The Lineage project was a collaboration between Twin Cities Public Television and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. The project included creation of a feature-length video program, a Virtual Reality game, and a set of hands-on activities designed for use by multigenerational audiences—all of which were incorporated as part of a series of seven Fossil Festival events at museums and other sites around the United States. This report presents findings from a set of external evaluation studies that examined impacts on families who participated in Fossil Festival events as well
The Brains On! exploratory research study was guided by three overarching research questions:
Who is the audience for Brains On! and what are their motivations for listening to children’s science podcasts?
How are Brains On! listeners using the podcast and engaging with its content?
What kinds of impacts does Brains On! have on its audiences?
These questions were answered through a three-phase mixed-methods research design. Each phase informed the next, providing additional insights into answering the research questions. Phase 1 was a review of a sample of secondary data in the
PEEP and the Big Wide World/El Mundo Divertido de PEEP is a bilingual, NSF- funded public media project that uses animation, live-action videos, games, mobile apps, hands-on science activities to motivate preschool-age children to investigate the world around them. Online, PEEP extends children’s science and math learning with a mobile-friendly website that offers games, videos, and hands-on activities, as well as a collection of 15 apps. PEEP is also reaching children in preschool classrooms and family/home childcare settings via the PEEP Science Curriculum, which provides resources for a
Roots of Wisdom (also known as Generations of Knowledge) is a 5-year project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF-DRL #1010559) in support of a cross-cultural reciprocal collaboration to develop a traveling exhibit, banner exhibit, and education resources that bring together Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and western science. The summative evaluation for public audience impacts was conducted by the Lifelong Learning Group (COSI, Columbus, OH), in collaboration with Native Pathways (Laguna, NM).
Funded by the National Science Foundation, the Science of Sharing project (SoS) was a collaboration between the Exploratorium, the Museum of Life and Science, Dialogue Social Enterprise and The Heroic Imagination Project. SoS included two major components for members of the public to engage with: a permanent collection of interactive, multi-user exhibits at the Exploratorium, and a series of social-media based activities called Experimonths. SoS exhibits and Experimonths were designed to allow visitors to experiment with cooperation, trust, and social dilemmas, connect those experiences to
This evaluation reports on the Mission: Solar System project, a 2-year project funded by NASA. The goal of the Mission: Solar System was to create a collection of resources that integrates digital media with hands-on science and engineering activities to support kids’ exploration in formal and informal education settings. Our goal in creating the resources were: For youth: (1) Provide opportunities to use science, technology, engineering, and math to solve challenges related to exploring our solar system, (2) Build and hone critical thinking, problem-solving, and design process skills, (3)
This report includes six separate formative evaluations conducted to inform the design and development of the deliverables for the 3D Visualization Tools for Enhancing Awareness, Understanding and Stewardship of Freshwater Ecosystems project. Deliverables were tested with both students and general visitor groups, with a focus on groups including late elementary and middle school children. Many different components were tested, including prototype versions of 3D visualizations, high-tech interactive experiences, apps on tablets and phones, and table top exhibits. Results are reported in each of
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded an Informal Science Education (ISE) grant, since renamed Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) to a group of institutions led by two of the University of California, Davis’s centers: the Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) and the W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in Earth Sciences (KeckCAVES). The purpose of the evaluation was to gather feedback from museum professionals and the general public about the proposed 3D visualization project and its related components. Additionally, the study aimed to assess the current understanding
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University of California, DavisSteven Yalowitz
This report was completed by the Program Evaluation Research Group at Endicott College in October 2013. It describes the outcomes and impacts of a four-year, NSF-funded project called Go Botany: Integrated Tools to Advance Botanical Learning (grant number 0840186). Go Botany focuses on fostering increased interest in and knowledge of botany among youth and adults in New England. This was being done through the creation of an online flora for the region, along with the development of related tools, including PlantShare, and a user-friendly interface for ‘smartphones’. In January 2012, the PI
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Judah LeblangNew England Wild Flower Society
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
The Science Museum of Minnesota conducted a study to find out how many visitors stopped at the Science on a Sphere (SOS) exhibit during their visit to the museum, visitors' prior knowledge of SOS, and why a visitor might chose not to visit SOS. A total of 189 visitors were interviewed. Findings included: - Groups of adults and children were more likely to visit SOS than groups composed of adults only. - Most visitors just happened across the exhibit during their visit rather than sought it out. - Of the visitors who did not stop at SOS, few were familiar with the exhibit. - Both visitors who
In May of 2006, Science on a Sphere (SOS) was set up in a permanent exhibit space at the Science Museum of Minnesota. With the new installation of the Sphere, came the addition of a variety of features that were not included in the initial front-end study. These new features included an expanded playlist, new audio for some of the visualizations, accompanying labels projected on the wall describing the visualization, indication on the labels of what image will be playing next, and seating for visitors so they can sit and view the sphere. The new master playlist was composed of three smaller