In this paper, we present the DeepTree exhibit, a multi-user, multi-touch interactive visualization of the Tree of Life. We developed DeepTree to facilitate collaborative learning of evolutionary concepts. We will describe an iterative process in which a team of computer scientists, learning scientists, biologists, and museum curators worked together throughout design, development, and evaluation. We present the importance of designing the interactions and the visualization hand-in-hand in order to facilitate active learning. The outcome of this process is a fractal-based tree layout that
The Climate Interpretation Coalition is maturing beyond a set of discrete institutions to become a collective voice for communicating climate change and the ocean. As the three‐year funded NOAA program and the empowerment evaluation end, the question of how to build ongoing communities of support arises. The findings are based upon an interview‐based exploration of individuals who participated in the 2012 Baltimore summit and who represent a broad spectrum of engagement (highly engaged with creating the coalition through to limited engagement in a single summit). The interviews were nested
In August 2011, nine months prior to the theatrical premiere of Otter 501, Sea Studios Foundation launched the Otter 501 Facebook page in an effort to reach and engage audiences through social media. Initially, Sea Studios organized for Katie Pofahl, the film’s human star and narrator, to author posts and respond to visitor comments about the forthcoming film and related topics. Subsequently, with the theatrical premiere of Otter 501 in May 2012, viewers of the film then had an opportunity to watch the character Katie post updates and respond to comments on her “virtual” Facebook page
The authors provide an analysis of pairs of children interacting with a multi-touch tabletop exhibit designed to help museum visitors learn about evolution and the tree of life. The exhibit’s aim is to inspire visitors with a sense of wonder at life’s diversity while providing insight into key evolutionary concepts such as common descent. The authors find that children negotiate their interaction with the exhibit in a variety of ways including reactive, articulated, and contemplated exploration. These strategies in turn influence the ways in which children make meaning through their
MarshAccess is an informal science education program based at the Meadowlands Environment Center (MEC) in Lyndhurst, NJ, and funded by the National Science Foundation. MarshAccess seeks to engage largely underserved populations of young and older adults with disabilities, as well as older adults with age-related limitations, in outdoor experiential STEM activities centered on the New Jersey Meadowlands marsh ecosystem. Program modules are designed to increase interest in science, increase scientific literacy, develop a sustained relationship between the MEC and the target audience and audience
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Hilarie B. DavisBradford T. DaveyRamapo College of New Jersey
This research was commissioned to explore visitors’ experiences in When the Dinosaurs Were Gone (later titled "When Crocodiles Ruled", a temporary exhibition at the Science Museum of Minnesota. As a summative evaluation, the research sought to address several issues and objectives: 1. overall impressions of the exhibition — visitors’ ratings of enjoyment, interest in the information, what they liked most, and what changes they would suggest (or not want) for a traveling version of this exhibit; 2. extent of use of the exhibition — amount of time spent in the exhibition and the extent to which
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People Places & Design ResearchScience Museum of MinnesotaJolene Hart
The goals of this Pathways Project will be to: 1) learn how to better recruit and sustain deep relationships with seniors and youth; 2)facilitate the roles that these two audiences can play as collaborators in field research and conservation science; 3) study ways that seniors and young people as well as scientists and lay people might interact most effectively while in training and in the field, and 4) study cognitive and affective impacts of such collaborations upon both citizens and professionals.
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PEER AssociatesNational Audubon Society
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
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This workshop will develop a new, comprehensive, research-based framework for assessing environmental literacy. By bringing together, for the first time, experts in research, assessment, and evaluation from the fields of science education, environmental education, and related social science fields, this project will access and build its work on the literature and the insights of many disciplines. The North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) will work with the leaders of the only two large-scale assessments of environmental literacy used in the U.S. to date (Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA] and the National Environmental Literacy Assessment [NELA]) to conduct the workshop. The project leaders will analyze PISA and NELA and use a multi-disciplinary search and review of the literature to prepare a draft framework. At the workshop, a diverse array of invited experts will critique that draft and provide suggestions for revision. Then, the leaders/organizers will produce a final Environmental Literacy Framework and disseminate it both electronically and at a nationally advertised event to a wide audience of assessment specialists, funding and policy-making agencies, and organizations working to develop assessments and achieve environmental literacy. Many institutions and agencies have noted the need to create an environmentally literate population, and government and private entities are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in projects aimed at enhancing environmental literacy. Given the scope and scale of these investments and the interest in this arena on the part of federal agencies, professional organizations, and corporations, assessments for gauging our progress in transforming our preK-12 education system to achieve that end are needed. The new Framework for assessing environmental literacy will provide a foundation for measuring the extent to which we are enabling all learners to acquire the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and behaviors vital for competently making decisions about local, regional, national and global issues.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karen HollwegRodger BybeeThomas MarcinkowskiWilliam McBeth
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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Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
resourceevaluationProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose (CDM) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to study the professional development component of Mammoth Discovery!, a NSF-funded project. The professional development part of the project convened a group of museum professionals (cohort participants) from select children’s museums to participate in several workshops, developed and conducted by CDM staff, and gatherings at a number of Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) conferences. RK&A conducted the evaluation to measure the impact of these experiences on the professional practice of cohort
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Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose
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