This article focuses on the setting factors associated with live animal exhibit design from the visitor perspective. Setting includes the physical features and events occurring in both the animal enclosure and the visitor areas.
This article discusses research conducted among families and museum visitors in the Midwest from 1996-1998. The study found that women, more often than men, initiate family museum visits and that a mother's parenting strategies are strongly related to her ideas about the nature of knowledge and how she comes to know and understand herself and the world.
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Sally Stanton
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This article describes an informal study study that investigated what it means to be a audience advocate. The author examines this question by describing the role in metaphorical terms.
In this article, Robert Eisenberger, professor of psychology at the University of Delaware, reviews two fundamental philosophical conceptions of motivation that influence contemporary views, show how these world views are embedded in current motivational theory, and consider how recent motivational findings can be applied to museum visitors. Then Eisenberger provides a visitor questionnaire that may be helpful in finding ways to increase visitor motivation.
The Milwaukee Public Museum will develop Adventures in Science: An Interactive Exhibit Gallery. This will be a 7250 sq. ft. interactive exhibit with associated public programs and materials that link the exhibit with formal education. The goal of Adventures in Science is to promote understanding of biological diversity, the forces that have change it over time, and how scientists study and affect change. The exhibit will consist of three areas. "Our Ever-Changing World" will feature "dual scene" habitat dioramas that will convey at-a-glance how environments change over time. "The Natural History Museum" will be a reconstruction of a museum laboratory and collections area to protray behind-the-scenes scientific and curatorial activities that further the study of biological diversity, ecology and systematics. An "Exploration Center: will bridge these two areas and will be designed to accommodate live presentations, group activities and additional multimedia stations for Internet and intranet access. Using interactive devices, visitors will be encouraged to make hypothesis, examine evidence, compare specimens, construction histories of biological and geological changes, and develop conclusions about the science behind biodiversity and extinction issues. Visitors should also come away with an increased understanding of the role of systematic collections in understanding biological diversity. Information on MPM research programs will be highlighted in "The Natural History Museum" section and will be updated frequently. Annual Teacher Training Institutes for pre-service and in-service teachers will present strategies for using the gallery's multimedia stations, lab areas, and Web site links. Special attention will be given to reaching new audiences including those in the inner city and people with disabilities.
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Allen YoungJames KellyPeter SheehanSusan-Sullivan BorkinRolf JohnsonMary Korenic
Children often learn new problem-solving strategies by observing examples of other people's problem-solving. When children learn a new strategy through observation and also explain the new strategy to themselves, they generalize the strategy more widely than children who learn a new strategy but do not explain. We tested three hypothesized mechanisms through which explanations might facilitate strategy generalization: more accurate recall of the new strategy's procedures; increased selection of the new strategy over competing strategies; or more effective management of the new strategy's goal
It has long been recognized, but rarely publicly acknowledged, that most people learn much if not most of what they know outside of the formal education system. As Patricia Albjerg Graham recently wrote in Daedalus, "Scholars ranging from the late James S. Coleman and Lawrence A. Cremin to Christopher Jencks have quite properly reminded us of the limited role that schools play in children's education." A vast educational infrastructure exists to support public learning, both inside and outside the workplace. Leisure opportunities for learning are particularly rich. Museums, along with print
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Institute for Learning InnovationJohn H Falk
This formative evaluation gathered feedback from third and fourth graders in response to the Cyberchase pilot episode, The Poddleville Case, which focused on pattern problem solving. The general goals for the research were To evaluate appeal of the program as a whole as well as specific program elements like the team of kids; To establish age appropriateness; To estimate motivational impact by looking at student interest in trying to solve similar pattern problems and interest in seeing another show in the series; To explore comprehension of the main plot events; To determine what viewers felt
During fall 1998, KCTS produced 50,000 “Bill Nye Family Fun Science Packets"" that included a family calendar and a ten-minute video. This outreach packet was meant for distribution to families with school-age children and designed to encourage family science activities at home. KCTS distributed these Packets in sets of 25-1,000 to community organizations, PBS stations, and member agencies of the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC). This study focused on capturing information about family and child involvement in science activities before and after they receive the BILL NYE
Respected museum professional and consultant Kathleen McLean examines the shift towards a more participatory culture of display and exhibition in museums. She cites numerous examples from different types of museums and the approaches they have taken in trying to better understand their visitors and become more visitor-centered. She lays open the debate within the museum community about the traditional role of museums and the resistance that advocates of visitor research and evaluation face from more conservative thinking colleagues. Useful background reading for interactive exhibit designers.
Vital Signs a community-based education program that links middle school students, citizen scientists, and scientists in the collection and analysis of environmental data related to invasive species. Vital Signs leverages technology to enable students to practice scientific inquiry, collect rigorous and consistent data, share the data and knowledge they have collected, and to serve as a distributed data collection network for the scientific community.
Great Lakes Worm Watch is a project that requires a half day training session that teaches you about the ecology, extraction, identification, and preservation of earthworms. Samples of worms are collected three times during late summer and early fall at different sites using the liquid mustard extraction method. By working in cooperation with Great Lakes Worm Watch out of Duluth, MN and uploading the data collected to the NatureMapping website, you provide valuable knowledge about the locations of established populations of earthworms in Wisconsin forests.