Engaging Faith-based Communities in Citizen Science through Zooniverse was an 18-month pilot initiative funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Any opinions, findings, or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Foundation. The goals of this initiative were to broaden participation in citizen science (aka people-powered research) among religious and interfaith communities by establishing pathways for them to engage with science using the online Zooniverse platform, and to build positive, long-term relationships with these
NSF generously funded the Science Museum of Minnesota's exploration of whether or not the "theatrical gaming" technique could improve visitors' understanding of complex topics requiring conceptual shifts--topics like evolution. COVID disrupted our formal evaluation plans, but this report offers finding and guidance/best practices for other informal education institutions interested in developing this type of experience. Individual sections discuss our particular, three-phased project, theatrical gaming as a technique, storytelling, gaming, technology, and evaluation.
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
ChemAttitudes: Using Design-Based Research to Develop and Disseminate Strategies and Materials to Support Chemistry Interest, Relevance, and Self-Efficacy (ChemAttitudes, NSF DRL-1612482) is a collaborative project between the Museum of Science, Boston (MOS), the National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Net), and the American Chemical Society (ACS) among others. As a part of this project, researchers and educators from MOS and the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) used design-based research to create chemistry hands-on activities meant to positively impact visitors’ attitudes towards
This report presents summative evaluation results for a National Science Foundation funded project entitled Grounding Institutional Partnerships in Structures for Broader Impacts Design (BID). The project represents a collaboration between five institutions: Institute for Learning Innovation, The STEM Research Center at Oregon State University, Scicenter, University of Washington-Bothell, and University of Wisconsin-Madison. BID aimed at creating an inter-institutional structure and toolkit to assist higher education institutions (HEIs) and informal science education organizations (ISEs) in
The Front-End Evaluation for the Mars Habitat exhibit component was conducted to inform the project team about overall public reactions to the concept of the exhibit, as well as to gather feedback about content, activity and the potential structure and building aspects of the component. This data was also used to help guide the development of an exhibit prototype and the subsequent testing of related ideas, materials and builds. This document includes the full data set and results of the front-end data collection.
The questions that were used for this evaluation included three main focus
This report summarizes the project work and research findings for a project designed to address racial justice through a STEM lens, in Minnesota communities, in the wake of George Floyd's murder. The project was rooted in principles of power sharing and co-creation. Though ultimately challenging, and not entirely successful according to the original goals, this report provides an overview of research findings and lessons learned.
Appendices include instruments.
This paper describes the methodology and the development of the instruments for collecting and analyzing data to better understand 1) what people bring with them to their visit, 2) what people do during a visit, and 3) what people take away from a visit. Elements of what they bring intersect with Knology’s work, and what they do and what they take away intersect with Oregon State University’s work on WZAM3.
COSI’s Center for Research and Evaluation (CRE) led a study was conducted in four phases with three study components. These phases serve to organize the remainder of this report::
Through Project BUILD, a STAR Library Network (STAR Net) program funded by the National Science Foundation, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the Space Science Institute’s National Center for Interactive Learning (NCIL) offered the virtual Dream, Build, Create program which consisted of (1) the award-winning documentary Dream Big: Engineering Our World and (2) five live-streamed panels of diverse engineers (Dream Teams) who shared their stories of what it means to be an engineer.
The external evaluation, conducted by Education Development Center (EDC), aimed to examine how