The Maryland Science Center (MSC) Astrobiology project includes an interactive exhibit and Davis Planetarium program for school and public museum visitors, exploring the search for life in our Solar System, the search for exoplanets and an understanding of extreme forms of Earthly life. Four day-long Educator Workshops have taken place during the project with a total of 179 teachers participating.
Baltimore’s MSC is the lead institution, with the project led by PI Van Reiner, MSC President and CEO and Co-PI Jim O’Leary, MSC Senior Scientist, and science advisors consisting of astronomers, biologists, a geologist and educators representing NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Space Telescope Science Institute, Carnegie Institute of Washington, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland and Maryland School for the Blind.
The project provides visitors with a sense of the Milky Way Galaxy’s size and composition, the galaxy’s number of stars and potential planets, and the number of other galaxies in the Universe. The exhibit explores Earthly extremophiles, what their survival signifies for life elsewhere in the Solar System, and examines possibilities for life on Mars and moons of the Solar System, explores techniques used to detect exoplanets and NASA’s missions searching for exoplanets and Earth-like worlds. The project looks to provide a sense of the vast number of potential planets that exist, the hardiness of Earthly life, the possibilities for life on nearby planets and moons, and the techniques used to search for exoplanets.
The exhibit and Planetarium program premiered November 2, 2012, and both remain as long-term Science Center offerings. Since opening, MSC has hosted nearly a million visitors, and with the Life Beyond Earth exhibit located in a highly trafficked area near the Davis Planetarium and Science On a Sphere, the great majority of visitors have experienced the exhibit. The We Are Aliens program in the Davis Planetarium has been seen by more than 26,000 visitors since opening.
Ascent to Orbit: An Educator Professional Development Program Investigating STEM Concepts for Space Shuttle Missions and Beyond trains upper elementary and middle school teachers to deliver inquiry-based, hands-on activities exploring STEM concepts involved in the evolution of human space exploration. The California Science Center Foundation will engage a total of 100 teachers from the Greater Los Angeles Area, 50 per year for two years. The curriculum will be organized around the Pre-Shuttle Era, Shuttle/International Space Station Era and Future of Human Spaceflight. This coursework will be developed in consultation with Dr. Ken Phillips, the California Science Center's Curator of Aerospace Science to be interdisciplinary and correlate with the newly adopted Next Generation Science Standards. As part of the 16-hour, two-day training session, teachers will view Space Shuttle Endeavour as well as other significant artifacts of human space exploration in the Science Center's singular Air and Space collection, including the Mercury-Redstone 2, Gemini 11 Capsule and Apollo-Soyuz Command Module. The goal is to engage teachers and their students with a core set of STEM concepts that stimulate critical thinking about science and engineering principles. As a result of the professional development, teachers will gain a deeper understanding of core STEM concepts, be motivated to embed STEM and space related concepts into their curriculum, and foster in students an interest in space travel that begins with a trip to see Space Shuttle Endeavour and journeys to the future of human space exploration.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jeffrey RudolphRobin GoseKen Phillips
The Mars Exploration Exhibit is a new public exhibition designed to provide experiential learning opportunities for students, educators and the public while inspiring greater excitement about space science. The exhibit emphasizes the importance of STEM education and careers through practical application and inquiry-based learning. Space Center Houston, the official visitor center of Johnson Space Center, is creating the new Mars landscape simulation in partnership with the Houston Independent School District and University of Houston Clear Lake. The exhibit will offer interactive science education activities that will be delivered through distance learning and onsite instruction at Space Center Houston. Utilizing research-based practices in both formal and informal learning environments, the project will help to attract and retain students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It will also foster life-long learning and enthusiasm toward the promise of space science and innovation. This unique exhibit will enable students and Space Center Houston’s more than 800,000 annual visitors to increase their knowledge of Earth science and apply their learning to the Mars environment. The exhibit will also highlight the role NASA missions serve in scientific innovation. The project will build the capacity of the Greater Houston community and school-based organizations to engage girls, minorities and other underrepresented students in STEM learning. It will offer in-depth science education for low-performing and gifted/talented students, ultimately bridging achievement gaps, increasing student performance and cultivating greater interest in science. Project outcomes will include: a 1,500-square-foot Mars landscape exhibition; interactive video presentations highlighting water recovery and other environmental processes; a standards-based learning curriculum aligned with Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS ) and National Science Standards; and a menu of K-12 experiential learning activities focused on water, air, renewable energy and other critical science topics.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Janet BrownMelanie JohnsonPaul SpanaMeg Naumann
This article describes Cosmic Chemistry, a two-week summer learning program for 9th and 10th grade students that focuses on chemistry with an astronomical twist. The program focuses on building a foundation for the next school year's science content, providing rigorous and relevant science experiences to help the students who need it most before they fall behind.
Over the last decade, hundreds of planetariums worldwide have adopted digital “fulldome” projection as their primary projection and presentation medium. This trend has far-reaching potential for science centers. Digital planetarium capabilities extend educational and cultural programming far beyond night-sky astronomy. These “digital domes” are, in essence, immersive visualization environments capable of supporting art and live performances and reproducing archeological sites, as well as journeying audiences through the local cluster of galaxies. Their real-time and rapid-update capabilities
The Houston Museum of Natural Science, in collaboration with Rice University has an outreach program taking portable digital theaters to schools and community sites for over five years and has conducted research on student learning in this immersive environment. By using an external independent evaluator, the effectiveness of NASA-funded Education and Public Outreach (EPO) projects can be assessed. This paper documents interactive techniques and learning strategies in full-dome digital theaters. The presentation is divided into Evaluation Strategies and Results and Interactivity Strategies and
The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) and its collaborators are conducting a set of research and development activities focusing on early childhood astronomy in the first field-wide effort to increase the capacity of informal science education (ISE) institutions to effectively engage their youngest visitors (ages 3 - 5) in astronomy. Leading the project is an Action Research Group comprised of the ASP; experts in cognitive development, early childhood, and astronomy learning progressions from UC Santa Cruz, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Penn State; and the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley, Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose, and San Luis Obispo Children's Museum as sites for research, field testing, and implementation. The project will identify critical areas of focus for early childhood astronomy and will test the hypothesis that early astronomy learning is not only possible but may contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the domain. A key question is: How can the ISE field scaffold children's early curiosity and ideas about astronomy to position them for greater understanding and interest in the topic? The results of the research and the materials that are created for educators will receive broad distribution nationally.
The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) conducted a national survey of in-service teachers participating in Project ASTRO. The survey results document (1) the value that teachers place on supplemental astronomy education provided by professional and amateur astronomers, and (2) the difference that teachers perceive in the value provided by professional astronomers versus amateur astronomers. Survey participants indicated that they believe that the astronomer partner positively influenced students' attitudes toward science and that amateurs may be especially effective at the elementary
In this study, the instructional effectiveness of the planetarium in astronomy education was explored through a meta-analysis of 19 studies. This analysis resulted in a heterogeneous distribution of 24 effect sizes with a mean of +0.28, p<.05. The variability in this distribution was not fully explained under a fixed effect model. As a result, a random effects model was applied. However, a large random effect variance component indicated that study differences were indeed systematic. The findings of this meta-analysis showed that the planetarium has been an effective astronomical teaching tool
The National Air and Space Museum (NASM) contracted with Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to help determine realistic strategies and next steps for scaling up its Science in Pre-K program, a PNC Bank-funded teacher professional development program that supports District of Columbia Public Schools’ (DCPS) preschool teachers in teaching science through exploration and problem solving. How did we approach this project? RK&A prepared two literature reviews—Scaling Up and Distance Education—intended to explore best practices for scaling up non-profit programs and facilitating distance learning
This study extends our understanding of the goals, beliefs, and pedagogical choices made by planetarium professionals. Interviews were conducted with planetarium professionals (N=36) to assess their goals for audiences and beliefs about the design of the learning environment. Classification of participants, according to a six-facet framework on effective learning environment design, suggests a range of perspectives on the design of the learning environment that primarily include learner-centered, motivationally-oriented, socioculturally-centered, and physically-oriented perspectives. Results
Amateur astronomers play a critical role engaging the general public in astronomy. The role of individual and club-related factors is explored using data from two surveys (Survey 1 N=1142; Survey 2 N=1242) of amateur astronomers. Analysis suggests that formal or informal training in astronomy, age, club membership, length of club membership, and participation in club service are factors that contribute to the likelihood of an amateur engaging in education and public outreach. Sex (male or female) and club service were found to influence the level of outreach amateurs engage in. Interventions