The California Academy of Sciences will develop, evaluate and disseminate exhibits and programs designed to communicate to public audiences the results of research including a biotic inventory of the amphibians and reptiles of Myanmar. Using innovative trading cards for kids, updates to current research exhibits, a poster highlighting research, a pocket guide to venomous snakes of Myanmar and a posting of research -related materials on the CAS website, the project will inform the public about biotic inventory research and conservation in Myanmar. Designed specifically for target audiences of children and adults, the exhibits and programs will serve several hundred thousand CAS visitors annually.
We expect people to look different. And why not? Like a fingerprint, each person is unique. Every person represents a one-of-a-kind, combination of their parents', grandparents' and family's ancestry. And every person experiences life somewhat differently than others. Differences - they're a cause for joy and sorrow. We celebrate differences in personal identity, family background, country and language. At the same time, differences among people have been the basis for discrimination and oppression. Yet, are we so different? Current science tells us we share a common ancestry and the
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Randi KornAmerican Anthropological Association
This report describes a summative evaluation of Secrets of Circles, a 2,600 square foot exhibition created by Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose and funded by the National Science Foundation. The exhibition and related programs were designed to highlight the uses of circles and wheels in everyday life. Circles have properties that make them extremely effective as an engineering tool, and they are ubiquitous in cultures around the world. The appendix of this report inclues interview and observation protocols and questionnaires used in this study.
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Sue AllenChildren's Discovery Museum of San Jose
Technology fills every day of our lives. At Innovation Station visitors can experience the excitement of invention as they explore technology in a whole new way. Then, they can even invent something incredible themselves. Innovation Station allows visitors to try their skills at programming a robot, building an aqueduct to bring water to a model town, or designing their own flying machines. Visitors can also step inside the Inventors Ball Room and build their own crazy contraptions to send balls whizzing, flying, and bouncing all around, or compare their own hands to the fast, precise moves of
Too Small to See is a 5,000 square-foot interactive traveling museum exhibition designed to provide hands-on nanotechnology science education to youth age 8 to 13 and adults. It debuted at Disney's Epcot and will reach over three million people during a five-year US tour. This evaluation examines the exhibition’s outcomes and impact on increasing visitors’ awareness of, interest in, engagement with, and understanding of nanoscale science, engineering, and technology. An overarching goal is to document the project’s contribution to the portfolio of federally funded Science Technology
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Douglas SpencerTina PhillipsTori AngelottiShane MurphyFred ConnerCornell University
Summative evaluation of the NSF- and NEH-funded Hunters of the Sky exhibition, including remedial, timing and tracking, and summative. The 5,000 square foot exhibition takes a science and humanities perspective on birds of prey. A particular focus of the evaluation was the exhibition's impact on "getting visitors to explore their own values and beliefs about the human relationship to the natural world" as well as "getting visitors to critically examine questions of economics, public policy, and environmental ethics related to the survival of raptors and their habitats." Sample data collection
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Deborah PerryKarla NiehusScience Museum of Minnesota
This is a front-end study designed to inform the team working on an NSF-funded exhibit-development project. The purpose was to determine what visitors think, know, and do in relation to listening, and to identifying potential opportunities and barriers to creating attentive listening experiences on the Exploratorium's public floor. The appendix of this repot includes the interview instruments used in the study.
There is a recognized need to rigorously examine the efficacy of approaches to supporting informal learning. In this study, we used a 2 × 2 factorial experimental design to test the impact of a computer guide on 3 proximal measures of visitor learning at an interactive math exhibit. In total, 128 families were systematically assigned to engage with the exhibit either with or without access to a supplementary computer kiosk. Visitor groups with access to the computer spent longer, on average, at the exhibit and engaged in more mathematical behaviors compared to other groups. However, based on
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Oregon Museum of Science and IndustryScott PattisonScott EwingAngela Frey
Poster on NSF grant DRL-1114467 (""Collaborative Research: Full Scale Development: Native Universe - Indigenous Voice in Science Museums"") from the 2012 ISE PI Meeting.
Poster on NSF grant DRL-1008546 (""The Handheld Signing Math & Science Dictionaries for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Museum Visitors Research Project"") at the 2012 ISE PI Meeting.