Objectives

This collaboration with Science Everywhere is designed to provide our CASC members and eligible collaborators with access to valuable program training that supports current visitor activities. The Freestyle Socials Course will support organizations in developing their capacity and program offerings that tackle misinformation. 

Success Measures

To ensure that the partnership successfully meets CASC’s strategic priorities, we wish to track and evaluate the level of participation in the course and evaluate the impact of games your organization runs post-training.   

Program Overview

• Each registered organization will receive free access to the Freestyle Socials Course between March 2025 to March  2026.  Up to three staff members can access the course portal from each organization. 
  • The Freestyle Socials Course text is provided in both official languages (English and French), and video portions of the course contain French captioning. 
• Each organization receives one (1) complimentary call with the Science Everywhere team to support their Freestyle Social delivery. 
• Access to downloadable banks of themed questions to facilitate game delivery, including a bank of questions related to tackling misinformation
  • General Topics
  • Misinformation Related Questions
• Access to ScienceUpFirst’s database of social media posts related to tackling misinformation.  

Participant Obligations

Freestyle Socials Course registrants agree to the following obligations as part of their free access to the learning material.

Organizations can receive free access to the Freestyle Socials Course by completing the sign-up form below and agreeing to the terms and conditions outlined in the form 

🔗 CASC-Sponsored Access to the Freestyle Socials Course 

Resources

The following resources will not be financially supported by CASC.

1. Paid staff time to complete the training course
   1. Approximately 6-8 hours.
2. Paid staff time allocated for planning and preparing games prior to delivery
   1. Approximately 1 hour per theme/game, depending on the subject. Prepared games can be reused multiple times. Staff preparation time is required for:
      1. Additional research (as needed)
      2. Creation of game questions or refining preexisting game questions (from the provided themed game question packs or from previous games)
3. Marketing resources (e.g. time) and materials to promote the games when they are delivered
4. Access to or rental of resources for hosting a game 
   1. 2 microphones, a microphone stand, a speaker, painter’s tape
5. Digital storage space for game questions to build an internal library of questions for future use (optional but strongly encouraged)

Activity Commitment

1. Deliver at least one Freestyle Socials game between March 2025 and March 2026 that connects to debunking misinformation.
2. Evaluate player enjoyment and learning from each game.
3. Report to CASC about staff participation and game evaluations on an ongoing basis, with a final deadline of March 2026.
4. Report to CASC about the overall program and provide project feedback by March 2026.
5. Provide feedback to the Science Everywhere team on the course material and format (via completion survey).
6. Acknowledgement of CASC support and Freestyle Social programing.

Participating organizations will receive free access after registering for the program and agreeing to the terms.  Staff members from participating organizations are asked to register for the Freestyle Socials Course using their workplace email address to facilitate reporting and to verify their place of employment. 

Subject Matter

Participating organizations are invited to select game topics most relevant to their audiences and concurrent offerings (e.g. exhibition topics). However, organizations are expected to include at least one question that addresses misinformation in each game. These questions can encourage players to think about credible information sources, the process of science, difficult conversations, tactics used by mis/disinformers etc. 

Educational resources about misinformation, such as misinformer tactics, cognitive biases, debunking strategies and critical thinking strategies, will be provided. The Science Everywhere team will provide a list of misinformation-related questions that can be adapted to fit the game’s topic. 

Game Evaluation and Reporting

Course participants are asked to evaluate each game and report to the ScienceUpFirst team on an ongoing basis via a reporting form. The deadline for all game reporting is March 2026. 

Organizations must report each game’s theme, number of players, where possible demographics of those players, game enjoyment and whether participants learned about the game's topic and about misinformation. These will be submitted via an evaluation form. Please see the Evaluation Toolkit for more information regarding the evaluation and reporting obligations. 

🔗 Freestyle Socials Course Evaluation Guide

Project Report and Feedback to CASC

Organizations are expected to complete a short form describing the impact of the course on their programming and feedback on the process. 

This is to be completed by March 31st 2026 via online form, a link to which will be provided later in the year. 

Branding and Funding Acknowledgement

Recognition of the Canadian Association of Science Centres as a sponsor on print and digital promotions, verbal recognition between March 2025 and March 2026. Please include an unmodified logo where applicable. Below are options for wording.

This game is funded by The Canadian Association of Science Centers. 

or

Funded by The Canadian Association of Science Centers.

The Freestyle Social branding guide will be available upon course completion through the course portal. You can find the CASC branding guide here.

Contact information

If you require further information about the Freestyle Socials Course or CASC’s funding of the year-long program, please contact Dr. Krishana Sankar at krishana.s@casc-accs.com.