The Youth Astronomy Apprenticeship (YAA) is a yearlong, out-of-school time initiative that connects urban teenage youth with astronomy as an effective way to promote scientific literacy and overall positive youth development. The program employs the strategies of a traditional apprenticeship model, common in crafts and trades guilds as well as in higher education. During the apprenticeship, youth develop knowledge and skills to create informal science education projects: through these projects they demonstrate their understanding of astronomy and use their communication skills to connect to
WGBH and the Materials Research Society (MRS) collaborated to create Making Stuff, a multi-faceted project about the all-encompassing role that materials play in shaping our lives. The project included a four-episode NOVA mini-series originally broadcast in January, 2011 that was hosted by NY Times columnist David Pogue, a large-scale national outreach campaign with collaborating partnerships funded in 20 locations, web pages on the NOVA website, and an online contest promoted and hosted on Facebook. Across all project components, the overarching goals were to enhance the general public's
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to study visitor engagement in the Museum. The intent of this research was to deepen the NHM's understanding of its audiences by examining visitors' programmatic and content-driven experiences in the NHM. In addition, RK&A explored the qualities and characteristics associated with different types of visitors and identified how such characteristics determine visitors' level of engagement with the NHM. How did we approach this study? RK&A used a combination of standardized questionnaires and in
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Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
The YardMap Network (see www.yardmap.org) is an NSF-funded citizen science project at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which will allow participants to map their habitat management and carbon neutral practices in backyards and parks, interact socially within the network, and display their activities and carbon footprints in an online platform such as Google maps. In 2010, the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI), in collaboration with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, conducted a front-end evaluation to assess the following evaluation questions: 1. What are gardeners', and birders', citizen
One World, One Sky: Big Bird's Adventure (OWOS) is a bi-national, China-US cooperative project to produce and distribute a planetarium show based on popular characters from Sesame Workshop's television productions in each country for preschool- and kindergarten-aged children, as well as accompanying outreach materials for children, parents and teachers to further enhance learning. The project aims to: (1) provide young Chinese and American children aged four to six with an age-appropriate introduction to astronomy; (2) promote positive attitudes toward science among young children in both
The Denver Art Museum (DAM) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to study its young adults. The study, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), provides a profile of the young adult audience, including their demographics, behaviors, perceptions, and values. The DAM intends to use the results of the study to inform future programming and communication with DAM's young adult visitors. RK&A employed two data collection strategies: standardized questionnaires administered online at Surveymonkey.com to program participants and telephone interviews with core program
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Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Denver Art Museum
In 2007 Miami University, in partnership with the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden (Zoo) and the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI), received a National Science Foundation Grant to develop, create, implement, and evaluate the impacts of Wild Research, a whole zoo exhibit. The purpose of Wild Research was to promote Zoo visitors' engagement in inquiry, across generations, and increase visitors' awareness of conservation issues. ILI was charged with conducting the summative evaluation for Wild Research. This study was conducted to answer the question: What is the impact on visitors to
This study was conducted as part of the formative evaluation of the NISE Network Forum Nanomedicine in Healthcare. The purpose of the forum was to bring members of the public together to discuss the conditions under which nanotechnology applications in medicine and personal care products should be made available to the public. During the forum, participants learned about nanotechnology and its societal and ethical impacts from expert speakers, had chance to ask questions of the experts, participated in a small group discussion in which they talked about the pros and cons of releasing
The Nanoawareness Study is designed to answer the question "What, if any, impact do NISE Net activities delivered at Tier 1 and Tier 2 institutions have on the nanoawareness of the public audiences that experience those activities?" The appendix of this report includes the online survey instrument used in the study.
The NISE Network Forums were created to provide an in-depth learning experience that would (1) enhance participants' understanding of nano and its potential impacts; (2) increase participants' confidence in participating in public discourse about nanotechnologies; and (3) build informal science educators' knowledge and ability to conduct this type of programming at their institution (NISE Network Public Forums Manual, 2007). In an effort to reach out to a more diverse audience, the NISE Network Forums Team translated into Spanish the existing NISE Net forum "Nanomedicine in Healthcare" to
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Elizabeth KollmannJane MorganNanoscale Informal Science Education NetworkRoxana del Campo
Illuminated Verses explored issues of traditional culture and modernity, as well as differences and diversity within the Islamic world, and offers an interpretive bridge to these content areas for both scholarly and general audiences. Through a symposium and a series of pre-events leading up to that program, Poets House and CityLore explored ways of using poetry, discussion and interpretation of poetry to create bridges for intercultural understanding. The symposium and pre-symposium events also served as a springboard to explore the potential for a broader, potentially national, program. This
In October 2007, The Franklin Institute Science Museum (FI) in partnership with the Free Library of Philadelphia was awarded a 5-year National Science Foundation grant to build a model museum/library partnership. This partnership project, called LEAP into Science, integrates science content and inquiry into an existing afterschool program at the Library, called LEAP. More specifically, LEAP into Science has three overarching goals: 1) To increase the capacity of influential adults for science teaching and learning; 2) To increase the capacity of libraries for science teaching and learning; 3)
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Jessica LukeFranklin InstituteJeanine E. AnceletClaudia Figueiredo