Many informal science institutions design exhibits to encourage inquiry and experimentation. But the authors of this paper suggest that often museums have found that visitors lack the expertise or confidence to engage in coherent inquiry. They report here on their efforts to equip visitors with key inquiry skills through providing families and groups with focused trainings on how to use inquiry-based exhibits.
This paper presents a quantitative strategy (K-means cluster analysis) for exploring museum-motivated ideas that can be helpful in resource allocation, marketing, event planning, and designing exhibits. Cluster analysis provides a potentially useful way of knowing and understanding visitors, especially when the rating statements used in the questionnaire and in the analysis represent the museum's intentions.
ISE educators may operate with the assumption that visitors come to the museum for learning, but this research shows that, two years after the visit, what these adult visitors remember is linked to their identity-related motivations for their visit. Based on five broad categories (explorers, facilitators, professional/hobbyists, experience seekers, and rechargers; see Falk 2006), this research shows that what museum visitors learn, remember about their experience, and its subsequent impact are influenced by how the museum meets the needs of these learners.
This study looks at how characteristics of parent-child dyads, in combination with exhibit qualities, contribute to their interactions in a science center. Parent schooling, parent and child attitudes toward science, and the type of activity supported at the exhibits play a role in how they interact together. For ISE professionals, this study shows that parents exert a great deal of influence over what and how their children feel and learn about science.
A modified guided tour increased students’ intrinsic motivation, interest, and perceived competence, and was more interesting and less boring than a traditional docent-led tour. Providing students with more opportunities for group work and active participation led to improvement in understanding and motivational and emotional states during the visit. Experiencing less negative emotions (anger) during the visit and prior knowledge contributed to a better understanding.
In this paper, the learning resources and museum visit that formed part of an undergraduate teaching sequence on the special theory of relativity are described and discussed. Findings highlight the importance of integrating pre- and post-visit activities, although the methods used to evaluate the impact of the experience do not offer conclusive results.
The authors of this paper were interested in knowing how parents can support exploratory behaviors of their preschool-aged children at museum exhibits. They developed a quantitative instrument based on psychological literature on exploration and play in order to describe and quantify young children's increasing levels of exploration of their environment. They then tested the measurement tool with parents and their preschool-aged children to investigate what types of adult coaching would achieve high-level exploratory behavior at various exhibits.
In teacher-student interactions during pre-visit, in-museum, and post–field trip interactions, open-ended styles of questions tended to happen more often during the in-museum part of the field trip, although closed-ended questions were still more frequent overall.
Conceived as part the Denver Evaluation Network, the City Value Study sought to understand whether people visiting one of the cultural institutions in the Network valued that museum. Further, participants were asked to explain, in their own words, more about why they valued that particular institution; what that museum offered themselves, their family, and their community; and what other leisure options they had considered for the day. Following these interview questions, administered by DMNS Research Assistants, each respondent completed a short, demographic questionnaire. Data collection
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Laureen TrainerDenver Museum of Nature & Science
Professionals from the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI), New Knowledge Organization, and faculty from Hunter College developed Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think (WM) as a traveling exhibition with ancillary programs about animal cognition to be presented in both science centers and zoos. The project primary goal is to develop public understanding of the complex concept of animal cognition. Its secondary objective is to encourage sustainable science center-zoo partnership in the communities that host Wild Minds. The Wild Minds science center exhibition consists of discreet stand-alone
The first phase of the evaluation, a front-end visitor study, assessing visitors' knowledge of and interest in space science and the cosmos, was conducted in May and June of 2000 at Boston's Museum of Science (MOS). The evaluation's second phase, a formative evaluation of the exhibition prototype, was completed in February of 2001 at the MOS. This summative report represents the third round of the evaluation process conducted by PERG, and is an evaluation of the current Cosmic Questions exhibition and related activities, based on data obtained by evaluators at two sites Boston's Museum of
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Joan KarpJudah LeblangSusan Baker CohenHarvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose (CDM) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to conduct a summative evaluation of the Mammoth Discovery! exhibition, one part of a comprehensive project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Mammoth Discovery! features the story of Lupe, fossilized mammoth bones found in San Jose and includes a full-size replica of Lupe and Lupe's actual skull, femur, and pelvis fossils. Through engagement with the exhibition, CDM intends for children and their caregivers to engage in scientific thinking, become aware that they are engaging in a
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Children's Discovery Museum