technology

We discussed teaching traditional paper star map skills versus smartphone apps.

• Rosemary: Discussed combining paper star charts with phone apps for Girl Scouts; paper provides context that phone apps lack. Combination of traditional and modern tools can be effective.

• Alan: Emphasized value of learning paper star maps, especially for students who cannot see real stars due to light pollution. Planetarium may be only place many students can see stars!

• Waylena: Noted tactile magic of paper maps versus screen-based apps; star hopping can be visualized better with tracing lines on a physical star map.

• Alan: Expressed interest in teaching planisphere use and having students make their own

• Rosemary: Mentioned several places have patterns for making planispheres

• Alan: Created Sky Challengers with interchangeable wheels (https://gss.lawrencehallofscience.org/planispheres/) and Messier object star wheel (https://gss.lawrencehallofscience.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2026/02/MessierStarwheel2026.pdf) for eVscope/smartscope use.

Chat

0:09:35 Alan Gould: 1. DIDACTIC advantages; disadvantages:

0:10:14 Rosemary Walling: Advantage is that you get to say what you want to put out there.

0:10:17 Mary Holt: Advantages - if you're just trying to describe a fact or phenomenon, even if it's just to be a preface before more interactive methods

0:10:50 Mary Holt: Disadvantages would be if that's the only method you use in a presentation, could be boring for folks

0:10:56 Rosemary Walling: Disadvantage is that people are assumed to follow

0:11:07 Karl von Ahnen: Audience might fall asleep.

0:12:12 Waylena McCully: adv: consistency, dis: can't tell if audience is getting it

0:12:14 Omega Smith | Babula Planetarium: Advantages: focuses attention on one topic, get's unified information out there, makes sure everyone is on the same page before exploring more. Disadvantages: no way to know if they retained the info, cannot explore more into complex ideas, easy to lose attention.

0:12:25 Waylena McCully: Reacted to "Advantages: focuses attention on one topic, get's unified information out there, makes sure everyone is on the same page before exploring more. Disadvantages: no way to know if they retained the info, cannot explore more into complex ideas, easy to lose attention." with 👍

0:12:32 Mary Holt: Reacted to "Advantages: focuses attention on one topic, get's unified information out there, makes sure everyone is on the same page before exploring more. Disadvantages: no way to know if they retained the info, cannot explore more into complex ideas, easy to lose attention." with 👍

0:12:38 Mary Holt: Reacted to "adv: consistency, dis: can't tell if audience is getting it" with 👍

________________________________________________

0:16:38 Alan Gould: 2. SMALL GROUP TASK examples; advantages; disadvantages:

0:17:47 Mary Holt: Advantage can be for folks that learn better when they're able to have a conversation with other people about a topic, or if they're shy and would rather share with a small group than out loud to the whole group

0:18:30 Mary Holt: Disadvantages can arise if one person in a small group dominates the conversation or activity too much

0:19:07 Omega Smith | Babula Planetarium: Advantage: boraden you perspective by hearing from others, use critical thinking when actively trying to get the task done instead of having someone tell you the answer, higher rentention and more of an experience than a lecture. Disadvantage: can lose the group if they get distracted by each other, takes more time, more resources, harder to plan

0:19:07 Karl von Ahnen: Increased possibility for each person to have input. Some people fell less inhibited in smaller groups.

0:21:42 Mary Holt: Native folks in the Bay Area do that too actually!

0:23:01 Waylena McCully: I love the star clock!

0:23:41 Mary Holt: Reacted to "I love the star clock!" with 💯

____________________________________________________

0:24:53 Alan Gould: 3. INDIVIDUAL TASK examples; advantages; disadvantages:

0:25:19 Mary Holt: A quick example is having the students predict and trace with their fingers where the Sun will "move" in the sky

0:25:30 Mary Holt: Advantage is everyone can participate

0:26:06 Mary Holt: I can't think of many obvious disadvantages, but maybe that describing how to do the task in a way that everyone can participate equally might be challenging, depending on the task

0:26:08 Nick Strobel: For measurements, the mass individual tasks could be used to talk about mean, standard deviation —statistics

0:26:30 Omega Smith | Babula Planetarium: Advantages: Not as much time as group tasks, practical application of concepts means high retention, more fun than listening. Disadvantages: more resources, people learn at different rates so some people will be bored while waiting for others to finish

0:26:30 Rosemary Walling: For a break when landed on the moon, I have small kids walk like they would on the moon.

0:26:40 Mary Holt: Reacted to "For a break when landed on the moon, I have small kids walk like they would on the moon." with ❤️

0:26:48 Waylena McCully: Reacted to "Advantages: Not as much time as group tasks, practical application of concepts means high retention, more fun than listening. Disadvantages: more resources, people learn at different rates so some people will be bored while waiting for others to finish" with 👍

0:26:57 Waylena McCully: Reacted to "For measurements, the mass individual tasks could be used to talk about mean, standard deviation —statistics" with 👍

0:27:18 Karl von Ahnen: Have students draw the phase of the moon each night, and/or the position of the moon in the sky at the same time each night. Mark position of shadow as the earth turns.

0:28:22 Mary Holt: I loved doing that with our Moon show in Hohfeld at the Academy when they still did live shows in there, sigh ❤️

0:28:25 Waylena McCully: Reacted to "Have students draw the phase of the moon each night, and/or the position of the moon in the sky at the same time each night. Mark position of shadow as the earth turns." with 👍

0:30:07 Mary Holt: BRB

____________________________________________________

0:34:51 Alan Gould: 4. INFORMAL DISCUSSION examples; advantages; disadvantages:

0:35:13 Mary Holt: One of the biggest advantage I can see with this one is it seems to be the most flexible approach of the 4

0:35:37 Waylena McCully: It does sound very adaptable

0:35:56 Omega Smith | Babula Planetarium: Advantages: allows time to explore ideas. Disadvantage: takes time, need to check in with each group to makes sure they get the conecpts correct, could propogate misinformation

0:36:17 Karl von Ahnen: The idea of talking with you neighbor , or a small group, allows one to put their thought in order before sharing with the larger group.

0:36:57 Nick Strobel: Disadvantages for the younger crowd is that they get distracted talking about something else besides the topic

0:37:12 Rosemary Walling: Just generically, it seems to be a good technique for a "predicting what happens" after you show part of a pattern.

0:37:20 Mary Holt: I'd be more worried about that with middle schoolers, honestly, hahaha

0:37:51 Waylena McCully: Reacted to "I'd be more worried about that with middle schoolers, honestly, hahaha" with 🤪

0:38:14 Nick Strobel: Definitely middle schoolers

____________________________________________________

0:41:29 Alan Gould: 5. GROUP MEETING examples; advantages; disadvantages:

0:42:03 Mary Holt: That does seem to be the most challenging one for a planetarium space, would be a good one for a classroom

0:42:16 Waylena McCully: Reacted to "That does seem to be the most challenging one for a planetarium space, would be a good one for a classroom" with 👍

0:42:41 Rosemary Walling: Isn't this the "default" when a question is posed or picked up by a facilitator?

0:42:43 Jon Elvert: ...especially in the dark.

0:44:36 Nick Strobel: 10 second rule

0:44:37 Mary Holt: Definitely have done shouting out answers with big groups, as long as you establish they should say their answer ONCE, not shouting it a bunch of times, lol

0:46:27 Waylena McCully: Smaller group dynamics

0:47:42 Mary Holt: We used this method a lot when I was a tutor, but that was for one-on-one situations

0:48:24 Omega Smith | Babula Planetarium: I have to run to a meeting. Great workshop! Thanks, Alan!

0:48:59 Mary Holt: Yeah I gotta run as well. Thanks Alan, and everyone else for your thoughts too! 🙂 Good to see y'all!

0:49:52 Nick Strobel: Ask them “what questions do you have?”

____________________________________________________

0:49:55 Alan Gould: 6. SOCRATIC examples; advantages; disadvantages:

0:50:36 Rosemary Walling: I think it takes training

0:52:46 Nick Strobel: Works in one-on-one tutoring

0:53:05 Waylena McCully: Definitely fell flat my first few times

0:54:09 Karl von Ahnen: Exploring questions in depth rather than skipping to the next subject, and how you reach a conclusion, can be very enlightening.

0:54:11 Waylena McCully: Y'all are giving me encouraging ideas

0:54:16 Waylena McCully: Reacted to "Exploring questions in depth rather than skipping to the next subject, and how you reach a conclusion, can be very enlightening." with 👍

0:55:40 Rosemary Walling: www.ips-planetarium.org/page/pass#1

0:55:55 Waylena McCully: www.ips-planetarium.org/page/pass#1" with ❤️

0:56:09 Alan Gould: Planetarium Activities for Successful Shows:

www.ips-planetarium.org/pass

gss.lawrencehallofscience.org/planetariums

pass.lawrencehallofscience.org

Workshop slides:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1oW-5FZ4kEzOcKqvJfQmVhkdxg3Xhf7uQ5X-VuTqNR8M/

https://www.youtube.com/@ppadomes/videos

0:56:37 Rosemary Walling: Recording will be on: https://www.ppadomes.org/

0:57:28 Nick Strobel: Thank you, Alan!

0:57:42 Rosemary Walling: Next month: 2026 Apr 24 at 11am PDT (2pm EDT, 18:00 UTC), Open Discussion: AI in Your Dome with Jeff Nee. Join your peers to both share your experiences, hear from others, and ask your questions about using artificial intelligence in/around your dome.  Whether you're interested in help with marketing, coding, show creation, and more, whether you've been using it for years and want to share your favorite project, or you've been putting off using it entirely and have big questions or concerns, everyone is welcome to join the discussion.  Facilitated by Jeff Nee from Sky-Skan International.  To share advanced questions (for a better response during the discussion) as well as any slides/materials (to share your own projects/experiences), please email nee@skyskan.com.

0:58:05 Jon Elvert: Good job, Alan. Thanks!

0:58:35 Waylena McCully: Alan, thank you so much. I've been so immersed in tech these past few years that I worry my live skills have been stagnating.

0:58:39 Waylena McCully: Reacted to "Next month: 2026 Apr 24 at 11am PDT (2pm EDT, 18:00 UTC), Open Discussion: AI in Your Dome with Jeff Nee. with ❤️