The Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Experience Studies (COVES) aims to help science centers gather and share data to better understand visitors’ experiences. For the summative evaluation of COVES, the Museum of Science’s Research and Evaluation Department studied the program’s impacts on participating museums and museum professionals. Specifically, this evaluation was designed to:
Examine participants’ overall satisfaction with the collaboration and their likelihood to recommend it to others;
Understand the impact that COVES is having on Participating Institutions;
Assess whether
Informal Science Education (ISE) and Science Communication (SciComm) are two overlapping but distinct fields that support engagement in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in a variety of settings. Though fluid boundaries and fuzzy definitions make a clear distinction between ISE and SciComm difficult, the two fields nevertheless exhibit strong differences in core values and goals, based in part on different histories, commitments, and trajectories.
This paper summarizes two studies conducted by the Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE):
A survey