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.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Sue AllenChildren's Discovery Museum of San Jose
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
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Douglas SpencerTina PhillipsTori AngelottiShane MurphyFred ConnerCornell University
Presentation on the evaluation of NSF grant DRL-0917640 (The Energy Project) presented at the CAISE Convening on Sustainability Science and Informal Science Education, February 6th, 2012.
Annotated, integrated, illustrated practical instructions result in higher levels of performance on task; lower completion time, task difficulty, and perceived cognitive load; higher relative efficiency score and post-test scores than the conventional instructions; and makes practical work instructions easier to understand for students with no prior knowledge of the subject matter.
Transitioning from textbook-style problems to ""real-world"" physics problem-solving requires participants to set limiting assumptions. In textbook-style questions these assumptions aren't necessary because all the numerical values are provided by the textbook. However, in real-world challenges this is often not the case. The article has implications for educators who are thinking about how to use real-world problems in their work.
In this paper, the learning resources and museum visit that formed part of an undergraduate teaching sequence on the special theory of relativity are described and discussed. Findings highlight the importance of integrating pre- and post-visit activities, although the methods used to evaluate the impact of the experience do not offer conclusive results.
This study reports on how high school students use scientifically correct language to articulate the concept of ‘force’. Although the analysis is somewhat complex, the importance of this study is its research of how the students engage with scientific concepts and language, and moreover, how they use and apply it.
This paper provides an interesting insight into how educators can support learners in coming to understand the nature of matter. Whilst the specific focus is on students’ implicit assumptions and reasoning strategies in a particular domain, the broader discussion exploring the differences between novice and expert thinking is relevant to all educators seeking to support learners to engage with new content.
The formal introduction of learners to scientific phenomena is accompanied by the need to reconcile what they are being taught in classrooms with their informal or pre-existing conceptualizations of the same phenomena. Reconciled formal and informal conceptualizations represent what the authors of this study refer to as “conceptual continuity,” which, they argue, is an important asset for science educators seeking to support students’ conceptual development. In this paper, authors studied the ways in which high-school baseball players expressed their understanding of how curveballs curve using
In 2012, Concord Evaluation Group (CEG) conducted an evaluation of the impact of Peep and the Big Wide World (Peep) resources on Spanish-speaking families with preschool-aged children. The three-pronged evaluation included a National Family Study in which 112 Spanish-speaking families who used the Peep resources were compared to Spanish-speaking families who did not use the Peep resources. It also included an In-Depth Family Study -- an experiment conducted in the metro Boston area in which 36 Spanish-speaking families who used the Peep resources were compared to Spanish-speaking families who
Concord Evaluation Group (CEG) conducted an evaluation of the Spyhounds pilot test in October-December 2011. The goal of the evaluation was to assess the online resources for appeal and interest, as well as to provide WGBH with data on how a full-scale year-long project could be structured. CEG recruited a national sample of 5-8 year old children to participate in the pilot test. We conducted a pre-test survey to measure science-related knowledge (kids only), attitudes and interest (parents and kids). We then invited families to use the online resources during the pilot test and surveyed the
“The Fabric of the Cosmos” is a special four-hour NOVA series that takes viewers to the frontiers of physics to see how scientists are piecing together the most complete picture we have ever had of space, time, and the universe. Based on the book of the same title by Columbia University physicist and author Brian Greene, "The Fabric of the Cosmos" explores a world just beneath the surface of our everyday experience that we would hardly recognize a startling world far stranger and more wondrous than anyone expected. Interweaving provocative theories, experiments, and stories with clear
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Pam CastoriWGBHBecky CarrollLaura Stokes