This report represents the results of a summative evaluation study of visitor response to new interpretive signage in Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Tropical Pavilion. The evaluation aims to reveal the extent to which the new signage succeeds in providing the outcomes for the visitor experience identified in the Garden's Interpretive Master Plan (IMP). The IMP's overarching goal is: to create interactions and experiences with visitors of all ages and backgrounds which are rich, enjoyable, personally relevant, and communicate the key message,Plants are essential to life. The following content goals
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ellen GiustiBrooklyn Botanic GardenKathleen Condon
"Megalodon: Largest Shark That Ever Lived", a 5000-square-foot exhibition, started with a gift of shark fossil specimens and models, inspiring curators and administrators to create an exhibition to educate the public about extinct and modern sharks. This summative evaluation was undertaken to investigate whether exhibition visitors come away with an understanding of the exhibition's main premise: Megalodon, a dominant marine predator for 15 million years before vanishing 2 million years ago, provides lessons for shark conservation today. The learning goals also included a number of subthemes
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ellen GiustiFlorida Museum of Natural History
This summative evaluation report aims to examine the impact of Travels in the Great Tree of Life, a temporary exhibition at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. The 1000-square-foot exhibition seeks to convey concepts of phylogenetic relationships based on recency of common ancestry. In addition, its goal is for visitors to come away with an understanding of the vast scope and complexity of the Tree of Life (herein referred to as ToL) and some practical applications of ToL research. Data collection employed a mixed methods approach. Structured exit interviews were conducted with 102
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ellen GiustiYale Peabody Museum of Natural History
Beautiful Science: Ideas that Changed the World, a 2,500-square-foot permanent exhibition, contains more than 100 rare, important, and beautiful books and manuscripts from the Huntington's collections, along with artifacts and interactive experiences. The content focuses on the changing role of science through the centuries, with particular emphasis on some of the astonishing leaps in imagination made by scientists and the importance of written works in communicating those ideas. There were 52 exhibit elements in subject areas of Astronomy, Natural History, Medicine, and Light. Feedback on the
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Beverly SerrellThe Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
Sugar from the Sun was managed by the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance (GPCA) and funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation. For this project, a 6,400 square foot living exhibition was built at Garfield Park Conservatory. This exhibition, comprised of five sections, depicted plants' production of sugar from water, air, and sunlight. The exhibition also featured a printed Exhibit Guide and hands-on activities. This study used a naturalistic inquiry methodology. The research question for this study was, As visitors engage with the immersive environments and interpretive messages in
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Eric GyllenhaalGarfield Park Conservatory Alliance
In 2003 and 2004 a summative evaluation of the Jellies: Living Art exhibition was conducted. The exhibition is a 4,650 square foot special exhibition at the aquarium that is open from April 2002 through January 2005. It includes live displays of domestic and exotic jellies and a collection of artwork in a variety of media: paintings, sculpture, works on paper, and three large site-specific installations. Though the aquarium has displayed art previous to Jellies: Living Art, this exhibition represents the first time the aquarium has displayed both art and live species together. There were seven
The Outdoor Exploratorium Project is a five-year project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF0104478), that aims to encourage and support visitors in noticing the subtleties of the outdoor environment. The study described here is one in a set of evaluation studies conducted for this project. It is a first look at what and how visitors notice in the area immediately outside the Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Arts. In particular, we look at visitors' experiences with a noticing toolkit, a set of simple tools we gave visitors to encourage them to explore the outdoors. The study 1)
In early 2004 Explorit Science Center (Explorit) contracted with Visitor Studies Services (VSS) to design and conduct an evaluation of Explorit's Health In Your World Project (HIYW). HIYW is a traveling, science-based health education program for children and adults in low-income communities. HIYW features interactive experiments designed to make learning about the human body, health, and healthy choices fun and accessible. The program serves students in grades K-6, and is designed to engage parents and involve them as an integral part of the learning process. The HIYW Project was developed in
The John G. Shedd Aquarium opened an exhibition entitled Wild Reef: Sharks at Shedd in April 2003. Wild Reef immerses visitors in an Indo-Pacific ecosystem where they experience firsthand the connections among animals, habitats and people. This 2,800 square-foot exhibition spans nine rooms and contains one of the largest and most diverse collections of sharks in North America, along with the Midwest's largest public display of live corals. The primary message of Wild Reef is: Philippine coral reefs support an amazing abundance of life and anchor a delicate network of dependencies between
This is the summative evaluation of Sharks: Myth and Mystery, a temporary exhibition at the aquarium from 2004 to 2006, which explored how cultures from around the world incorporate sharks into their customs, stories and rituals. The evaluation included timing and tracking, structured interviews and post-visit web surveys, which can be found in the appendix of this report.
Yale Peabody Museum is developing an exhibition for the general public to introduce and interpret the Tree of Life online project that involves many universities and museums and is being supported by the National Science Foundation. This front-end visitor study was conducted to inform exhibition development about the potential audience's understanding of Trees. Interview forms and images are included in the appendix of this report.
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), with major funding from the National Science Foundation, developed the Animal Secrets exhibition for children ages 3-8 and their families. The exhibition seeks to provide families with an opportunity to discover nature from an animal's point of view as they explore immersive, naturalistic environments including a meadow, stream, woodland, cave, and naturalists' tent. The exhibit's "big idea" is for visitors to develop a sense of wonder about nature by exploring the secret world of animals. Evaluation instruments and surveys are included in the