Stroud Water Research Center (SWRC) will partner with Longwood Gardens (LG) to develop educational materials that help visitors understand the links between the hydrologic and carbon cycles. The goal is to demonstrate how landscape aesthetics can influence land-use decisions, and to offer carbon-neutral methods the public and others can employ to reduce the impact of storm runoff. The intended audience is primarily adults among the 800,000 annual visitors to the Gardens who are landowners as well as professionals such as engineers, regional planners, landscape architects, developers and municipal officials. This project will also communicate research to public audiences through SWRC and LG websites.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Louis KaplanJ. Denis NewboldSusan GillAnthony Aufdenkampe
The Exploding Optic Incredible was an experiment in expanding the boundaries of art and music with science and technology. Ostensibly a multi-media rock concert as a fund raiser for Marshall Barnes' drug free creativity efforts, it took Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable concept of the 1960s into unchartered territory driven by Marshall's inspiration through discussions with Omni magazine's Dick Teresi and Pamela Weintraub and Gene Youngblood's book, Expanded Cinema. Marshall incorporated 1970s era slide and film projection light show effects, with dance lights, massive strobes, spotlights, and big screen video projection that showed customized and original video special effects while bands performed, and music videos in-between accompanied by lighting effects. The first multi-media rock concert of the 1990s, the January 18, 1990 event at the Newport Music Hall was also a test for the public's reaction to over stimulation through sight and sound, the results leading to exploration and ultimate creation of psychoactive entertainment technology later that year and the formation of new technological architectures for entertainment and learning that have yet to be presented but exist in design form.
This project was an early example of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) and was produced for the 2004 BLD Studios art exhibition, Time Machines, in Columbus, OH. This project included a chair and a desk made of drawers, on top of which was a audio/video work station where visitors sat and interacted with the technology by using the headphones and listening to one tape deck for instructions and then listening to music on the other while watching the TV screen with special HyperSpeks(tm). There was also a panel of photos above the TV designed to simulate time travel. The instructions explained the purpose of the exhibit and how to use the TV to tune into various channels to pick-up a variety of video static on empty UHF frequencies. The music was designed to put the visitor into a certain frame of mind. It was futuristic sounding and created using DEMI sampling, a proprietary sampling technique also created by Marshall Barnes. The intent was to set the mood. Training Session was supposed to simulate training prospective transdimensional travelers in the cognitive exercises required to deal with the psychological rigors of time/parallel universe travel. The HyperSpeks(tm) allowed the visitors to search for various shapes in the TV static on a number of selcted channels which would resemble such cosmological constructs as black holes and wormholes. The static was live and not prerecorded and so the interaction on all levels was live and in real time. Visitors were to write their observations down on paper which was provided via a note pad and pen at the exhibit. In this way, a record of their experiences existed for subsequent visitors to review. The visitors were also told to view the photo panel, which consisted of pictures taken in 1977, but not developed until 2004. As a result, the pictures were somewhat faded and all tinted pink, however, when the visitors viewed them with the HyperSpeks(tm) they appeared not only normal color, but almost as if the scenes they depicted were views outside a window. Thus, the visitor was able to travel optically back in time and see the images the way they looked when they were originally photographed.
This summative evaluation of the exhibition Robots & Us was designed to investigate how visitor audiences used and experienced this exhibition in relation to the project’s objectives and challenges. Visitors’ expectations and perceptions in relation to the project’s content goals prompted the summative evaluation to focus on specific challenges including: attitudes and perceptions about technology, connections between robots and people, appeal to a broad audience, and reactions to specific exhibits.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jeff HaywardJolene HartScience Museum of Minnesota
The Huntington asked Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to conduct a summative evaluation to study the impact of Plants are up to Something, a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded exhibition in the Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science. The study was specifically designed to examine visitors’ behavior in the exhibition, including engagement with science; understanding of the overall exhibition message; and understanding of and attitudes toward plants. RK&A conducted the first summative evaluation of Plants are up to Something in 2006 and it revealed findings worthy of
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
This report details the findings from an exploratory research study conducted by the Research and Evaluation Department at the Museum of Science, Boston about this exhibition, which came to be known as Provocative Questions (PQ). This investigation was guided by the following questions: 1. Will visitors engage in socio-scientific argumentation in an un-facilitated exhibit space, and are they aware that they are doing so? 2. How do the un-facilitated exhibits impact visitors’ socio-scientific argumentation skills? For the exploratory research study, visitors were cued to use the exhibits and
A range of sources support science learning, including the formal education system, libraries, museums, nature and Science Centers, aquariums and zoos, botanical gardens and arboretums, television programs, film and video, newspapers, radio, books and magazines, the Internet, community and health organizations, environmental organizations, and conversations with friends and family. This study examined the impact of one single part of this infrastructure, a Science Center. This study asked two questions. First, who in Los Angeles (L.A.) has visited the California Science Center and what factors
Considerable time and effort have been invested in understanding the motivations of museum visitors. Many investigators have sought to describe why people visit museums, resulting in a range of descriptive categorizations. Recently, investigators have begun to document the connections between visitors' entering motivations and their exiting learning. Doering and Pekarik have proposed starting with the idea that visitors are likely to enter a museum with an “entry narrative” (1996; see also Pekarik, Doering and Karns 1999). Doering and Pekarik argue that these entry narratives are likely to be
Falk and Dierking’s Contextual Model of Learning was used as a theoretical construct for investigating learning within a free-choice setting. A review of previous research identified key variables fundamental to free-choice science learning. The study sought to answer two questions: (1) How do specific independent variables individually contribute to learning outcomes when not studied in isolation? and (2) Does the Contextual Model of Learning provide a useful framework for understanding learning from museums? A repeated measure design including interviews and observational and behavioral
The aim of the work reported here has been to give an overview of the support that the informal sector provides for learning and engagement with science. In addressing this goal, we have taken the view that engagement with science and the learning of science occur both within and without schools. What is of interest is not who provides the experience or where it is provided but the nature and diversity of opportunities for science learning and engagement that are offered in contemporary UK society. Thus in approaching the work we have taken a systems perspective and looked at informal
It has been argued that visitors' pre-visit “agendas” directly influence visits. This study attempted to directly test the effects of different museum visit agendas on visitor learning. Two new tools were developed for this purpose: (1) a tool for measuring visitor agendas; and (2) a tool for measuring visitor learning (Personal Meaning Mapping). Visitor agenda was defined as having two dimensions: motivations and strategies. Personal Meaning Mapping is a constructivist approach that measures change in understanding along four semi-independent dimensions: extent, breadth, depth, and mastery
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TEAM MEMBERS:
John H FalkTheano MoussouriDouglas Coulson
Genetics was developed by The Tech staff in collaboration with Stanford University and was funded by the National Institutes of Health Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) program. The evaluation documents the impact and effectiveness of the exhibition using timing and tracking observations and exit interviews. It also examines the partnership between The Tech and Stanford University through interviews with graduate students, who conduct programs in the exhibition, and their supervisor (results are not included in this summary).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Randi KornThe Tech Museum of Innovation