The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), with six science centers across the U.S., will develop, implement, and evaluate the National Center for Blind Youth in Science (NCBYS), a three-year full-scale development project to increase informal learning opportunities for blind youth in STEM. Through partnerships and companion research, the NCBYS will lead to greater capacity to engage the blind in informal STEM learning. The NCBYS confronts a critical area of need in STEM education, and a priority for the AISL program: the underrepresentation of people with disabilities in STEM. Educators are often unaware of methods to deliver STEM concepts to blind students, and students do not have the experience with which to advocate for accommodations. Many parents of blind students are ill-equipped to provide support or request accessible STEM adaptations. The NCBYS will expose blind youth to non-visual methods that facilitate their involvement in STEM; introduce science centers to additional non-visual methods that facilitate the involvement of the blind in their exhibits; educate parents as to their students' ability to be independent both inside and outside the STEM classroom; provide preservice teachers of blind students with hands-on experience with blind students in STEM; and conduct research to inform a field that is lacking in published material. The NCBYS will a) conduct six regional, two-day science programs for a total of 180 blind youth, one day taking place at a local science center; b) conduct concurrent onsite parent training sessions; c) incorporate preservice teachers of blind students in hands-on activities; and d) perform separate, week-long, advanced-study residential programs for 60 blind high school juniors and seniors focused on the design process and preparation for post-secondary STEM education. The NCBYS will advance knowledge and understanding in informal settings, particularly as they pertain to the underrepresented disability demographic; but it is also expected that benefits realized from the program will translate to formal arenas. The proposed team represents the varied fields that the project seeks to inform, and holds expertise in blindness education, STEM education, museum education, parent outreach, teacher training, disability research, and project management. The initiative is a unique opportunity for science centers and the disability population to collaborate for mutual benefit, with lasting implications in informal STEM delivery, parent engagement, and teacher training. It is also an innovative approach to inspiring problem-solving skills in blind high school students through the design process. A panel of experts in various STEM fields will inform content development. NCBYS advances the discovery and understanding of STEM learning for blind students by integrating significant research alongside interactive programs. The audience includes students and those responsible for delivering STEM content and educational services to blind students. For students, the program will demonstrate their ability to interface with science center activities. Students will also gain mentoring experience through activities paired with younger blind students. Parents and teachers of blind students, as well as science center personnel, will gain understanding in the experiences of the blind in STEM, and steps to facilitate their complete involvement. Older students will pursue design inquiries into STEM at a more advanced level, processes that would be explored in post-secondary pursuits. By engaging these groups, the NCBYS will build infrastructure in the informal and formal arenas. Society benefits from the inclusion of new scientific minds, resulting in a diverse workforce. The possibility for advanced study and eventual employment for blind students also reduces the possibility that they would be dependent upon society for daily care in the future. The results of the proposed project will be disseminated and published broadly through Web sites; e-mail lists; social media; student-developed e-portfolios of the design program; an audio-described video; and presentations at workshops for STEM educators, teachers of blind students, blind consumer groups, researchers in disability education, and museum personnel.
This article discusses notion of "bimodal" visitation patterns by museum visitors, in which people are either interested or not in the material presented. The authors argue that this no-time, lots-of-time notion is misleading, and present data that contradicts its alleged commonness. They also discuss how timing data is and can be used by exhibit developers to improve their exhibits.
In February 2013, the Atomic Heritage Foundation (AHF) brought together historians, sociologists and other scholars, as well as museum directors and thought leaders from the informal science education field to engage in a two-day discussion to explore ways to engage the public in the topic of the development of the atomic bomb in the context of history, society and culture. The workshop, titled "Transforming the Relationship Between Science and Society: The Manhattan Project and Its Legacy," had as its overarching goal to identify how the Manhattan Project might best be interpreted in a
In this article, researchers for the University of North Carolina at Asheville describe findings from their study that assessed the impact of two interactive, hands-on, informal science-learning programs on elementary and middle school children's (1) general interest in science learning and (2) short-term science learning. They used a separate-sample pretest-posttest research design to evaluate the impact of two informal science-learning programs--a robotics program and an electricity program at the Health Adventure at Pack Place. The appendix of this report includes the survey, observation
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This paper reports findings from a study at the Exploratorium of a single physics exhibit that compared three labels and assessed visitors' attitudes and behavior. Based on interviews with 60 visitors, evaluators found a preference for labels containing both questions and suggestions, but that this type of phrasing may not always affect visitor behavior.
This paper discusses cognitive science research, specifically how people learn and learning as a transition from novice to expert within a field of knowledge. The authors explore some aspects of this model and ways in which it might be applied to science learning in museum settings.
This paper discusses the influence of mutual communication on exhibit development and evaluation. It discusses how mutual communication techniques helped developers at the Impression 5 Science Museum see the production of "SPIN," a traveling hands-on exhibit about rotational motion, through the eyes of the visitor and imagine ways of generating visitor-object and visitor-developer dialogues in the exhibit.
In this paper, Jeff Bonner of the St. Louis Science Center discusses the merits of formal versus naturalistic evaluation within the museum context. Bonner also presents the approach and findings of a two-part study designed to compare the results of these two evaluation approaches. They compared the the results of a formal analysis of the holding power, ease of use, readability of text, and overall enjoyability of nine exhibits with a naturalistic study focused on how one volunteer, two part-time employees and a staff supervisor viewed the same exhibits.
Engineering Adventures (EA) is a free, hands-on, project-based engineering curriculum designed for out-of-school time (OST) programs serving children in grades 3 to 5. The EA curriculum was developed by Engineering is Elementary® (EiE), a project of the National Center for Technological Literacy® at the Museum of Science, Boston. Each Engineering Adventures (EA) curriculum unit features a hands-on "engineering design challenge" based on real-world events that gives children the opportunity to apply and reinforce the science and engineering practices put forth in the Next Generation Science Standards. Every EA unit focuses on a different field of engineering and features 10-12 hours of activities with flexible scheduling options. EA units area available as FREE DOWNLOADS on the project website.
The goal of this outreach program was for Chemistry at the Space-Time (CaSTL) limit to partner with the Boys and Girls Club (BGC) of Santa Ana, CA to increase their participants' interest, enthusiasm and learning outcomes in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) fields, through the development of science and chemistry hands-on lessons. The Boys and Girls Club of Santa Ana serves nearly 2,700 participants each day at six sites. Ninety percent of their participants identify as Hispanic/Latino and 93% are on free or reduced lunch. Although the Boys and Girls Club offers limited STEM activities, they agreed to partner with CaSTL, a UC-Irvine NSF-funded Center for Chemical Innovation, to expand their STEM ISE activities. CaSTL, in close collaboration with both the California Science Project of Irvine (CSPI), developed 24 science lesson plans that engage participants in high-level, hands-on, and interactive lessons that expose program participants to the visualization of chemistry and physics, based on CaSTL's mission. All lessons align with the California Science Standards, are highly interactive, and do not mimic the school day. These lessons compliment the state standards, but go much further in providing the participants experimental, hands-on activities that they often do not receive in their schools, due to budget, space and time restrictions. CaSTL faculty and graduate students ensured that the lens through which CaSTL research occurs was clearly represented in the lessons. CaSTL graduate students developed one of the lessons and kit and taught the spectroscopy lesson at the club.
On February 14-15, 2013, the Atomic Heritage Foundation (AHF) hosted a workshop in Washington, DC: "Transforming the Relationship between Science and Society: Interpreting the Manhattan Project." The workshop, funded by the National Science Foundation, brought together historians, scientists, museum experts, and representatives of the National Park Service, Department of Energy and Manhattan Project museums from across the country. The goals of the workshop were to develop ideas for interpreting the controversial history and legacy of the Manhattan Project for a national traveling exhibit. By
In this paper, Minda Borun of the Franklin Institute discusses the publics' naive notions of science and how museums provide the opportune place to study the pre-existing misconceptions of visitors of all ages. Borun reveals findings from the Franklin Institute's 18-month study to discover visitors' naive notions about gravity and air pressure and to develop exhibits which help restructure these concepts. The project is intended to establish a new model for the design of effective science museum exhibits.