This is an announcement to VSA members, Visitor Studies Today! readers and contributors from John Fraser, VSA Vice President for Programs and David Anderson, Chair of the Publication Committee about a new VSA archiving initiative. Through a joint effort of the Visitor Studies Association and the University of Pittsburgh’s UPCLOSE InformalScience.org, supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, VSA will now reprint the content of the Visitor Studies Association archive digitally and make these reprints available online and without cost.
In this article, John Chadwick, web administrator and distance learning coordinator for the Office of Cultural Affairs in Santa Fe, discusses research methodology and findings related studies investigating to who visits museum websites, why they visit, and what they do on these sites. Chadwick highlights results of a NASA-led study.
In this article, Harry Searles, Director of Educational Services at the Ohio Historical Society, discusses the development of four computer programs used as orientation and exit exhibits. These programs aimed to improve and measure visitor interaction and understanding. Findings from this research are briefly summarized.
In this article, Mary Stewart Miller, evaluator at the Cumberland Science Museum, discusses evaluation methods involving child visitors as well as adults. Stewart Miller shares methodology and findings from an evaluation of the museum's "Brain" exhibit, a study which involved interviewing children ages eight to thirteen.
In this article, Linda A. Black, Exhibits Planning Director at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, discusses methods and findings from the Kellogg Demonstration Project. The project directly involved museum staff in the instrument design and data collection for evaluation of the Museum's new "Mysteries in History" exhibit. Also, a computer software package known as "Looking Closely" was developed to assist with data collection and analysis.
This document, released in September 2013, grew out of a Joint Committee of the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) that was convened to establish cross-agency guidelines for improving the quality, coherence, and pace of knowledge development in STEM education. In this report, the Joint Committee 1) defines the types of ED- and NSF-funded research that relates to the development and testing of interventions and strategies designed to increase learning, and 2) specifies how the types of research relate to one another, and describe the theoretical and
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National Science FoundationU.S. Department of Education
In this bibliography, Jacksonville State University's Stephen Bitgood presents a list of hands-on, participatory and interactive exhibits from 1991 or earlier. It is not an exhaustive list, but is a good resource for professionals interested in researching the topic of interactive exhibits.
In this editor's note, Stephen Bitgood discusses the upcoming 1992 Visitor Studies Conference in St. Louis and summarizes the theme of the issue of "Visitor Behavior," which focuses on the design and evaluation of interactive exhibits.
In this article, Jacksonville State University's Stephen Bitgood presents a literature review of successful interactive exhibits. Bitgood outlines guidelines for designing interactive exhibits, focusing on two aspects of interactive exhibits: stages of evaluation; and design of the exhibit in terms of the physical device, labels for instruction and explanation, and the visitor-exhibit interface.
In this article, Annette Noschka-Roos discusses a study of a computer-supported information system (CIS) touch-screen interactive in the "New Energy Techniques" gallery at the Deutsches Museum. The objective of the study was to gather systematic data on how the medium is used by visitors. Noschka-Roos provides key findings from the study.
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Annette Noschka-RoosVisitor Studies Association
In the title of this very brief article, Marilyn Hood, of Hood Associates, poses the question "Can aquariums, zoos and museums use TV to educate?" and then goes on to cite a Ohio State University study. The study found that high school students may retain information from watching TV as well as they do from listening to a classroom lecture.
The Principal Investigator's Guide: Managing Evaluation in Informal STEM Education Projects (PI Guide) is designed to help principal investigators and other leaders of informal STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education projects integrate evaluation into all phases of project design, development, and implementation. Such projects include exhibits, media projects, websites, community science projects, afterschool programs, festivals, family activities, online games, citizen science projects, and other efforts to help people learn about science in the course of their everyday