How does taking photos affect people’s memories of objects in a museum? Henkel compared people’s recall after taking photos and after simply observing museum paintings and objects. People remembered more when they observed than when they took a photo. However, if the photo zoomed in on a specific feature, people remembered the whole object better.
How does taking photos affect people’s memories of objects in a museum? Henkel compared people’s recall after taking photos and after simply observing museum paintings and objects. People remembered more when they observed than when they took a photo. However, if the photo zoomed in on a specific feature, people remembered the whole object better.
Rather than focusing on how different they are, this literature review details shared characteristics of science museums, science centers, zoos, and aquariums in order to contribute to an ecological view of learning. This article identifies four shared characteristics of these informal science environments: motives and goals, staging of popular science, physical layout, and social exchange and participation. The learning outcomes encompass not only knowledge acquisition but also changes in interests and beliefs.
Long aware that people from working-class, low-income, and ethnic minority backgrounds do not visit, informal science education institutions often attribute lack of visitorship to cost or barriers to access. Dawson argues that such institutions are not inclusive due to social factors that reinforce the experience of difference, discomfort, and inaccessibility for these minority groups.
Dancu, Gutwill, and Hido describe a process for designing science museum exhibits to create playful learning experiences. They outline five characteristics of play: It is structured by constraints, active without being stressful, focused on process not outcome, self-directed, and imaginative. For each characteristic, they offer an example of iterative design using formative evaluation.
In informal learning environments such as museums and science centers, researchers sometimes assess the effect of learners’ experiences by looking at their engagement. In this paper, researchers Barriault and Pearson describe a framework that identifies three different levels of visitor engagement with exhibits in a science center: initiation, transition, and breakthrough.
A comparison of survey data from 2000 and 2009 supports findings that the California Science Center in Los Angeles provides opportunities for public engagement in science that may not be supported by other education resources. Survey evidence correlates the community’s use of the science center with improvements in science engagement and science literacy.
This 2006 paper reviews the ways in which structured informal learning programs for youth have been characterized in the research literature. The paper synthesizes opportunities for and challenges to research in this domain; it categorizes programs and gives concrete examples of various program types. A proposed Vygotskian research framework is organized around key dimensions of the informal learning context, including location, relationships, content, pedagogy, and assessment.
This article makes a case for providing multiple types of hands-on resources to support learner inquiry. More specifically, a computer simulation of an electric circuit complemented work with a real circuit to support learners’ conceptual development. When learners had the opportunity to use both simulated and real circuits, less structured guidance seemed to benefit the inquiry process.
Briseño-Garzón analyzed interviews with 20 families after they visited Universum Museo de las Ciencias. She concluded that the benefits of visiting a science museum are “much more than science,” including spending quality time together as a family, interacting with others, learning about local culture and history, learning from each other, and, of course, learning science.
Achiam presents a template for improving the exhibit design process to ensure that the visitor experience matches the designer’s intended learning outcomes. The template is based on praxeology—a model of human activity that, in the case of museum engagement, addresses the ways in which visitors know what to do with an exhibit and then come to understand the scientific phenomena the exhibit was designed to demonstrate.
This study examined the ways in which teachers’ beliefs influence their practice when taking students to visit a science and technology museum. The researchers interviewed 14 primary and secondary school teachers before and after their museum visit, which was also observed. They found a clear relationship between teachers’ beliefs about the value of informal, museum-based learning and their goals and actions before, during, and after the visit.