ECHO will enhance its capacity to deliver impactful STEM learning experiences for its visitors through the implementation of a re-energized volunteer program. The museum will research innovative practices from the field and build upon best practices from across institutions to overhaul its volunteer training and management systems. Project activities will include building a blended training curriculum, in which volunteers participate in asynchronous and in-person interpretive content, and diversity and inclusion trainings. The museum will also improve its volunteer tracking systems, strengthen staff supervisor training, and revitalize its volunteer recognition and engagement activities. A community of practice will engage three other science centers to inform project activities and assist with the dissemination of a set of training tools adaptable across institutions.
The Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio will expand its professional development program for educators in Chicago Public Schools and surrounding suburbs with low-income populations. The Teaching by Design program integrates design-based inquiry and problem-solving into K-12 curricula. It connects Wright's design philosophy to contemporary issues in STEAM subjects. Following a multi-year pilot, the trust will bring the project to scale by delivering 12 professional development seminars, developing 100 new lesson plans, enhancing the program's online platform, evaluating the project's short- and long-term impact, and cultivating a sustainable Teaching by Design learning community. The seminars will provide educators with a fully immersive artmaking and design experience that can be replicated in the classroom and connected to cross-curricular themes and learning standards. The project aims to reach 90 educators in at least 40 schools, 9,000 students, and an estimated 3,000 website users.
Building on program assessments and feedback, the Plains Art Museum will scale up its youth leadership-building program, Buzz Lab. The paid summer internship program engages teens in student-led, project-based learning in art and science. The program inspires the teens to lead community change while highlighting the art museum's role in addressing community needs. The program centers around the museum's pollinator garden, and the next phase of the project will engage interns with new and diverse project partners and guest speakers. For example, the interns will help find creative ways to streamline Buzz Lab projects for mass appeal and engage citizens around the pollinator crisis. The museum will also create a support network for interns entering post-secondary education programs by leveraging relationships with regional universities. Project assessment will be responsive to intern feedback so the teens become co-collaborators on the program's future.
The Portland Children’s Museum will open a new exhibition, “Drip City,” which focuses on water as a precious natural resource that has shaped the region’s geography, weather, and culture. Following an IMLS-funded evaluation and design process, the museum will engage a local fabrication company to construct and install exhibit components that explore concepts in science, engineering, and art. The museum will also engage community members in the design and testing of associated programs that target families and children ages 0 to 7. Museum staff will evaluate all exhibit elements to ensure they are working properly, accessible as intended, and making children’s learning visible to adult audiences.
The Thinkery will develop research-based exhibit materials and community resources to support adults as learning facilitators for their children. The museum will formalize a decade-long research relationship with a nationally recognized expert in child development and learning to establish new infrastructure and capacity to translate best practices from learning sciences into museum operations. The museum will create a 180-foot learning hub that blends elements of an exhibition and research space, allowing the prototyping and evaluation of exhibits by engaging visitors as active participants in research studies. The project team will produce bilingual exhibit prompts cards, signage, and enhancements to educate and inform parents by offering STEAM knowledge, inquiry questions, play-based learning and child development information. Additional project activities will include the development and implementation of related staff trainings and the establishment of an online parent resource gallery.
Sciencenter will use a co-development process to strengthen rural engagement with hands-on and inquiry-based STEM for families and children. The museum will initiate the project in partnership with Moravia Central School District and Groton Public Library. The project team will also collaborate with advisors who have expertise in reaching rural audiences. Project activities will increase the museum's understanding of rural communities' needs around STEM. The museum will work with additional rural partners to develop activities and programs that meet identified needs. An external evaluator will track project progress and measure results. This evaluator will also train the museum's staff on data collection and recording methods. Data analysis throughout the project will support changes in programs and activities as needed.
The Bronzeville Children's Museum will design and open a new exhibition, "African-Americans in STEM." The exhibit will support learning about science, technology, engineering, and math for children ages 3 to 9 through an exhibit design featuring bold colors and the use of green screen interactive animation programs. It will focus on the value and importance of these critical subjects, how they impact everyday lives, and will feature African Americans who are successful role models in STEM fields. Hands-on learning experiences will engage young minds while teaching valuable skills to spark excitement. The museum will survey its staff, docents, and volunteers for their assessment of the learning impact of the STEM exhibition on the children who visit. In addition, the museum will also survey community organizations and the Chicago Public Schools for feedback on the exhibition.
The Exploratorium will increase the museum community's understanding of the impact of a single science museum visit on "emerging adult" learners-young adults aged 18-29, who are not yet married and have no children. In particular, the study will attempt to understand how museum visits help young women build crucially important science self-confidence. The project will build on prior IMLS-funded research that found that a science museum visit mitigated a pre-existing gender gap in science confidence, or self-efficacy (SSE). The research team will replicate and investigate this effect further by observing male and female young adults during their visits, and over the course of the following three months. The study will gather data before, during, and after the visit through interviews, surveys, experience-sampling, and analysis of participants' social media posts. Results of this research will provide valuable information to the science museum community, as they seek to address the challenges of achieving gender equity in STEM education and the workforce.
Over a three-year period, the Lawrence Hall of Science will conduct research on the conversations of groups and families encountering an Augmented Reality (AR) experience in a museum environment. The research program will identify which design elements best facilitate conversations among groups of visitors, and determine if these conversations are both rich in scientific content and gender-balanced. The project will focus on four specific activities: understanding the learning associated with current AR activities, implementing design-based research to develop visitor conversation supports, designing and developing new AR programs with embedded conversation supports, and conducting iterative hypothesis-based research on how learning conversations happen in AR learning environments. The museum community will gain insights on design principles for supporting collaborative learning using AR. Project staff will disseminate results via conference workshops for museum professionals on designing AR to enhance family learning, and through publication in professional journals.
The Children's Museum of Wilmington will renew and expand its STEM All-Stars program for at-risk and underserved youth to enhance and apply their knowledge of STEM concepts in a fun, safe, and contemporary learning environment. Twice per month from January through May in 2019 and 2020, a third-grade class will visit the Children's Museum of Wilmington for two-to-one student to faculty ratio workshops exploring states of matter, the wonders of the solar system, various science career paths, and more through activities which complement the NC Science Standard Curriculum. Students will document their workshop experiments, hypotheses, and findings in personal journals. Project goals include improving students' competence in STEM concepts, nurturing student enthusiasm for STEM subjects, and encouraging students to pursue careers in STEM-related areas. Teachers will be asked to participate in two assessments per year to evaluate the STEM All-Stars' impact on student interest and learning.
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum will amplify its partnership with Hart Magnet School, a Title 1 elementary school in urban Stamford, Connecticut, by increasing exposure and access to the arts for first-fifth graders, their families, and educators. A new program model, leveraging the museum's artist exhibitions, will focus on technology and an inquiry-based approach to science. Students, educators, and families will be encouraged to see and think in new ways through on-site STEAM tours at the museum, artist-led workshops at Hart, teacher professional development, and afterschool family activities. Outside evaluators will work with the project team to develop goals and associated metrics to measure how the model of museum-school partnership can enhance student achievement, engage families more deeply in their child's school experience and community, and contribute to teacher professional development. The evaluator will also train museum staff on best practices for program assessment.
In partnership with the Pasadena and Los Angeles Unified School Districts, the Armory Center for the Arts will develop and implement comprehensive visual art-math and visual art-science curricula for grades two through five at Title I elementary schools. The curricula will be developed in conjunction with Armory teaching artists and educators, and will align with the Common Core Standards for math and science, and with the National Core Visual Arts Standards. The museum will deliver the program in 48 classrooms over a three-year period. Professional development, paired with in-class program modeling, will enable participating teachers to implement arts integration strategies into their teaching practice, with an overall goal of creating a sustainable and long-term impact on student learning. An external evaluator will oversee program assessment in the schools. The museum will post sample lessons from each curriculum online to demonstrate the style and scope of the program for possible use by additional school districts.