This poster from the 2023 ASTC conference provides and overview of research from the NSF funded Designing Our Tomorrow project. This research study examined storytelling approaches used by caregivers and educators to communicate to other caregiver and educators that the engineering practices exercised at DOT exhibits are usefully relevant to problem-solving in their day-to-day lives and within their communities.
This is a compilation of front-end, formative, and a partial summative evaluations, and an exploratory study using the xMacroscope, a data visualization technology developed for generating data from an exhibit using data captured from visitor actions.
There is no formula for starting a science center. Science centers are as variable as the communities that surround them and the people who plan them. They may be of modest or monumental proportions and grow at different rates and in a variety of ways. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify a number of common themes and dimensions that appear to be critical to their success.