RISES (Re-energize and Invigorate Student Engagement through Science) is a coordinated suite of resources including 42 interactive English and Spanish STEM videos produced by Children's Museum Houston in coordination with the science curriculum department at Houston ISD. The videos are aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, and each come with a bilingual Activity Guide and Parent Prompt sheet, which includes guiding questions and other extension activities.
Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Access from the Ground Up project at the Palo Alto Junior Museum & Zoo (JMZ) seeks to better serve children with disabilities through a combination of partnerships with community, staff professional development and training, and the development of accessible STEM-focused exhibits and resources at the new JMZ facility, which opened in November 2021. This summative evaluation report seeks to answer the following evaluation questions:
To what extent does the Access from the Ground Up project build or strengthen relationships with
The Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, in partnership with six science centers and museums, will promote and invest in science education in rural communities with limited museum access. This coalition will work with two cohorts of rural school communities (12 total) and focus on engaging, learning from, and supporting rural school districts, teachers, families, and communities through relationship building, asset mapping, and the collaborative integration and implementation of museum resources. Additional activities include the production of publications, virtual presentations, and a virtual tool kit. The project will illustrate the ways in which museums can collaborate to support STEM and literacy at the K-2 level, enhance teacher self-efficacy, attitudes and beliefs, and engage family and community, strengthening services for Americans who live in the most rural areas.
The DoSeum will re-imagine its exhibition, “Dream Tomorrow Today,” focusing on underserved students in San Antonio. The community-driven exhibition will provide a space for children ages 4 to 11 to develop key learning and STEM leadership skills to approach their desired futures. In developing the exhibit content, the museum will partner with academic futurists, local organizations with a focus on underserved students, STEM-focused organizations, and a community network of families connected to those organizations. Community conversations will be convened for children and families throughout the exhibition development process to elicit feedback from key stakeholders.
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis will redesign its popular Dinosphere exhibition to explore and test accessibility to ensure the discoveries from its “Jurassic Mile” dig site are accessible to all visitors. This will result in updated exhibition elements that promote accessible lifelong learning experiences for children and families of all abilities, as well as spark interest in STEM through hands-on engagement. Findings from the accessibility assessment also will inform development of industry standard guidelines for future exhibitions. The museum will disseminate the findings to arts, science, and cultural institutions.
The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center will procure and install three exhibitions to provide new experiences related to STEAM learning for children up to age 11, as well as their teachers and families. The museum will add a large color wheel and giant pixel peg board to the paint gallery. They will replace the existing Bernoulli table—which demonstrates how low pressure creates lift or fast-moving air creates low pressure—with a new, more engaging version. The new exhibitions will expand arts and science learning experiences for visitors, spark an interest in learning, and ignite a desire to study STEAM-related fields.
The Children’s Museum will collaborate with six Hartford Public Library branches, three Hartford Family Centers, and the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center to provide hands-on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) - based programs to over 1,000 local 3 to 14-year old children and their care givers. Program design and development will include planning for field trips to the museum. All participants will be given age-specific, supplemental STEAM materials to continue their learning activities at home, and families can attend more than one week of library programs, or more than three Saturdays of family center programs. The goal will be to help urban Hartford youths find new pathways toward responsible citizenry and fiscal stability.
Kidzeum of Health and Science will partner with Springfield, Illinois School District 186 to create a two-week STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) residency for approximately 1,000 second graders in the district. The residency will take place at Kidzeum during the 2021-2022 school year. The program will include a curriculum created by teachers, school administrators, and museum staff, featuring a collaborative STEAM project that builds on Kidzeum exhibit content. Literacy, physical education, music, social studies, and social-emotional wellness will also be included in the curriculum as the Kidzeum tests the hypothesis that museums can benefit young learners and their families by serving as a place for longer term, immersive education programs. Southern Illinois University School of Medicine will provide project evaluation and subsequent reporting.
The Wyoming State Museum will implement an exhibit plan developed with content experts from across the state to produce a Prehistoric Wyoming exhibit. The exhibit will explore the prehistory of Wyoming, with a special focus on the age of dinosaurs, and will serve the needs of the museum’s three main visitor groups—local families, out-of-state tourists, and students on field trips—as determined through formative surveys and visitor feedback. Visitors will learn about the geological forces that shaped the Wyoming landscape visible today, examine the different plants and animals that have called Wyoming home through the ages, and discover the history of fossil hunters in Wyoming.
The Nest: A Nature Inspired Space, Design Workshop, and Art Studio is a new project of the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s Museum of American Bird Art designed to provide a dedicated space and robust mobile component for pre-K to grade 5 aged children, their families, and educators. Working with community partners, the museum will create an interactive exhibition integrating nature, art, and science, using existing underutilized space at the museum. The project team will test and develop prototypes of content, materials, and equipment for the Nest, along with curriculum and programmatic activities. Through the immersive exhibition and supporting programmatic activities, the museum will better serve an expanded group of learners with nature-based STEAM programs.
This assessment serves as the summative assessment of the IMLS-funded project at KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum: Natural History Mystery: Immersing families in a problem-solving game using museum collections. The assessment employs a mixed methods approach, in which both quantitative and qualitative data are collected. More specifically, quantitative data are generated from surveys that are administered to participants at the beginning and end of the game and analyzed by using descriptive statistics (i.e., mean, standard deviation, and histogram) and paired sample t-test
The University of Kansas Natural History Museum, in collaboration with the University of California Museum of Paleontology, will develop, test, and deploy an immersive educational game on the topic of evolution and common ancestry. The museum will frame the game with a narrative that involves tracing the origin of a zoonotic disease (infectious disease that is transmitted between species from animals to humans or from humans to animals). Played on the museum floor, the escape room-inspired game will explore innovative formats for museum learning and engagement. It is being designed for families with children ages 7 to 12, and by visiting groups of schoolchildren in grades 3 to 5.