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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TEAM MEMBERS:
Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose
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
This mixed-methods evaluation, which was conducted at the request of the museum’s Communications department, answers two questions about a suite of special family events at the Burke Museum. First, this project sought to develop a profile of Family Day visitors – including any differences in audiences across individual events, and how visitors were receiving information about the events. Second, this evaluation sought to explore visitors’ expectations of and experiences at the events. Specific evaluation questions included the extent to which expectations and experiences aligned with one
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Emily CraigBetsy O'BrienRenae YoungsBurke Museum of Natural History and Culture
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
The Language of Conservation was a collaborative project between libraries, zoos, and poets nationwide to replicate a project originally undertaken by the Central Park Zoo. The project model built zoo, library, and poet-in-residence partnerships in five host cities: Brookfield, Illinois; Jacksonville, Florida; Little Rock, Arkansas; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and New Orleans, Louisiana. It was anticipated that the zoo exhibits would result in positive outcomes for zoo visitors who encountered the poetry, including increasing the conservation thinking and language used after a visit and creating a
One World, One Sky: Big Bird's Adventure (OWOS) is a bi-national, China-US cooperative project to produce and distribute a planetarium show based on popular characters from Sesame Workshop's television productions in each country for preschool- and kindergarten-aged children, as well as accompanying outreach materials for children, parents and teachers to further enhance learning. The project aims to: (1) provide young Chinese and American children aged four to six with an age-appropriate introduction to astronomy; (2) promote positive attitudes toward science among young children in both
Illuminated Verses explored issues of traditional culture and modernity, as well as differences and diversity within the Islamic world, and offers an interpretive bridge to these content areas for both scholarly and general audiences. Through a symposium and a series of pre-events leading up to that program, Poets House and CityLore explored ways of using poetry, discussion and interpretation of poetry to create bridges for intercultural understanding. The symposium and pre-symposium events also served as a springboard to explore the potential for a broader, potentially national, program. This
This report describes the findings of an evaluation of the K-5 school tour program at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Washington. These school tours observed in this study are based in the methods of the educational model of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), but take place during hour-long tours in the galleries, rather than repeatedly over longer periods of time, and are integrated with other questions, information, and activities developed specifically at the Frye. The findings reveal positive correlations between the use of VTS questions by gallery guides and desired student participation
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Valerie GrabskiLauren LeClaireAmanda Mae BomarFrye Art Museum
Listeners to The Really Big Questions (TRBQ) were asked to complete an online survey about their thoughts and experience with the program. Those interviewed cited that they valued the depth and thoughtfulness of the TRBQ programs and said they would like to see more programming produced. When asked, listeners reported that they would be willing to access programming via the Internet if it were not available by radio broadcast. They also reported that while they would like to see new programming as frequently as every week, they felt that quality and depth were more important than the number of