The goal of this evaluation was to determine how museum visitors responded to the museum's existing live animal exhibits and identify recommendations for their new Live Animal Garden exhibit.
This front-end evaluation study is part of Designing Our Tomorrow: Mobilizing the Next Generation of Engineers, a five-year project (2018–2023) led by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) with the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF, DRL-1811617) and project partners: Adelante Mujeres, the Biomimicry Institute, and the Fleet Science Center. The Designing Our Tomorrow (DOT) project seeks to promote and strengthen family engagement and engineering learning via compelling exhibit-based design challenges, presented through the lens of sustainable design exemplified by
The Science Museum of Minnesota prototyped interpretive approaches to using an innovative scientific visualization system developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) called Science On a Sphere (SOS). SOS is composed of a wide variety of visualizations projected onto a six-foot sphere creating animated, whole-planet views of the Earth, other planets in our solar system, and their moons. Visualizations of the Earth cover topics such as weather, climate, topography, earth system dynamics, and geophysical processes. A challenge of SOS is making the content accessible
Visitor Baseline study for Science on a Sphere at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. The Sphere was installed in DMNS’ permanent space science gallery, Space Odyssey, in February 2010. Space Odyssey “Museum Galaxy Guides” (volunteer facilitators) were trained on Sphere operation and content in April 2010. The purpose of the Baseline Visitor Study was to establish a baseline of visitors’ length of stay, behavior, interactions, perceptions, and interest in the Sphere near the beginning of the grant period. These data and findings will serve a basis of comparison for future evaluations and
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Andrea GironDenver Museum of Nature & Science
Ice Planet Earth (IPE) was a three-year NSF-Funded grant, with a focus on building awareness and understanding of polar processes and designed to coincide with the International Polar Year, which took place from March 2007-March 2009. A key feature of the IPE project was the development of 'Ice Worlds', a planetarium style film designed for both general audiences and for students/youth. IPE was a collaboration between the University of New Hampshire, and the following institutions: The Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh; the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences; the Louisiana Art