This multiplatform media and science center project is designed to engage audiences in humanity's deepest questions like the nature of love, reality, time and death in both scientific and humanistic terms. Project deliverables include 5 hour-long radio programs for broadcast on NPR stations, public events/museum exhibits at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, kiosks in venues throughout the city, and a social media engagement campaign. The audience of the project is large and diverse using mass media and the internet. But the project will specifically target young, online, and minority audiences using various strategies. The project is designed to help a diverse audience understand the impact of new scientific developments as well as the basic science, technology, engineering and math needed to be responsible, informed citizens. Innovative elements of the project include the unique format of the radio programs that explore complex topics in an engaging and compelling way, the visitor engagement strategy at the Exploratorium, and the social media strategy that reaches niche audiences who might never listen to the radio broadcasts, but find the podcasts and blogs engaging. The Exploratorium will be opening a new building in 2013 and will include exhibits and programs that are testing grounds for this project. This is a new model that aligns the radio content with exhibitions, social media, and in person events at the Exploratorium, providing a unique holistic approach. The project is designed to inspire people to think and talk about science and want to find out more. The evaluation will measure the impacts on the targeted audiences reached by each of the key delivery methods. Data will be collected using focus groups; intercept interviews with people in public places, and longitudinal panels. The focus will be on 5 targeted audiences (young adults, families with children, non-NPR listeners, underrepresented minorities, and adults without college experience). This comprehensive evaluation will likely contribute important knowledge to the field based on this multiple-platform collaborative model.
This project is making novel use of familiar technology (smartphones and tablets) to address the immediate and pressing challenge of affordable, ongoing, large-scale museum evaluation, while encouraging museum visitors to engage deeply with museum content. Using a smartphone app, museum visitors pose questions to a 'virtual scientist' called Dr. Discovery (Dr. D). Dr. D provides answers and the chance to complete fun mini-challenges. The questions visitors ask are gathered in a large database. An analytics system analyzes these data and a password-protected website provides continuous, accessible evaluation data to museum staff, helping them make just-in-time tweaks (or longer term changes) to exhibit-related content (such as multimedia, lecture topics, docent training, experience carts, etc.) as current events and visitors' needs and interests change. The intellectual merit of this project is that it is building evaluation capacity among informal educators, advancing the fields of visitor studies, museum evaluation, informal science learning, and situated engagement, and is contributing to the development of novel evaluation techniques in museums. This project has many broader impacts: The Ask Dr. Discovery system is available to any venue that wishes to use or adapt it to their context. By enhancing the visitor experience and improving museum access to data for evaluation and data-driven decision making across the country, Ask Dr. Discovery has both a direct and indirect impact on museums and visitors of all types. This project is also training the next generation of STEM and education innovators by employing a diverse team of undergraduate students.
The University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) and the Museum of Science, Boston (MoS) were awarded an Informal Science Education grant from the National Science Foundation (#0813541) for the project, Responsive Virtual Human Museum Guide. The goal of the project was to use computer-generated character animation, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing to create interactive characters, or virtual humans, that could engage in face-to-face communication with museum visitors. During the three year project, the MOS and ICT project teams created
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Susan FoutzJeanine AnceletKara HershorinLiz DanterUniversity of Southern CaliforniaMuseum of Science
WGBH received funding to develop and create NOVA Labs, an online environment that provides teen audiences with an online research lab, educational content, and the opportunity to engage with authentic data, tools, and processes to investigate scientific questions. This work has begun with the development of a first pilot lab, called The Sun Lab. NOVA Education created and launched this lab in early summer 2012. Examining the site in its pilot form, the Lifelong Learning Group (LLG) engaged in a formative evaluation to support refinements and improvements in the design of subsequent NOVA Lab
NOVA Labs (www.pbs.org/nova/labs) is a web-based platform designed for use by educators, students, and teens to engage learners with authentic data, processes, and tools of working scientists. The present evaluation study sought to investigate the outcomes achieved by users of the third NOVA Labs platform developed: Cloud Lab. The intended outcomes identified for student users were that they would: • Be able to successfully work with the real data provided in the Cloud Lab; • Demonstrate ability to interpret and use scientific data and tools; • Engage with real scientific data through the
This poster describes the work accomplished by August 2014 for the NSF-funded project "Science of Sharing: Investigating Cooperation, Competition, and Social Interdependence." It was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. The project created a bilingual exhibit and surrounding activities to explore the concept of sustainability.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Oregon Museum of Science and IndustryMarilyn Johnson
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It highlights the work accomplished through the ARIEL project, which developed a cyberlearning exhibit using augmented and virtual reality.
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The Franklin InstituteKaren ElinichSusan Yoon
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. Using STEM America (USA) is a two-year Pathways project designed to examine the feasibility of using informal STEM learning opportunities to improve science literacy among English Language Learner (ELL) students in Imperial County, California.
This article describes how two inquiry games promoted student science skills in a museum setting while minimizing demands on teachers, fostering collaboration, and incorporating chaperones. Students who played these games engaged in more scientific inquiry behaviors than did students in control groups.
Silence of the Lands is a virtual museum of natural quiet in Boulder, Colorado, based on locative and tangible computing. The project promotes a model of virtuality that empowers the active and constructive role of local communities in the interpretation, preservation, and renewal of natural quiet as an important element of the natural heritage. This is accomplished by using sounds as conversation pieces of a social narrative aimed at transforming the virtual museum into an organism linking the people, perspectives, and values that pertain to the specific environmental setting of Boulder
This report summarizes findings from an evaluation of the NSF-funded project: Two Eyes, 3D. Through collaborations with two museums, the project sought to develop and test learning outcomes for stereoscopic (3D) resources. More specifically, the external evaluation—conducted by Rockman Et Al—sought to determine the perceived value of using stereoscopic technology within museums and planetariums, uncover best practices for implementation of stereoscopic resources, and further explore best practices for research partnerships within museum settings.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
American Association of Variable Star ObservrsJennifer Borland