The University of Washington’s Museology Program, in partnership with the Woodland Park Zoo and the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments Research Center is developing a model of university-community collaboration where students work with client museums, zoos and aquaria to evaluate exhibits and programs under the guidance of a research mentor. Students will gain experience in audience research and evaluation, as well as in project management, collaboration, and leadership. Staff at participating museums will advance their personal knowledge about visitors and the field of museum evaluation. The project will prepare a new generation of evaluators and museum practitioners through an innovative apprentice-styled laboratory that integrates the strengths of mentoring, fieldwork, academics, and client-centered experiences. Project Advisors include John Falk, Julie Johnson, Randi Korn, Marjorie Schwarzer, and Patterson Williams. Project started January, 2009 with 24 graduate students in the first cadre.
Children feed alphabet letters to a talking baby dragon, drive a New York City fire truck, paint on a six-foot art wall, and crawl through a challenge course in PlayWorks™ at the Children's Museum of Manhattan (CMOM) in New York. Manhattan’s largest public play and learning center for early childhood marries the skills that children need to succeed in kindergarten with fun stuff that kids love. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded the project through a 2006 Museums for America grant to support the museum as a center of community engagement and lifelong learning. “PlayWorks™ is a joyful place for learning science, math, reading and other things. We incorporate fun and learning into the whole design to create a scaffold of learning. Families come to the museum to supplement preschool experiences,” said Andy S. Ackerman, CMOM’s executive director. The museum also offers parents, sitters, and other care-providers guidance on engaging their children with the exhibit. Based on the concept that children’s learning and personal growth is rooted in play, the 4,000-square-foot space is divided into five learning areas: Language, Math and Physics, Arts and Science, Imagination and Dramatic Play, and Practice Play (for infants and crawlers).
This report presents findings from a joint study carried out by the Museum of Science, Boston Research and Evaluation Department (MOS) and Art Beyond Sight (ABS, formerly Art Education for the Blind) with museum visitors who are blind or have low vision. The purpose of this study was to gather information that can inform the development of pilot museum programs that meet the needs and interests of visitors who are blind or have low vision and to provide professional development for museum professionals. Focus groups were used as the primary data collection method, as they enable idea sharing
This research was commissioned to explore visitors’ experiences in When the Dinosaurs Were Gone (later titled "When Crocodiles Ruled", a temporary exhibition at the Science Museum of Minnesota. As a summative evaluation, the research sought to address several issues and objectives: 1. overall impressions of the exhibition — visitors’ ratings of enjoyment, interest in the information, what they liked most, and what changes they would suggest (or not want) for a traveling version of this exhibit; 2. extent of use of the exhibition — amount of time spent in the exhibition and the extent to which
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TEAM MEMBERS:
People Places & Design ResearchScience Museum of MinnesotaJolene Hart
This summative evaluation of the exhibition Robots & Us was designed to investigate how visitor audiences used and experienced this exhibition in relation to the project’s objectives and challenges. Visitors’ expectations and perceptions in relation to the project’s content goals prompted the summative evaluation to focus on specific challenges including: attitudes and perceptions about technology, connections between robots and people, appeal to a broad audience, and reactions to specific exhibits.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jeff HaywardJolene HartScience Museum of Minnesota
The TEAMS Collaborative received three separate rounds of funding from the National Science Foundation; Inverness Research served as the external evaluator to the project for all three rounds of funding. This summative report details the return on NSF's long-term investment in the TEAMS Collaborative. It outlines the overall contributions of the project to participating museums, individual staff at those museums, and to the larger field of informal science education institutions. It also summarizes the ways in which the TEAMS Collaborative was able to effectively capitalize on NSF's investment
Researchers at the U.C. Davis will carry out observations of museum visitors to plan for a study of how visualizations affect visitors of an Earth Sciences exhibit using 3D technology. The researchers will be able to conduct an experimental study about how much participants in an education center learn from the model of earthquakes and of a model of the Lake Tahoe basin. The researchers will conduct a quasi-experiment of a sample of 100 visitors to the center at Lake Tahoe to study their experience with visualization and learning of science. The funding for this phase of the project will include the development of audience surveys, conducting focus groups to develop types of feedback, train staff to conduct data collection, and to conduct a literature review of technology visualization.
The Milwaukee Public Museum will develop Adventures in Science: An Interactive Exhibit Gallery. This will be a 7250 sq. ft. interactive exhibit with associated public programs and materials that link the exhibit with formal education. The goal of Adventures in Science is to promote understanding of biological diversity, the forces that have change it over time, and how scientists study and affect change. The exhibit will consist of three areas. "Our Ever-Changing World" will feature "dual scene" habitat dioramas that will convey at-a-glance how environments change over time. "The Natural History Museum" will be a reconstruction of a museum laboratory and collections area to protray behind-the-scenes scientific and curatorial activities that further the study of biological diversity, ecology and systematics. An "Exploration Center: will bridge these two areas and will be designed to accommodate live presentations, group activities and additional multimedia stations for Internet and intranet access. Using interactive devices, visitors will be encouraged to make hypothesis, examine evidence, compare specimens, construction histories of biological and geological changes, and develop conclusions about the science behind biodiversity and extinction issues. Visitors should also come away with an increased understanding of the role of systematic collections in understanding biological diversity. Information on MPM research programs will be highlighted in "The Natural History Museum" section and will be updated frequently. Annual Teacher Training Institutes for pre-service and in-service teachers will present strategies for using the gallery's multimedia stations, lab areas, and Web site links. Special attention will be given to reaching new audiences including those in the inner city and people with disabilities.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Allen YoungJames KellyPeter SheehanSusan-Sullivan BorkinRolf JohnsonMary Korenic
The National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED) is a Science and Technology Center focused on understanding the processes that shape the Earth's surface, and on communicating that understanding with a broad range of stakeholders. NCED's work will support a larger, community-based effort to develop a suite of quantitative models of the Earth's surface: a Community Sediment Model (CSM). Results of the NCED-CSM collaboration will be used for both short-term prediction of surface response to natural and anthropogenic change and long-term interpretation of how past conditions are recorded in landscapes and sedimentary strata. This will in turn help solve pressing societal problems such as estimation and mitigation of landscape-related risk; responsible management of landscape resources including forests, agricultural, and recreational areas; forecasting landscape response to possible climatic and other changes; and wise development of resources like groundwater and hydrocarbons that are hosted in buried sediments. NCED education and knowledge transfer programs include exhibits and educational programs at the Science Museum of Minnesota, internships and programs for students from tribal colleges and other underrepresented populations, and research opportunities for participants from outside core NCED institutions. The Earth's surface is the dynamic interface among the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere. It is intimately interwoven with the life that inhabits it. Surface processes span environments ranging from high mountains to the deep ocean and time scales from fractions of a second to millions of years. Because of this range in forms, processes, and scales, the study of surface dynamics has involved many disciplines and approaches. A major goal of NCED is to foster the development of a unified, quantitative science of Earth-surface dynamics that combines efforts in geomorphology, civil engineering, biology, sedimentary geology, oceanography, and geophysics. Our research program has four major themes: (1) landscape evolution, (2) basin evolution, (3) biological sediment dynamics, and (4) integration of morphodynamic processes across environments and scales. Each theme area provides opportunities for exchange of information and ideas with a wide range of stakeholders, including teachers and learners at all levels; researchers, managers, and policy makers in both the commercial and public sectors; and the general public.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Efi Foufoula-GeorgiouChristopher PaolaGary Parker
resourceevaluationProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose (CDM) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to study the professional development component of Mammoth Discovery!, a NSF-funded project. The professional development part of the project convened a group of museum professionals (cohort participants) from select children’s museums to participate in several workshops, developed and conducted by CDM staff, and gatherings at a number of Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) conferences. RK&A conducted the evaluation to measure the impact of these experiences on the professional practice of cohort
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Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose
This research examined and evaluated visitor comments at The National Museum of Ireland - Country Life, recorded in comment books over a period of 10 years since the Musuem opened to the public in 2001. The aim was to establish reoccuring patterns of comments and determine what these told us about how the public related to the exhibitions and objects on display. Themes related to reminisence, identity, ownership and emotion were identified as reoccuring throughout the comments recorded. These were analysed within the context of museum learning theory to determine links between recorded visitor
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TEAM MEMBERS:
The National Museum of Ireland - Country LifeJoanne Hamilton
This report details the findings from an exploratory research study conducted by the Research and Evaluation Department at the Museum of Science, Boston about this exhibition, which came to be known as Provocative Questions (PQ). This investigation was guided by the following questions: 1. Will visitors engage in socio-scientific argumentation in an un-facilitated exhibit space, and are they aware that they are doing so? 2. How do the un-facilitated exhibits impact visitors’ socio-scientific argumentation skills? For the exploratory research study, visitors were cued to use the exhibits and