This evaluation was commissioned to explore visitors’ reactions to and experience of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's special exhibition Fishing for Solutions. The exhibit team sought feedback about whether visitors perceived the main messages, what mood people leave with, and issues of media choice in exhibit design, among other topics. To provide systematic information on these issues, interviews were conducted with a sample of 343 randomly selected visitors as they were exiting from the exhibition, plus “mini-studies” of 40 people each were conducted at four specific exhibits. Details about
The summative evaluation with middle school students focused on three major outcomes: (1) To what extent did the film appeal to middle school viewers? (2) To what extent did the film achieve its intended viewing goals? (3) Did the implementation of school-based activities prior to viewing affect outcomes? A quasi-experimental pretest/posttest nonequivalent comparison group design was used with middle school students to evaluate the film and ancillary schoolroom activities. Intact school classes were assigned to one of two treatments: Viewing the film only (FILM, N = 225)) and viewing the film
The summative evaluation focused on four major outcomes: (1) to what extent did the film appeal to adult viewers? (2) to what extent did the film achieve its intended viewing goals? (3) what did viewers perceive that they learned from the film, if anything? (4) did viewing the film influence the audience beyond the museum visit? A quasi-experimental separate-sample pretest-posttest design was used to evaluate the film in its natural theater setting: 204 adults responded to the presurvey and 199 to the post survey. Thirty adult audience members were also interviewed by phone one week later
This formative evaluation gathered feedback from fourth graders in response to characters and stories proposed for further development. The general goals for the formative evaluation were To determine appeal of the proposed animated characters, given drawings and verbal descriptions, To assess reactions to the cast and storylines, given two short audiotapes with black and white illustrations, To evaluate comprehension of the storylines, To estimate viewers' interest in participating in the problem solving activity, To compare appeal of the two stories, To explore viewers' impressions of what
This report summarizes the evaluation of the first 20 months of the National Science Foundation-funded tour of the Traveling Experiment Gallery. The Traveling Experiment Gallery is the touring version of Science Museum of Minnesota's successful core science hall, the Experiment Gallery. The evaluation of the Traveling Experiment Gallery was conducted using naturalistic inquiry methodology. Depth interviews were conducted with 28 staff and six volunteers at the five museums and science centers which have hosted the exhibition. The evaluators also spent almost 30 hours observing visitors, floor
Out of This World: Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy opened at the National Library of Canada (NLC) in Ottawa in May 1995, and a concurrent mini-exhibit was planned for the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy facilities in Toronto. This was expected to be a significant literary event and an effective initiative toward reaching important new audiences. The Library wanted to catalogue their SF collection because science fiction was one of the fastest growing literary genres. The codeveloper of the Exhibition, Allan Weiss, had done extensive research and compiled A
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Barbara SorenLORD Cultural Resources Planning & Management Inc.
The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (AGNS) collection features artists from Nova Scotia, as well as Canadian, American, British, and European works. As at many art museums, the issue of whether or not to include written material (extended labels) in exhibitions, and the related issue of who was responsible for the writing, editing, and presentation of labels created tension among educators, curators, and artists. Thus a Labels Project at the AGNS was intended to address this issue, and stimulated a summative evaluation study during 1996. The visitor study reported is a portrait of an institution of
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Barbara SorenArt Gallery of Nova Scotia
This report presents findings from a front-end evaluation of Texas Prehistory: How Do We Know?, under development by the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History and supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) planning grant. This 10,000 square-foot permanent exhibition, with accompanying traveling exhibition and educational programs, focuses on current archaeological and paleontological fieldwork taking place in Texas and explores how scientists are able to piece together the past.
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Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Fort Worth Museum of Science and History
This evaluation instrument was developed for Exploring Physics, an extra curricular program for 5-7 grade students, with a focus on female students. It is part of an NSF funded program entitled Promoting Young Women in the Physical Sciences.