Edu, Inc. provided expertise and experience in user testing and evaluation of public outreach using new media for this project. In their role as advisor, Edu, Inc., observed that the website successfully satisfied the project goal of producing and testing five new models of interactive media and several feedback mechanisms to allow the public to register personal opinions on ethical scenarios regarding nanotechnology. The evaluators suggest that there is significant anecdotal evidence to recommend four practices tested by the web designers: 1. The potential of web comics as a media to present
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Douglas SpencerOregon Public BroadcastingJediah GrahamSusan Hibbard
Cracking the Maya Code is a one-hour PBS/NOVA adaptation of the two-hour feature documentary Breaking the Maya Code, based on the book of the same title by Michael D. Coe. Major funding for the project - which included website, eduational and outreach components - was provided by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Knight Williams Research conducted a summative evaluation of Cracking the Maya Code. The evaluation examined the appeal, clarity, and educational impact of the program, focusing on educating Viewers about: The basic principles that underlie
SciGirls is a new weekly public television series produced by Twin Cities Public Television and supported by the National Science Foundation. Twelve half-hour animated and live action shows are accompanied by web and outreach activities in the fields of science, technology and engineering (STEM). Multimedia Research, an independent evaluation group, implemented a summative evaluation of SciGirls television programming with a rigorous randomized controlled trial design comparing treatment and control groups. Girls entering fifth grade were assigned randomly either to a treatment group (n = 42)
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Barbara FlaggTwin Cities Public Television
With funding from Atlantic Philanthropies, the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to evaluate the Traveling Through Time (TTT) program, a 90-minute fieldtrip program facilitated by museum educators that explores the early history of New York City through objects and inquiry. The study explores whether and to what extent the TTT program affects students' attitudes about history and history museums, history knowledge, and history-related skills. In the last 30 years, there has been little rigorous research that investigates the outcomes
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Randi Korn & Associates Inc.Museum of the City of New York
In Spring 2009, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (Museum) contracted with JVA Consulting, LLC (JVA) to conduct a comprehensive process and outcome evaluation of the Passport to Health Program (P2H). The Museum designed P2H, a three-year program funded by the Colorado Health Foundation, to improve health outcomes for fifth-grade students as well as their families and teachers throughout the Denver metro area. This evaluation report offers the findings of the baseline process evaluation and climate assessment, which will serve as a foundation for future evaluation efforts. Using various
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TEAM MEMBERS:
JVA Consulting, LLCDenver Museum of Nature & Science
This report presents the results of a front-end exploration study conducted at Boston Children's Museum in September and November, 2010. This front-end study was designed to determine visitors' existing knowledge of the living things and natural processes in their neighborhood, and more importantly, their level(s) of interest in finding out more about the animals and plants with whom they share their neighborhoods. A copy of the survey instrument used in the study is included in the appendix of this document.
Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) conducted a summative evaluation of the Gallery of California Art (Art Gallery) for the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA). The Art Gallery underwent an extensive reinstallation project, funded in part by a grant from The James Irvine Foundation. The OMCA Art Gallery reinstallation project focused on four goals: create a more welcoming, comfortable and lively Gallery of California; foster intergenerational learning; attract and engage an ethnically diverse community; and foster a personal connection between art and the visitor. The summative evaluation
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Oakland Museum of California
Goodman Research Group completed the summative evaluation report of the Black Holes Experiment Gallery (BHEG), a traveling exhibit by the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which aimed at engaging museum visitors in the topic of black holes. One of the innovations of the project included the inclusion of significant input from youth collaborators in the exhibit's design and development phase in order to achieve improved audience impact and the other innovation was a Black Holes Explorer's Card which visitors used to collect digital artifacts at the museum and could access the
In summary, this Planning Grant has demonstrated that the Fusion Science Theater mode successfully uses the dramatic structure of a play to create an investigative, participatory theater event that conveys science information, concepts, and methodology in a way that is engaging to children and attractive to parents and educators. The model can be transferred to others both by teaching others to develop their own shows and by training undergraduates to perform FST shows that have already been created. Finally, significant achievements have occurred in publicizing the model and in recruiting
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Joanne CantorMadison Area Technical College
Our study at the Frye Art Museum examined the use of the gallery guides by visitors in Tete-a-Tete, the salon-style hang of the museum's founding collection. Our goal was to see who was using the guides, how, what effect this had on their experience, and what they expected from the guides. We discovered that the average gallery guide user was female, over 35 years of age, previously been to the Frye Art Museum but had not yet seen Tete-a-Tete. Although gallery guide users spent more time in the exhibit and were able to recall art historical information more readily, the use of the guides did
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Valerie GrabskiLauren LeClaireFrye Art Museum
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This evaluation looked at one set of visitor behaviors - taking and using photographs - in the whole of Experience Music Project | Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (EMP|SFM). It was conducted between April 30 and May 6, 2010 by collecting semi-structured interview responses from 58 EMP|SFM visitors during their visits. We sought to identify 1) whether visitors were taking their own photos in the galleries; 2) how they planned to use those photos; 3) whether they planned to use visitor-generated material (in the form of the Taking Aim Flickr site) after their visit; and
Overall findings suggest that the Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway exhibit attracted a different audience than the audience which attended the Coffee: The World in Your Cup exhibit the previous year. Additionally, visitors were highly engaged within the exhibit, and were spending a great deal of time in the exhibit space. Visitors to Cruisin' felt strongly that the exhibit was able to successfully present scientific and educational content, but in a more creative and dynamic way than they're used to. The appendix of this report includes the interview and observation protocols and tracking