“Monkeying Around: Digital Media and Parent/Child Engagement Resources to Increase Preschool Computational Thinking” is a new project that uses animation, live-action videos, and hands-on activities to support joint engagement of children and caregivers around computational thinking concepts and practices. WGBH, a leading producer of educational STEM media, developed prototypes of videos and hands-on activities around the project’s computational thinking learning goals for young children. Education Development Center (EDC), WGBH’s research partner for the project, conducted a small formative
Techbridge Girls’ mission is to help girls discover a passion for science, engineering, and technology (SET). In August 2013, Techbridge Girls was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation grant to scale up its after-school program from the San Francisco Bay Area to multiple new locations around the United States. Techbridge Girls began offering after-school programming at elementary and middle schools in Greater Seattle in 2014, and in Washington, DC in 2015.
Education Development Center is conducting the formative and summative evaluation of the project. To assess the
Techbridge Girls’ mission is to help girls discover a passion for science, engineering, and technology (SET). In August 2013, Techbridge Girls was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation grant to scale up its after-school program from the San Francisco Bay Area to multiple new locations around the United States. Techbridge Girls began offering after-school programming at elementary and middle schools in Greater Seattle in 2014, and in Washington, DC in 2015.
Education Development Center is conducting the formative and summative evaluation of the project. To assess the
Designing Our World (DOW) was a four-year NSF-funded initiative in which the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) sought to promote girls’ pursuit of engineering careers through community-based programming, exhibition development, and identity research. The overarching aim of DOW was to engage girls ages 9–14 with experiences that illuminate the social, personally relevant, and altruistic nature of engineering. In addition to programming for girls, the project also included workshops for parents/caregivers, professional development for staff from community partners; and an exhibition
As part of the development work of Latina SciGirls, the independent evaluation firm Knight Williams Inc. conducted a front-end evaluation focused on gathering input from the project’s primary public audiences (Latina girls and their parents/guardians) and professional audiences (the project’s advisers and partners). A total of 86 participants representing these diverse audience perspectives were asked to review an episode of the SciGirls program Hábitat en Caos/Habitat Havoc and two role model scientist profile videos featuring Karin Block and Victoria Velez. Scheduled early in Year 1 of the
As part of the development work of Latina SciGirls, the independent evaluation firm Knight Williams Inc. conducted a front-end evaluation focused on gathering input from the project’s primary public audiences (Latina girls and their parents/guardians) and professional audiences (the project’s advisers and partners).
Appendix includes logic model.
This study was a longitudinal summative evaluation of repeat visitors’ experiences in four Math Moves! exhibitions that were developed as part of a large collaborative exhibition development project called Math Core for Museums, and mounted at four museums around the country: Museum of Science (Boston); Museum of Life & Science (Durham, NC); Explora (Albuquerque); and Science Museum of Minnesota (St. Paul). The summative evaluation purposively selected four family groups at each institution and collected naturalistic data as the 16 groups engaged with the exhibits from 4-6 times over a two
Science from the Start (SFTS) was a two-year early childhood program funded by IMLS, with matching funds from the Sciencenter. The goal of SFTS was to empower teachers, parents, and caregivers to do more science with their students and children. Although the SFTS program continues today,this final summary report describes the results of the initial two-year pilot project only.
Providence Children’s Museum was tasked with examining how children demonstrate their learning and thinking through their play at the museum, and how exhibit activities and resources can be designed to build awareness of these learning processes among children’s caregivers and museum educators. The project team created a set of resources, including an exhibit space called Mind Lab, a Circuit Block activity, and an Observation Tool for caregivers that highlighted different types of behaviors associated with learning that happens naturally while children play. Rockman et al conducted a summative
During the development of the first permanent exhibition to be installed at COSI, a science center in Columbus, Ohio, a number of front-end, developmental, and remedial evaluations were implemented over the course of 3 years. As the embedded evaluator for this project, I was considered part of the design team and was present at almost all the project team meetings and facilitated all of the evaluations except for the summative evaluation, in which an outside evaluator was hired to perform the evaluation. This collection of reports contains a front-end evaluation that explored what COSI guests