Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose (CDM) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to study the professional development component of Mammoth Discovery!, a NSF-funded project. The professional development part of the project convened a group of museum professionals (cohort participants) from select children’s museums to participate in several workshops, developed and conducted by CDM staff, and gatherings at a number of Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) conferences. RK&A conducted the evaluation to measure the impact of these experiences on the professional practice of cohort
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Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose
This report details the findings from an exploratory research study conducted by the Research and Evaluation Department at the Museum of Science, Boston about this exhibition, which came to be known as Provocative Questions (PQ). This investigation was guided by the following questions: 1. Will visitors engage in socio-scientific argumentation in an un-facilitated exhibit space, and are they aware that they are doing so? 2. How do the un-facilitated exhibits impact visitors’ socio-scientific argumentation skills? For the exploratory research study, visitors were cued to use the exhibits and
Purpose: To determine the effectiveness of the Evolution Wall and Research Highlight exhibit in conveying the main topics of the exhibit: biodiversity and the research of Burke curators. Evaluation Questions: 1.What is the nature of Evolution Wall and Research Highlight use by visitors? What draws their attention? 2.Do visitors understand that the exhibit is about evolution and biodiversity? 3.To what extent are visitors aware that Burke curators are involved with and conduct current research? Key Findings: 1.The Evolution Wall and the photos were the most interesting components of exhibit for
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Ari EinbinderAmy DygertDylan HighBurke Natural History Museum
The Seattle Aquarium seeks to discover how toddler families experience its exhibits and how to best incorporate toddler family needs in future exhibit developments. The goal of this study is to begin to document toddler-exhibit interactions in order to better understand the Aquarium experience for that audience. The specific research goal was to determine which exhibit elements are attracting and holding the attention of the toddler family audience. A total of 47 caregiver interviews and 297 toddler observations across three exhibit areas were collected from January-March 2011 at the Seattle
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Andrea BarberKaleen PovisSeattle Aquarium
The Washington Park Arboretum (WPA) in Seattle is a 230 acre expanse of land which abuts Lake Washington. Apart from the Japanese Garden, admission into the arboretum is free and access points into the park are numerous. As such, tracking visitorship is challenging. For this front-end study the focus was on visitors at the Graham Visitor Center entry point. This point-of-entry has the benefit of both a parking lot and an established facility, allowing for a large amount of visitor data to be collected in a relatively short amount of time. The goal of this study was to better understand who
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 2006, the Science Museum of Minnesota carried out a formative evaluation of the traveling exhibition, Disease Detectives. Disease Detectives features an immersive environment where visitors investigate a case by meeting a patient (an interactive mannequin), interpreting lab tests, and exploring specific environments to learn more about disease transmission and prevention. Each case highlights a different mode of disease transmission and the relevant illnesses. The purpose of this evaluation was to look at the usability and learning outcomes of one of the three proposed scenarios for the
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
During January 2007, the Science Museum of Minnesota carried out a study to gather visitor feedback on a variety of potential interpretive features of Science on a Sphere. Visitor preferences related to the use of interpretive labels and graphics directly on the Sphere and the speed in which visualizations rotate were studied. A total of 51 visitors were interviewed. Key findings include: 1. Three quarters of visitors preferred descriptive labels to be directly on the Sphere. 2. If labels were projected on the Sphere, almost all the visitors wanted them to disappear after a period of time. 3
This report describes a summative evaluation of Secrets of Circles, a 2,600 square foot exhibition created by Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose and funded by the National Science Foundation. The exhibition and related programs were designed to highlight the uses of circles and wheels in everyday life. Circles have properties that make them extremely effective as an engineering tool, and they are ubiquitous in cultures around the world. The appendix of this report inclues interview and observation protocols and questionnaires used in this study.
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Sue AllenChildren's Discovery Museum of San Jose
Too Small to See is a 5,000 square-foot interactive traveling museum exhibition designed to provide hands-on nanotechnology science education to youth age 8 to 13 and adults. It debuted at Disney's Epcot and will reach over three million people during a five-year US tour. This evaluation examines the exhibition’s outcomes and impact on increasing visitors’ awareness of, interest in, engagement with, and understanding of nanoscale science, engineering, and technology. An overarching goal is to document the project’s contribution to the portfolio of federally funded Science Technology
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Douglas SpencerTina PhillipsTori AngelottiShane MurphyFred ConnerCornell University