The Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Experience Studies (COVES) is designed to unite science centers across the country to systematically collect, analyze, and report on visitor experience data. We envision a collaborative museum community seeking to better understand and improve the visitor experience. We believe that studying the visitor experience in science centers—who visits a particular museum, why they visit, what they experience during their visit, and how they react to different aspects of their experience—can help organizations learn about their visitors, make evidence-based
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants. The Museum of Science, Boston (MOS) and Boston University (BU) will conduct a Pilot and Feasibility Study project that leverages the current Living Laboratory (LL) model and expand it to engage high school students (teens) in experimental psychology research, science communication and science education activities. In LL, which is now an extensive network of museums and university researchers across the country, scientists and museum staff collaborate to engage children in studies on the museum floor and educate caregivers about the research. Multi-site implementation and evaluation of LL has also documented positive impacts for undergraduate researchers. Many sites are eager to extend these benefits to high school students by engaging them as practitioners within the model and by providing them with opportunities to engage in current research, education and communication, thereby helping to foster stronger youth identities with science and its applications in society. This project expands a ten-year LL partnership between MOS and BU to: 1) pilot a program in which high school students both conduct scientific research and engage the public in learning about science; 2) explore strategies for museums and universities to collaboratively engage, support and mentor high school students in science research, communication and education activities; 3) document curricular, other programmatic, and evaluation materials; and 4) convene professional participants to provide feedback on pilot materials, and assess the viability of implementing similar programs at additional sites. Guided by developmental evaluation, these activities will generate knowledge for the field, and act to increase professional capacity to integrate experiences for teens at multiple LL sites in future projects. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
In June of 2017, the Exploratorium hosted the GENIAL Summit which brought together approximately 91 practitioners, community leaders, diversity-focused organization staff, researchers, and media/marketing specialists from across the country and Puerto Rico for a one and a half day gathering. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Summit focused on increasing Latino participation in Informal STEM Learning (ISL) environments by examining these five content strands identified by the GENIAL team:
1. Latino Audiences
2. Marketing, Communicating, and Media
3. Community Collaboration and
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants. This project will build and test a new model for co-created public engagement with science activities in partnership with civic, community, and scientist partners. The innovation to be tested is deliberative dialogues in science museums that help reduce the polarization about socio-scientific issues, giving people a greater voice in science, and addressing barriers that disconnect scientists from the public. The project will engage four target audiences (informal science education/ISE professionals, civic, community and scientist partners). Science museum partners include Museum of Science (MOS) Boston, Oregon Museum of Science, the Michigan Science Center, and the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science. The project is designed to have a strategic impact on how ISE institutions choose topics of STEM engagement and build public Forum programs.
There will be two evaluation teams for the project. MOS Research and Evaluation will act as formative evaluation mentors for the four partner sites as they co-create their forums. They will provide evaluation capacity building for the sites using team-based inquiry as they create and understand the potential impacts and outcomes of the model. Data collection will include panel surveys and focus groups. The evaluation will explore how the forums can decrease 1) public polarization around STEM topics and (2) the disconnect between scientists, civic organization, and the public. The external summative evaluation will be conducted by Rockman et al (REA). They will conduct a study of the project's process to help the team identify challenges and strategies for overcoming them as they work through the phases of public engagement. The summative study will focus on the project goals taking a qualitative approach. Early interviews with partner participants will explore their strengths and weaknesses in taking on this type of public engagement model including the extent of their previous work with civic partners. Later interviews will investigate what factors have enabled or hindered this project. Summative evaluation questions will also address changes in attitudes toward public engagement with science. REA will collect feedback from summit attendees through intercept interviews and post-surveys administered within a week at the event's conclusion to explore the any changes in knowledge or confidence in undertaking this type of model. REA will present findings from the external evaluation during the annual meeting of the Association of Science-Technology Centers and publish reports to Informalscience.org. Once the model has been developed and tested it will be disseminated to an initial group of 25-30 science museums and eventually to the entire ISE museum field.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
This project explores augmented reality (AR) technology as a way to make STEM content accessible to Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) learners in "live" presentation settings found within science centers and museums. The current ways of providing communication and information access to DHH museum visitors require DHH learners to split their attention between the visual focus of the experience and the interpreter or captioning display. As a result, DHH learners are forced to decide which information to miss during live presentations, thus presentations may not be fully comprehended by the DHH learner. Furthermore, this issue perpetuates a lack of inclusivity and accessibility in informal STEM learning environments. The work focuses on investigating approaches to develop an AR platform with a near-eye display that will allow DHH visitors to receive signed or captioned instruction while still looking at and interacting with the intended exhibits. The new platform will allow for transmission of live and spontaneous instruction. Researchers will evaluate and recommend efficient ways to make information at science centers and museums accessible to the DHH population based on data collected from DHH learners. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program's Pilot and Feasibility Studies which seek new approaches to design and development of STEM learning to be accessible to all learners including underrepresented groups in informal environments.
The researchers will investigate the following research question: how can the use of Augmented Reality (AR) as a method of support service delivery improve the engagement of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) adolescent learners in semi-structured learning environments? Both formative and summative evaluations will be conducted from two different angles: (1) an engineering-centric evaluation focused on technical development and (2) an educational-research centric evaluation focused on pilot studies on user experiences, attitudes, and learning outcomes. Both qualitative and quantitative data on the use of this technology will be collected. The evaluation methods include attitudinal surveys (pre/post), ethnographic observations, pre/post tests of content knowledge, and semi-structured group and individual interviews. This project will be conducted by researchers in the Center on Access Technology at National Technical Institute for the Deaf, one of the colleges of Rochester Institute of Technology, in partnership with the Rochester Museum & Science Center, which includes the Rochester Challenger Learning Center. This project represents a first step in setting future directions for research & development and to make educational materials more accessible to the DHH community.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Wendy DannelsSara SchleyBrian TragerMel Chua
The Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) aims to help member institutions inform and educate the public about science through a global lens. The World Biotech Tour (WBT) was a three-year initiative designed to not only promote a greater understanding of biotechnology through public outreach and programming led by science centers and museums, but also as an opportunity for ASTC to collect useful data on the resources required and challenges encountered at different science museums around the world when implementing a long-term, multi-country program. The WBT involved students
The San Diego Natural History Museum contracted RK&A to conduct an evaluation of the SPECTRUM Social Stories Project. The program involved a series of 16 “meetups” for museum staff and young adults with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to visit seven Balboa Park museums. The young adults, with support from museum staff, used their observations of those spaces to create pre-visit materials for museum-goers with ASD.
How did we approach this study?
The evaluation explored outcomes for young adult participants, museum staff, and project partners from other Balboa Park museums. We conducted
In this paper, we summarize the results of the two-year, National Science Foundation-funded Head Start on Engineering (HSE) project, designed to study and support engineering-related interest development for preschool children and their families from low-income backgrounds participating in Head Start. Low-income communities face ongoing barriers to accessing STEM learning resources and pursuing STEM-related careers. Quality family interventions in early childhood are a critical approach to addressing these barriers and have been shown to have long-term, positive impacts on families well beyond
The Museum of Science, Boston’s Research and Evaluation Department conducted a summative evaluation of The Hall of Human Life (HHL) exhibition. This 9,700 square foot exhibition is geared towards older children and adults. It is focused on human biology and human health with the main message, “Human beings are changing in a changing environment.” Visitors are able to use their own bodies and behaviors to understand biological mechanisms. Unique to this exhibition, visitors are able to use scannable wristbands to record and compare personal data with other Museum visitors to learn about their
The Space and Earth Informal STEM Education (SEISE) project, led by the Arizona State University with partners Science Museum of Minnesota, Museum of Science, Boston, and the University of California Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science and Space Sciences Laboratory, is raising the capacity of museums and informal science educators to engage the public in Heliophysics, Earth Science, Planetary Science, and Astrophysics, and their social dimensions through the National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Net). SEISE will also partner on a network-to-network basis with other existing coalitions and professional associations dedicated to informal and lifelong STEM learning, including the Afterschool Alliance, National Girls Collaborative Project, NASA Museum Alliance, STAR_Net, and members of the Association of Children’s Museums and Association of Science-Technology Centers. The goals for this project include engaging multiple and diverse public audiences in STEM, improving the knowledge and skills of informal educators, and encouraging local partnerships.
In collaboration with the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD), SEISE is leveraging NASA subject matter experts (SMEs), SMD assets and data, and existing educational products and online portals to create compelling learning experiences that will be widely use to share the story, science, and adventure of NASA’s scientific explorations of planet Earth, our solar system, and the universe beyond. Collaborative goals include enabling STEM education, improving U.S. scientific literacy, advancing national educational goals, and leveraging science activities through partnerships. Efforts will focus on providing opportunities for learners explore and build skills in the core science and engineering content, skills, and processes related to Earth and space sciences. SEISE is creating hands-on activity toolkits (250-350 toolkits per year over four years), small footprint exhibitions (50 identical copies), and professional development opportunities (including online workshops).
Evaluation for the project will include front-end and formative data to inform the development of products and help with project decision gates, as well as summative data that will allow stakeholders to understand the project’s reach and outcomes.
Informal science learning (ISL) organizations that are successful at providing meaningful science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) experiences for Latino children, youth, and their families share some common traits. They have leaders and staff who believe in the importance of developing culturally relevant models and frameworks that meet the needs and acknowledge the legacy of STEAM in Latino communities. Such organizations are willing to take risks to create experiences that are culturally meaningful, garner funding and implement programs by working closely with their
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Cheryl JuarezVerónika NúñezExploratorium
Community collaboration and empowerment was identified by the GENIAL organizers as an important theme to include in the Summit. Informal STEM learning (ISL) organizations strive to engage Latino audiences in their science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programming on a long-term basis and recognize the importance of understanding the needs, motivations, interests, and challenges of the diverse Latino community in the context of STEM participation. An effective way to collaborate with a community is to involve them as equal partners in the co-development of ISL experiences. A key
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Salvador AcevedoPaul DusenberyExploratorium