PERG conducted the formative and summative evaluations of Windows on Earth, a project led by the Center for Earth and Space Science Education (CESSE) at TERC. The project included numerous partners and contributors who focused on the development of the Windows on Earth software, exhibit and website, as well as four museums who participated in the development and evaluation process: Boston's Museum of Science, (MOS), the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, (A&S), the St. Louis Science Center (SLSC), and the Montshire Museum of Science (MM) in Vermont. The project also coordinated some programming
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Judah LeblangJoan KarpTERC IncJodi Sandler
In 2009, the Monterey Bay Aquarium began looking at new ways to interpret its Seafood Watch program. This nationwide conservation program strives to educate the public about the importance of buying sustainable seafood. As part of the program, the Aquarium publishes a printed pocket guide that lists the types of seafood consumers should buy and the types they should avoid. (For more information, visit www.seafoodwatch.org.) Over the years, several zoos, aquariums and museums that partner with the Aquarium have expressed interest in displaying an exhibit to encourage more of their visitors to
The InformalScience.org web site is a resource for researchers working in the field of informal science and provides access to information linking researchers with one another and to member-contributed resources. Through use of the web site resources such as member projects, publications, and evaluation reports, users have opportunities to develop social and human capital. This report analyzes the value of InformalScience.org in supporting participants in the community as they navigate and advance the changing field of informal science education (ISE) research. In addition, we identify
Goodman Research Group, Inc. (GRG) is serving as the external evaluator of the three-year, NSF-funded Science Festival Alliance (SFA) project with this report summarizing results from the first year of the project. First year data collection was completed in June 2010. It included: Surveys of 1,411 San Diego Science Festival (SDSF) and 1,054 Cambridge Science Festival (CSF) attendees; End-of-year focus groups with each of the festival (SDSF and CSF) team leaders; and An online survey of 11 principal Alliance team members. The report is organized around four key questions: 1. Who participated
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 (P2H) program. The Museum designed P2H, originally a three-year program funded by the Colorado Health Foundation (the Foundation), to improve health outcomes for fifth-grade students as well as their families and teachers throughout the Denver metro area. Passport to Health has seven components, designed to complement each other and help the Museum achieve its stated program goals. The seven components
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TEAM MEMBERS:
JVA Consulting, LLCDenver Museum of Nature & Science
In an effort to prepare female high school students for a college curriculum and achieve gender parity in the engineering industry, WGBH has developed an initiative entitled, Engineer Your Life (EYL). The initiative is targeted toward female high school students, career counselors/educators, and professional engineers. It is designed to: 1) increase these target audiences' understanding of engineering, 2) inspire young women to explore engineering as a career option and 3) help adults encourage young women to investigate engineering opportunities. One component of this initiative involves
In 2010, WGBH Boston (www.wgbh.org) was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to explore the development of a new animated television series for children about environmental sustainability. In preparation for the series development, NSF requested that WGBH perform a needs assessment to determine how much kids know and understand about topics related to environmental sustainability. In September 2010, the focus groups took place at WGBH in Boston, MA. Each focus group was comprised of a mix of girls and boys aged 6 - 9 years old. We recruited 60 children from the greater
In the spring of 2010, WGBH Boston (wgbh.org) delivered twenty new episodes for the television series FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman (pbskids.org/FETCH!/). These episodes, developed for FETCH!'s fifth season, reflected a broadening of FETCH!'s stem content to include more mathematics. Rather than focusing exclusively on science and engineering, as FETCH! had done in the first four seasons, Season 5 episodes also highlighted age-appropriate math skills and concepts. WGBH was interested in assessing the extent to which kids learned math concepts and skills from these episodes. WGBH hired Concord
In 2009, Insight Evaluation Services conducted a summative evaluation of Junior Zoo Crew (JZC), a summer service program at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore (MZB) for teens ages 14 through 17. The goal of the evaluation was to assess the long-term impact of the JZC Program on its past participants in four main areas: 1. How and why participants are attracted to the Program and what support they get from their parents. 2. The extent to which the Program meets participants' expectations, as well as offers a satisfactory volunteer experience that also increases their appreciation for the value of
LOOP is a new animated television series from WGBH for children that is designed to improve the environmental and scientific literacy of children ages 5-8. WGBH developed a pilot episode of the program and tested it in the fall of 2010. WGBH hired independent evaluator Concord Evaluation Group, LLC (CEG) to conduct formative evaluation of the full pilot episode including the 25-minute animatic and the live-action video to assess the impact of LOOP on kids' knowledge of environmental science concepts. CEG performed an experimental study specifically a posttest-only control group design to
In June 2010, the Gardner contracted with the Institute for Learning Innovation to augment the results of a large scale, Wallace Foundation funded quantitative study. Specifically, ILI was asked to conduct a focused, qualitative study that would provide in depth data about local visitors' long term perceptions of their Gardner Museum experience. Semi structured, retrospective interviews were conducted with 31 museum visitors, months after their Gardner experience. Key results include the following: 1) Study participants demonstrated a range of motivations for visiting the Gardner, but most
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jeanine AnceletIsabella Stewart Gardner MuseumJessica J. LukeErin Johnson
The YardMap Network (see www.yardmap.org) is an NSF-funded citizen science project at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which will allow participants to map their habitat management and carbon neutral practices in backyards and parks, interact socially within the network, and display their activities and carbon footprints in an online platform such as Google maps. In 2010, the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI), in collaboration with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, conducted a front-end evaluation to assess the following evaluation questions: 1. What are gardeners', and birders', citizen