Dinosaurs have been a very popular science topic since signs of their presence on earth were first discovered. They have represented so-called ‘edutainment’ for some people. Learning from informal sources and in- an out-of-school environment can be effective and motivating. In this study, 12-year-old pupils (N = 366) visited a dinosaur science centre exhibition in Finland. Pupils were tested with standardised tests of motivation as defined by self-determination theory, cognitive skills, and interest via pre-, post-, and delayed post-tests during a six-month period. Findings show that pupils
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Hannu SalmiHelena ThunebergMari-Pauliina Vainikainen
Purpose: In the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress only 17% of 8th grade students performed at or above the proficient level in U.S. history. One way to engage students in learning history is to create history learning resources that are designed to be relevant and appealing to young people's interests and regular activities. Surveys find that almost all teenage boys and girls play digital games, and the majority of teens play daily. This project will leverage the potential of games and technology to engage students and increase history skills and content knowledge.
Project Activities: The team, consisting of graphic artists, content specialists, computer scientists, and programmers, will initially create wireframes and a functional game prototype. Following feedback from a group of students and teachers on the user-interface, the team will produce an online tablet app. Iterative refinements will be conducted at major production milestones until the intervention is fully functional. Once development is complete, the researchers will assess the usability and feasibility, fidelity of implementation, and the promise of the product to improve outcomes in a pilot study. The study will include 200 8th grade students in eight classrooms. Four classrooms will be assigned to play to game as part of the curriculum over three to five class periods, and four classrooms will be taught the same historical content using the business as usual curriculum without the game. Each group will complete pre- and post- assessments to assess differences in history knowledge and skills.
Product: This project team will develop a tablet-based interactive role-playing game that immerses 5th through 9th grade students in the history of the Great Depression. The game will provide players an experiential understanding of the hardships that beset Americans in the 1930s and their strategies for survival, as individuals and as a nation. Features of the game will include story-based immersive narrative missions where student's decisions continually drive the action, tips and hints for students who are struggling in the game, writing tools, and interactive maps. The game will can be integrated within a course or used as a supplement. A teacher dashboard will be developed to facilitate the use of the game within classroom settings. Finally, the final product will include upgrades to existing games, including City of Immigrants and the The Hardest Times. The upgrades will publish these games to tablets and will include deeper in-game assessment opportunities.
Purpose: There is concern about a decline in mathematics achievement scores among U.S. students during the middle school years. For example, while 4th grade U.S. students rank 8th overall on an international mathematics comparison, by 10th grade U.S. student's drop significantly to 25th in the same comparison. Some researchers posit that much of this decline relates to how math is taught in the U.S. and with how students become less engaged as learners in middle school. The purpose of this project is to develop a web-based game to engage 7h grade students in a narrative-based story which will apply learning of content and skills aligned to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in mathematics.
Project Activities: During Phase I in 2012, the team developed a functioning prototype and conducted usability and feasibility research with fourteen 7th grade students. Researchers found that the prototype functioned as intended and that students were highly engaged while playing the game. In Phase II, the team will develop a fully-functional user interface with animated characters, interactivity across student users, narrative scripts and accompanying art assets, 36 problem sets, and student and teacher dashboards and databases. After development is complete, a pilot study will examine the usability and feasibility, fidelity of implementation, and the promise of the game to improve math learning. The study will include 120 students in 6 classrooms in three schools, with one classroom per school randomly assigned to use the game and the other half assigned to a business-as-usual control. Analyses will compare student scores on pre and post mathematics measures.
Product: Empires is a web-based game that addresses 36 pre-algebra Common Core State Standards in mathematics for 7th and 8th grades. The game follows a storyline in a recreation of an ancient empire which is at the brink of agricultural revolution and of becoming a trade economy. As students play the game, they engage in math-focused activities to drive the action, such as taxing citizens to learn ratios and proportions, allocating resources to learn percentages, and measuring the distance and time between a neighboring empire by applying the principles of the Pythagorean Theorem. As a socially networked game, students will interact with other students in the class to complete trades that lead to encounters with different math problems. The game will include two helpful, funny, advisors who will scaffold learning through mathematical discourse, arguing over the next most important thing to do. The game design architecture will work on a wide range of computers, including desktops and iPads. A teacher's guide and companion website will provide guidance to classroom activities that complement the game.
In prior research and development (in part supported by a 2014 ED/IES SBIR award), the project team developed Mission U.S., a series of web- and app-based games for topics in U.S. history. With this Phase I funding, the team will extend Mission U.S. by developing and testing a prototype of a virtual reality (VR) platform to immerse students in transformational moments in U.S history and to guide document-based investigations. The prototype of Mission U.S.: Time Snap will consist of VR goggles that present history content, and a website to host mission briefs to prepare student inquiry, worksheets to facilitate reflection, and an embedded assessment. At the end of Phase I in a pilot study with 30 students in one classroom, the researchers will examine whether the VR platform and the website function as planned, if students are engaged with the system, and whether student content knowledge of a historical event improves from pre- to post-test.
The National Museum of the American Indian, NY (NMAI-NY) contracted RK&A to conduct a two-phase formative evaluation of the museum’s upcoming Native New York exhibition. The study’s objectives for walk-in visitors and teachers were to understand their baseline knowledge, what piques their interest, potential barriers (confusion or misunderstanding), strategies to help make personal connections, and how/if they understand exhibition outcomes (such as appreciate who Native Americans are today and understand that Native peoples have powerfully shaped and defined New York’s geography, economy, and
Public understanding of science and civic engagement on science issues that impact contemporary life matter more today than ever. From the Planned Parenthood controversy, to the Flint water crisis and the fluoridation debate, societal polarization about science issues has reached dramatic levels that present significant obstacles to public discussion and problem solving. This is happening, in part, because systems built to support science do not often reward open-minded thinking, inclusive dialogue, and moral responsibility regarding science issues. As a result, public faith in science
The Concord Museum contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to conduct a front-end evaluation of its current permanent exhibition gallery—Why Concord?—in preparation for a comprehensive reinterpretation and reinstallation of the museum’s permanent collections funded by an IMLS grant. The goal of the evaluation was to understand the current visitor experience in Why Concord? and to explore visitors’ responses to several ideas the museum is considering for the updated exhibition. Specifically, the evaluation explored the extent to which visitors find history relevant (in general, in the
The San Diego Natural History Museum (theNAT) contracted RK&A to conduct a summative evaluation of the exhibition Extraordinary Ideas from Ordinary People: A History of Citizen Science and to explore how well the exhibition communicates an inclusive view of science. The goals for the evaluation were to explore visitors’ behaviors in the exhibition as well as understand what meanings visitors made from the exhibition, particularly with regard to how the exhibition’s messages about citizen science are resonating in the context of visitors’ science identity.
RK&A conducted timing and tracking
The Anthropologist examines climate change like no other film before. The fate of the planet is considered from the perspective of American teenager Katie Crate. Over the course of five years, she travels alongside her mother Susie, an anthropologist studying the impact of climate change on indigenous communities. Their journey parallels that of renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead, who for decades sought to understand how global change affects remote cultures.
From January 2012 to May 2012, SmartStart Educational Consulting Services conducted a front-end evaluation of the documentary
The status of photographs in museums is receiving increased attention. This is exemplified by the debate over the transfer of the Royal Photographic Society collection held at the SMG’s National Science and Media Museum to the V&A (see Terwey, this issue), and the implications for photographs of a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) focus at the National Science and Media Museum. So it seems to useful moment to think about the terms under which photographs exist in museums collections. What are they doing there?
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Elizabeth Edwards
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
I received the invitation to deliver a paper as part of a panel about photography at the Science Museum Group’s [SMG] inaugural research conference towards the end of 2015. A few months later, SMG announced its plans to give a significant part of the photography collection held at the National Science and Media Museum – one of the four institutions for which the umbrella group is responsible – to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. What has proved to be a controversial decision will see 400,000 objects, originally the collection of the Royal Photographic Society, and now categorised as
This article will consider the alignment of scientific and media practice at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Over several decades after 1817 certain instrument makers began to specialise in the domestic entertainment market, transferring skills from optical instrument manufacture to the design of fashionable novelty devices. The instrument trade was expanding into a new middle-class market to exploit an increasing popular trade in optical novelties, exemplified by the 1817 Kaleidoscope craze and new interest among the middle classes for microscopes, telescopes, and magic lanterns