On November 4, 2010 The Science Museum of Minnesota, in conjunction with Fresh Energy, held a program about ocean acidification. The program included a dinner reception for VIP guests, a screening of the documentary film A Sea Change, and a panel discussion about ocean acidification. A Sea Change (http://www.aseachange.net/) is a feature-length documentary film about ocean acidification. A Sea Change documents Sven Huseby's worldwide search for more information about ocean acidification. Huseby, a retired history teacher, talks with scientists, policy experts, lawyers, business leaders, and
Given its ongoing commitment to universal design and the integration of technologies into the museum experience, the Museum of Science decided to employ a handheld Multimedia Tour to accompany Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination, an exhibition about the real world meeting Star Wars technologies. With the help of leading tour guide developer, Antenna Audio, a 22-stop tour was produced featuring narration, Behind the Scenes interviews with individuals who had worked on the films, Star Wars film clips, still photos and the ability to send information home. An American Sign Language version
On two Saturday mornings, December 3 and December 10, 2005, two groups of Deaf adults were invited to participate in a focus group to try out the Multimedia Tour in the Star Wars exhibition and provide feedback on both its effectiveness and how it could be improved. The purpose of the focus group was to gain rich in-depth feedback from many people at once, particularly because it is so difficult to capture Deaf users in our exit interviews due to language barriers. Focus groups followed a topical framework surrounding what visitors enjoyed about the handheld, improvements they might make to
The NSF-funded 400 Years of the Telescope project was a unique partnership among a public television station, a production studio, two planetariums and a leading astronomical society in the United States. Its five main components included a one-hour PBS documentary, a 22-minute planetarium program, a website with astronomical infromation, "star parties"(nighttime astronomical viewing events) and promotional events hosted by PBS affiliate stations. The summative evaluation focused on three main evaluation questions: 1) What are the individual and cumulative impacts of the menu of deliverables
Listeners to The Really Big Questions (TRBQ) were asked to complete an online survey about their thoughts and experience with the program. Those interviewed cited that they valued the depth and thoughtfulness of the TRBQ programs and said they would like to see more programming produced. When asked, listeners reported that they would be willing to access programming via the Internet if it were not available by radio broadcast. They also reported that while they would like to see new programming as frequently as every week, they felt that quality and depth were more important than the number of
In October 2009, the Tennessee Aquarium began an ambitious program, Connecting Tennessee to the World Ocean (CTWO), funded by a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. CTWO consists of several individual projects, all intended to increase the ocean literacy of Aquarium audiences and to promote their adoption of an ocean stewardship ethic. This formative evaluation report summarizes the extent to which the Aquarium has made progress toward these goals in the first year of the project and provides an information base for identifying opportunities to strengthen
Edu, Inc. provided expertise and experience in user testing and evaluation of public outreach using new media for this project. In their role as advisor, Edu, Inc., observed that the website successfully satisfied the project goal of producing and testing five new models of interactive media and several feedback mechanisms to allow the public to register personal opinions on ethical scenarios regarding nanotechnology. The evaluators suggest that there is significant anecdotal evidence to recommend four practices tested by the web designers: 1. The potential of web comics as a media to present
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Douglas SpencerOregon Public BroadcastingJediah GrahamSusan Hibbard
Cracking the Maya Code is a one-hour PBS/NOVA adaptation of the two-hour feature documentary Breaking the Maya Code, based on the book of the same title by Michael D. Coe. Major funding for the project - which included website, eduational and outreach components - was provided by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Knight Williams Research conducted a summative evaluation of Cracking the Maya Code. The evaluation examined the appeal, clarity, and educational impact of the program, focusing on educating Viewers about: The basic principles that underlie
The Museum of Science (MoS) in Boston is contributing to early endeavors of informal science educators to engage and inform the public about the emerging field of nanotechnology by producing 3-5 minute segments that appear on a regional cable news station, New England Cable News (NECN). Multimedia Research implemented a naturalistic post-only experiment with three general goals: (1) to assess the effectiveness of four Sci-Tech Today segments in engaging, educating and motivating the public to learn more about nanotechnology; (2) to appraise local news viewers' support for science and
Goodman Research Group completed the summative evaluation report of the Black Holes Experiment Gallery (BHEG), a traveling exhibit by the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which aimed at engaging museum visitors in the topic of black holes. One of the innovations of the project included the inclusion of significant input from youth collaborators in the exhibit's design and development phase in order to achieve improved audience impact and the other innovation was a Black Holes Explorer's Card which visitors used to collect digital artifacts at the museum and could access the
Listening to the River (LTTR) is a watershed science education project funded by the National Science Foundation. Its aims are to deliver education experiences in the local area, Traverse City, Michigan, and also to develop a model that could be replicated in other locations. Inverness Research was contracted by the Listening to the River project to conduct both formative and summative evaluations. Our work began in 2005 when the project received a planning grant, and continued through the life of the project. Primarily through interviews and product reviews, along with some direct program
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mark St. JohnHeather MitchellDawn RoblesElizabeth HorschLaura StokesLand Information Access Assocation
Radiolab is a public radio series of hour-long interdisciplinary shows, co-hosted by Robert Krulwich and Jad Abumrad, and produced by WNYC. To help guide the future development of shows, this evaluation, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, gathered feedback from listeners via online and mailed questionnaires in response to a season 4 show entitled Choice. The general goals for the evaluation process are: (1) To explore what attributes of the format engage and interest listeners; (2) To examine influences on awareness and comprehension of content; and (3) To assess impact on post