This practitioner guide summarizes lessons learned from a three-year design-based research project focused on using elements of narrative (such as characters, settings, and problem frames) to evoke empathy and support girls' engagement in engineering design practices. The guide includes a summary of the driving concepts and key research findings from this work, as well as design principles for creating narrative-based engineering activities. Six activity case studies illustrate the design principles in action, and facilitation tips and observation tools offer practical guidance in developing
Exhibit Design for Girls’ Engagement (EDGE) began as an NSF-funded research project led by the Exploratorium to learn how science museums can better engage girls aged 8–13 with STEM exhibits. Over the course of the research, we identified nine design attributes that were consistently positively related to girls’ engagement with these exhibits. The Exploratorium then went on a three-year journey funded by the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation to explore ways to fold the EDGE design attributes into our exhibits, with a focus on existing exhibits. This was an exciting opportunity to put the EDGE
“Not a place for me” is often one of the main reasons people choose not to visit art museums.
Such perceptions of art museums call for institutions to create wider and more diverse entry points for visitors. At the Art Institute of Chicago—envisioned by our first president as a “museum of living thought”—we seek to continually expand art historical narratives by bringing together a plurality of perspectives and voices to processes of research, scientific and creative inquiry, and to increasingly varied modes of public engagement with art. To achieve these goals we developed a multifaceted
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Francesca Casadio
resourceresearchPlanetarium and Science on a Sphere
This poster, which was presented at the Association of Science and Technology Centers Annual Conference on October 22, 2017, compares and contrasts evaluation findings across components of the Beyond Spaceship Earth project at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis. The project focuses on educating families and students about life and work aboard the International Space Station and generating interest in STEM topics and careers. Project components reviewed include an exhibit, a space object theater, and workshop-style programs focused on engineering and robotics for both families and school
Constructivist education theory postulates (Fosnot, 1996; Hein, 1998) that visitors learn actively and create their own meanings as they interact with the world. This raises challenges for visitor studies, since it may be difficult to plan a reasonable evaluation strategy for exhibitions if visitors’ actions and outcomes cannot be determined in advance. Constructivist theory also requires an appropriate evaluation approach (Hein, 1997). This paper illustrates the use of a combination of methodologies that allow visitors’ meanings and activities to emerge as they visit an interactive, non
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Elsa BaileyKerry BronnenkantJudith KelleyGeorge HeinMuseum of Science, Boston
This report details the findings from an exploratory research study conducted by the Research and Evaluation Department at the Museum of Science, Boston about this exhibition, which came to be known as Provocative Questions (PQ). This investigation was guided by the following questions: 1. Will visitors engage in socio-scientific argumentation in an un-facilitated exhibit space, and are they aware that they are doing so? 2. How do the un-facilitated exhibits impact visitors’ socio-scientific argumentation skills? For the exploratory research study, visitors were cued to use the exhibits and
From the Proceedings of the 1992 Annual Visitor Studies Conference. Reviews a study, conducted as part of a formative evaluation of an HIV/AIDS exhibit developed by the New York Hall of Science, which was designed to investigate two issues: 1) What is the current state of youth awareness of the mechanisms by which condoms help prevent the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases; and 2) Which of two exhibit designs most efficiently communicates concepts related to HIV sexual transmission prevention. A copy of the survey used in the study is included in the appendix of this report.