The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to conduct a front-end evaluation to inform the reinstallation of the Ancient Latin America Hall. The study was conducted to examine visitors' experiences in the current exhibition, the nature of their connection with the objects on view, and their needs and preferences for interpretation. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 English-speaking and 20 Spanish-speaking visitor groups, using a quota sampling method. Visitors were intercepted as they exited the current Ancient Latin America Hall
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History will partner with The Exploratorium and with three smaller science museums that have strong connections to rural and Spanish-speaking populations in Texas: Discovery Science Place, Loredo Children's Museum, and Science Spectrum to develop TexNET, a four-year project modeled on the Exploratorium Network for Exhibit-based Teaching (ExNET). TexNET builds on lessons learned from past exhibit outreach models and addresses the needs of small, rural partners for exhibits and capacity-building workshops. Each small museum partner will host a set of ten exhibits for one year. Exhibit topics are 1) motion, 2) weather and 3) sound. Workshops focus on inquiry learning techniques, science content, programming and workshop design, as well as the institutional needs of each partner. Based on feedback from formative evaluation, the project added three additional partners in its final year, the Children's Museum of Houston, the Austin Children's Museum, and the Don Herrington Discovery Center, and focused its remaining year on building institutional capacity around tinkering. Inverness Research Associates will conduct the project evaluation. They will examine the success of this project by looking at the effectiveness of the TexNET model, the success of the individual exhibit elements to engage rural communities, the effectiveness with which this project has enhanced the abilities of local rural communities to sustain their own educational improvements and the effectiveness of the training components in increasing the capabilities of the local museums to serve their rural audiences.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Charlie WalterSamuel DeanJoe HastingsRobert Lindsey
The Children's Museum of San Jose, in collaboration with developmental psychology researchers at UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) and science and education staff of the UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology (UCMP), is conducting a 48-month long project that focuses on children's use of evidence to construct scientific explanations. Key deliverables are: a 2,300 square-foot paleontology exhibit with an Evidence Central area three "evidence hubs" at the Children's Museum of San Jose, an educational Web site developed by UCMP, research on children's use of evidence conducted by Maureen Callanan's research group at UCSC, a "state of the children's museum field" study on varieties of perspectives on "science" and "evidence," and professional development experiences for staff at children's museums. Additional partners include the children's museums in Austin, TX, Madison, WI, and Providence, RI and local Vietnamese and Latino organizations in the museum's neighborhood. Randi Korn & Associates will conduct the program summative evaluation process and the "state of the field" study. The project identifies and will work to address two specific needs in the field: (a) a clearer sense of the developmental progression of children's understanding of evidence, and (b) a rigorous and systematic investigation of children's open-ended reasoning about evidence in a rich content domain (paleontology). The strategic impact goal is to build capacity in children's museums, enabling them to offer more evidence-based science learning experiences for their visitors.
The New York Hall of Science is overseeing a complex, four-year applied research and traveling exhibit development project on "precursor concepts" to the theory of evolution. These concepts pertain to key ideas about life -- variation, inheritance, selection, and time (VIST) -- and are organized around the principle that living things change over time. The central research question is: Can informal, museum-based interventions prepare young children (5 -12) to understand the scientific basis of evolution by targeting their intuitive pre-evolutionary concepts? The work involves many collaborators -- museum personnel around the country, university researchers, exhibit designers and evaluators, web designers, the Association of Science-Technology Centers and a number of advisors in the biological sciences, psychology and in informal and formal education. The products include applied research studies that will add to the conceptual change knowledge base in cognitive psychology, a 1,000 square-foot exhibit plus discovery boxes, a section on the UC-Berkeley Understanding Evolution web site, extensive on site and online staff training opportunities for participating museums and others, several dissemination activities including two research symposia, and bilingual (English and Spanish) exhibit materials and family guides. The project is positioned as a new model in informal science education for integrating research, development and evaluation, with applicability beyond the life sciences to other STEM fields.
The Children's Museum of Houston seeks to develop a 1,500 sq ft bilingual traveling exhibition based on their bilingual "Magnificent Math Moments" activities. This project simultaneously addresses two very important needs: the relative lack of mathematics exhibits for young children and for Spanish-speaking audiences. The exhibition is based on Patron (Pattern) Point where the visitor meets math superheroes, Subtracta, Capt. Mas in the settings of Subtracta's Puzzle Parlor; Capt. Mas's Marina; and Formas (Shapes) Family Shipping Yard. It will provide an inviting setting for introducing the target audiences to mathematics through the use of characters, environments and puzzles. BROADER IMPACT: Fabrication of a second version of the traveling exhibition will extend the number of institutions reached through two national tours. These exhibitions, which target children ages 5-10 and adults, are projected to reach some 1.4 million visitors in 24 museums over five years; sites will be selected to reach Hispanic audiences in smaller, low-income urban and rural areas. For further impact CMH is forming another network of museums that will benefit from this project, even though the institutions will not be able to host the traveling exhibition. CMH also is developing ancillary materials and services to accompany the exhibition that include activity kits and cart, character costumes, training guides, parent materials and other resources.
The California Science Center (CSC) developed the "World of Ecology," a 45,000 sq ft permanent exhibition that involves the large-scale fusion of interactive science exhibits with the immersive live-habitat concept of zoos, aquariums and botanical gardens.The focus for this project is the Extreme Zone, which will explore how species adapt to their environment. It contains four habitats: the Sonoran desert, deep sea hydrothermal vents, polar regions and rocky shores and will include more than 259 terrestrial and aquatic animal and plant species. The overall goal is to communicate that in every ecosystem the physical and living worlds are connected and shaped by the same fundamental ecological principles. It will be achieved through the integration of science center exhibits with immersive habitats on a large scale. This approach provides an interesting model for the science center, museum, zoo and botanical garden fields. The target audience is the 1.6 million annual CSC visitors, 57% of whom are from minority populations, with an emphasis on families, elementary and middle school students. In addition, CSC will enhance the exhibition through outreach programs that serve at-risk students. All audio-visual programs will be available in Spanish as well as English, and a Spanish language audio guide will be produced. Collaboration with the Santa Barbara Zoo will bring valuable expertise as well as enhance prospects for dissemination.
To address a lack of informal science education opportunities and to increase community capacity to support STEM education for their children, Washington State University's Yakima Valley/Tri Cities MESA program, the Pacific Science Center, and KDNA Educational Radio have developed a set of informal science initiatives that offer complementary learning opportunities for rural Latino families. The goal of this four-year program is to create a sustainable informal science infrastructure in southeastern Washington State to serve families, increase parental awareness, support and involvement in science education and ultimately increase the numbers of rural Latino youth pursuing STEM-related under graduate studies. This program is presented in English and Spanish languages in all of its interconnected deliverables: Two mobile exhibits, beginning with one focused on agricultural and environmental science developed by The Pacific Science (PCS) Center; Curriculum and training in agriculture, life sciences and facilitating learning; Curriculum and training for community members to provide support to parents in encouraging the academic aspirations of their children developed by PSC and MESA; 420 Youth and parents from the MESA program trained to interpret exhibits and run workshops, community festivals, family science workshops and Saturday programs throughout the community; Four annual community festivals, quarterly Family Saturday events, and Family Science Workshops reaching 20,000 people over the four-year project; Take home activities, science assemblies, a website and CDs with music and science programming for community events; A large media initiative including monthly one hour call-in radio programs featuring science experts, teachers, professionals, students and parents, 60-second messages promoting science concepts and resources and a publicity campaign in print, radio and TV to promote community festivals. These venues reach 12,500-25,000 people each; A program manual that includes training, curriculum and collaborative strategies used by the project team. Overall Accesso la Ciencia connects parents and children through fun community activities to Pasco School District's current LASER science education reform effort. This project complements the school districts effort by providing a strong community support initiative in informal science education. Each activity done in the community combines topics of interest to rural Latinos (agriculture for instance) to concepts being taught in the schools, while also providing tools and support to parents that increases their awareness of opportunities for their children in STEM education.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
James PrattD. Janae' LandisDonald LynchMichael Trevisan
This Communicating Research to Public Audiences proposal is based on current NSF-funded research, AST 0607505, "Asteroid Satellites and Spins." Finding NEO (near-Earth Objects) proposes an 18-month-long project to develop on-line and museum traveling exhibit-module deliverables that provide users with both video vignettes of amateur astronomers engaged in NEO asteroid studies and at least three interactive game-like experiences on the science content and processes, specifically the analysis of "lightcurves," i.e., changes in light reflectivity off of spinning asteroids. The staff of the Space Science Institute will create these products in partnership with four small science museums around the country (2 in CO, NY, WI). The on-line material will be user-accessed via current astronomy web sites that already are popular, for example, www.spaceweathercenter.org. The videos and software will be made freely available for download. All materials will be both in English and Spanish.
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), in collaboration with the Small Museum Research Collaborative (SMRC), proposes to create four small bilingual exhibitions in English and Spanish for a national tour to small museums. The exhibitions will focus on current clinical research in nutrition and physical activity and its applications to personal and family wellness. We propose to build four, 700-square-foot traveling exhibitions: two identical exhibitions with a focus on nutrition, and two identical exhibitions with a focus on physical activity. OMSI's SMRC partners bring the experiences and resources of five geographically and thematically diverse small museums to this project. As the lead institution, OMSI brings over 19 years of experience in creating and touring national exhibitions and in collaborative projects with other museums. Front-end, formative, remedial, and summative evaluation will be conducted with family audiences at OMSI and SMRC sites. To extend the visitor experience, OMSI and SMRC will produce related educational materials and programs including a Web site, teachers' guides, small museum staff training, distance-learning programs, and interactive presentations. An SMRC distance-learning network will be created for program dissemination. The project will be developed with the support of local research scientists at the Oregon Health & Science University's (OHSU) General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) and other experts in nutrition and fitness research, health care, and education. The project's audience is family and K-5 school group visitors to small science and children's museums in rural and small urban communities nationwide. Latino families are also a priority audience for the project. Each of the four traveling exhibitions will tour to three venues a year for a minimum of eight years. We conservatively estimate that over two million people will visit the exhibitions during their national tours. This project presents a powerful opportunity to reach museum visitors in rural and underserved communities, to invite families to pursue healthy nutrition and physical activity together, and to present and interpret clinical research findings for diverse audiences.