The University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) and the Museum of Science, Boston (MoS) were awarded an Informal Science Education grant from the National Science Foundation (#0813541) for the project, Responsive Virtual Human Museum Guide. The goal of the project was to use computer-generated character animation, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing to create interactive characters, or virtual humans, that could engage in face-to-face communication with museum visitors. During the three year project, the MOS and ICT project teams created
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Susan FoutzJeanine AnceletKara HershorinLiz DanterUniversity of Southern CaliforniaMuseum of Science
The Bronx Zoo of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) engaged Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. to conduct formative evaluation and community focus groups related to a proposed exhibit, "Safari Adventure." The aim with this exhibit is to provide better connections to nature for families in our community and foster a life-long sense of environmental stewardship. The exhibit concept was born of the issue that, today, there exists a greater need to connect people to nature than ever before, a topic especially relevant for our community—part of the largest urban population in the United States
This report presents and analyzes the findings from a front-end evaluation conducted by Randi Korn & Associates (RK&A) regarding the concept for "Safari Adventure," an exhibition being developed at the Bronx Zoo by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Bronx, NY. The aim of Safari Adventure will be to provide better connections to nature for families in our community and foster a life-long sense of environmental stewardship. The exhibit concept was born of the issue that, today, there exists a greater need to connect people to nature than ever before, a topic especially relevant for our
The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to conduct a front-end evaluation for a new exhibition around the theme “home.” The exhibition will be the first in the Center for Learning and Creativity (CLC), a new space in the BMA that will be dedicated to creativity and learning. How did we approach this study? The BMA recruited 32 volunteer participants primarily through the BMA’s Facebook page. Participants were asked to spend about 10 minutes looking at a mock-up of exhibition materials and 20 minutes participating in an interview about the mock-up. The
WGBH received funding to develop and create NOVA Labs, an online environment that provides teen audiences with an online research lab, educational content, and the opportunity to engage with authentic data, tools, and processes to investigate scientific questions. This work has begun with the development of a first pilot lab, called The Sun Lab. NOVA Education created and launched this lab in early summer 2012. Examining the site in its pilot form, the Lifelong Learning Group (LLG) engaged in a formative evaluation to support refinements and improvements in the design of subsequent NOVA Lab
NOVA Labs (www.pbs.org/nova/labs) is a web-based platform designed for use by educators, students, and teens to engage learners with authentic data, processes, and tools of working scientists. The present evaluation study sought to investigate the outcomes achieved by users of the third NOVA Labs platform developed: Cloud Lab. The intended outcomes identified for student users were that they would: • Be able to successfully work with the real data provided in the Cloud Lab; • Demonstrate ability to interpret and use scientific data and tools; • Engage with real scientific data through the
This report summarizes findings from an evaluation of the NSF-funded project: Two Eyes, 3D. Through collaborations with two museums, the project sought to develop and test learning outcomes for stereoscopic (3D) resources. More specifically, the external evaluation—conducted by Rockman Et Al—sought to determine the perceived value of using stereoscopic technology within museums and planetariums, uncover best practices for implementation of stereoscopic resources, and further explore best practices for research partnerships within museum settings.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
American Association of Variable Star ObservrsJennifer Borland
This study focused on informal reasoning regarding socioscientific issues. It sought to explore how content knowledge influenced the negotiation and resolution of contentious and complex scenarios based on genetic engineering. Two hundred and sixty-nine students drawn from undergraduate natural science and nonnatural science courses completed a quantitative test of genetics concepts. Two subsets (n = 15 for each group) of the original sample representing divergent levels of content knowledge participated in individual interviews, during which they articulated positions, rationales
The attached document describes the results of evaluation of affective and cognitive impact of the Fusion Science Theater show model. Affective gains were measured by post-show questionnaires and cognitive gains were measured by having audience members vote for their prediction to the investigation question before and after the "lesson" of the show. Appendix includes instruments.
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Madison Area Technical CollegeDr. Joanne Cantor
This front-end evaluation sought (1) to identify visitors' prior knowledge of microbial oceanography, and (2) to determine visitors’ interest in the different research conducted by microbial oceanographers with metagenomics data. The findings from this study served to (1) guide the selection of scientific datasets that are meaningful to visitors, (2) suggest areas of interest to highlight, and (3) identify information or explanations visitors may need to make sense of the content, for the Living Liquid pathways project that aimed to use visualization tools to engage museum visitors with
The Educational Gaming Environments group (EdGE) at TERC embarked on a research project to study serious online collaborative gaming environments as a vehicle for engaging the public with National Science Digital Library (NSDL) resources. The goal of the project was two-fold: to design and test serious games that use a prototype virtual resource center; and to build a community and framework for creating a Serious Games Pathway to deliver NSDL resources into this burgeoning community with the aim of facilitating STEM learning. As part of this endeavor, the external evaluators under the
The purpose of this Summative Evaluation was to assess visitors’ use and perceptions of ‘Living with Hurricanes: Katrina & Beyond’ at the Louisiana State Museum (LSM) as an informal science experience. The exhibition is distinctive in that it is presented in a museum which has been primarily focused on history. The overall experience, affective impact and learning were evaluated for visitors leaving the exhibition. More specific questions of science learning were evaluated in mini-studies in Room 3. This report also examines the degree to which emotion affects informal learning in the museum