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resource research Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
How can we begin to chart a course toward a future for science museums in which we maintain our status as sources of trusted information, while also fulfilling our potential as sites of genuine participation and social interaction? In 2019, with funding from the National Science Foundation, the New York Hall of Science hosted a three day conference to discuss new and equitable approaches to exhibit design. With leading exhibit designers, educators, researchers, and community engagement specialists, we began to rethink the exhibit design process, toward a goal of helping our museums become more
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TEAM MEMBERS: dana schloss Katherine Culp Priya Mohabir
resource project Public Programs
Research on how museum staff are trained continues to emerge. Training varies considerably across institutions and typically includes observations, shadowing, and trial and error. While museum educators put high value on increasing visitor-centered participatory experiences, engagement based on acquisition-based theories of learning is still common among floor staff, even after training. Facilitating learning about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) topics in ways that support visitors in constructing their own understanding is difficult, especially since floor staff/facilitators may be working simultaneously with children and adults of a range of ages, backgrounds, and goals. This project will advance understanding of how to facilitate open-ended learning experiences in ways that engage visitors in practices that align with the STEM disciplines. The project will result in an evidence-based facilitation framework and training modules for training informal science educators. The work is grounded in constructivist theories of learning and identity work and focuses on visitors constructing understanding of STEM topics through active engagement in the practices of STEM. This model also results in learning experiences in informal settings that are mutually reinforcing with the goals of schools. This research is being conducted through an established researcher-practitioner partnership between MOXI, the Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation and the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB).

The two primary goals of the work are to (1) enable visitors to better engage in STEM practices (practice-based learning) and (2) investigate the role of training in helping facilitators develop the practice-based facilitation strategies needed to support visitors' learning. STEM content in this study is physical science. Prior work resulted in two tools that constitute part of a facilitation framework (a practices-by-engagement matrix and three facilitation pathways) which help educators identify appropriate goals based on how the visitor is engaging with exhibits. The development of the final tool in the framework, facilitation strategies, and the refinement of the first two tools will be done using a design-based implementation research (DBIR) approach. Data collection and analysis will be directed and completed by research-practitioner teams of UCSB graduate students (researchers) and MOXI educators (practitioners); MOXI educators will be both participants and researchers. Data collection activities include: video data using point-of-view cameras worn by visitors and educators; interviews of educators and visitors; observations of the training program; and educator reflections. In the final year, a small field test will be done at six sites, representing different types of museums. Interviews and reflections comprise the data collection at the field sites.


This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Ron Skinner Danielle Harlow
resource research Public Programs
The COMPASS conference will bring together 80 participants for two days in September 2018 at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA. The first dissemination will take place in a presentation at the ASTC conference the following month in October 2018. A webinar sharing insights from COMPASS and inviting others to engage will be held in March 2019 hosted by ASTC and accessible by ASTC members and non-members alike. A companion COMPASS e-publication will be released for free download, also in March 2019, with summaries of conference proceedings, key issues identified, case histories of ILAM in
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TEAM MEMBERS: Claire Pillsbury
resource research Media and Technology
With stories of struggle and dramatic breakthroughs, science has incredible potential to interest the public. However, as the rhetoric of outrage surrounds controversies over science policy there is an urgent need for credible, trusted voices that frame science issues in a way that resonates with a diverse public. A network of informal educators, park rangers, museum docents and designers, and zoo and aquarium interpreters are prepared to do so during millions of visits a year; just where science stories are most meaningfully told—in the places where members of the public are open to learning
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TEAM MEMBERS: Martha Merson
resource project Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants. The theme of this conference project by the New York Hall of Science will be exploring how to better design exhibits to promote "public engagement with science." Here, "public engagement with science" refers to opportunities that go beyond traditional approaches to the public understanding of science. The event will invite professionals to consider how to shift exhibit designs toward engaging visitors with STEM in ways that emphasize the intersection of STEM innovation with visitors' daily lives, their personal agency, and their interdependence with their personal social networks and the institutions that advance STEM knowledge and innovation. The conference and its pre- and post-conference activities will bring together curators, exhibition developers, community outreach professionals, museum administrators, and learning scientists from the United States and Canada. They will work together to identify design principles and key obstacles to designing exhibits that can better help science museums achieve two goals: 1) making visitors' diverse and personal questions, concerns, and perspectives central to their experience of the exhibits; and 2) engaging visitors as contributors to the exhibit experience in ways that make their contributions visible and consequential. During this two-day event attendees will consider how exhibits can support broader and more diverse public participation in critical debates about the roles of STEM discovery and innovation in society. The effort is grounded in recent work on public engagement with science; on reorganizing museums to become sites for participation and contribution by visitors, and particularly by institutions' local communities; and on making and engineering design programming within museums. The goal is to chart a course toward a vision of the future of science museums in which they maintain their status as sources of trusted information, while also fulfilling their potential as sites of genuine participation and social interaction, in which visitors make meaningful contributions to the substance and workings of the museum floor while also engaging with, learning about and holding themselves accountable to the core concepts and practices of the STEM disciplines. The conference will build the capacity and collaborative engagement of a network of science centers whose work is central to achieving the museum field's ultimate goal of engaging the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments. The conference and associated activities will be evaluated by staff at the New York Hall of Science, with oversight by an external advisory committee of research and development professionals. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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resource project Media and Technology
The Space and Earth Informal STEM Education (SEISE) project, led by the Arizona State University with partners Science Museum of Minnesota, Museum of Science, Boston, and the University of California Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science and Space Sciences Laboratory, is raising the capacity of museums and informal science educators to engage the public in Heliophysics, Earth Science, Planetary Science, and Astrophysics, and their social dimensions through the National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Net). SEISE will also partner on a network-to-network basis with other existing coalitions and professional associations dedicated to informal and lifelong STEM learning, including the Afterschool Alliance, National Girls Collaborative Project, NASA Museum Alliance, STAR_Net, and members of the Association of Children’s Museums and Association of Science-Technology Centers. The goals for this project include engaging multiple and diverse public audiences in STEM, improving the knowledge and skills of informal educators, and encouraging local partnerships.

In collaboration with the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD), SEISE is leveraging NASA subject matter experts (SMEs), SMD assets and data, and existing educational products and online portals to create compelling learning experiences that will be widely use to share the story, science, and adventure of NASA’s scientific explorations of planet Earth, our solar system, and the universe beyond. Collaborative goals include enabling STEM education, improving U.S. scientific literacy, advancing national educational goals, and leveraging science activities through partnerships. Efforts will focus on providing opportunities for learners explore and build skills in the core science and engineering content, skills, and processes related to Earth and space sciences. SEISE is creating hands-on activity toolkits (250-350 toolkits per year over four years), small footprint exhibitions (50 identical copies), and professional development opportunities (including online workshops).

Evaluation for the project will include front-end and formative data to inform the development of products and help with project decision gates, as well as summative data that will allow stakeholders to understand the project’s reach and outcomes.
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resource research Public Programs
During the GENIAL Summit, the Marketing, Communication, and Media strand examined the role of marketing and communications in connecting Latino audiences with STEAM in informal science learning (ISL) environments. ISL organizations do not generally think to include a marketing perspective early on in the process of developing audience experiences. When ISL practitioners seek to connect with key audiences, specifically, Latino audiences, marketing efforts are often considered when an exhibit or program is fully developed, in production, or already launched. This causes an immediate and inherent
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TEAM MEMBERS: Julie Nunn Lorraine Yglesias
resource evaluation Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Researching the Value of Educator Actions for Learning (REVEAL) is an NSF-funded research project, led by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in collaboration with TERC and Oregon State University (OSU), which studied the impact of science center staff facilitation strategies at math exhibits. Building on and using exhibits from Design Zone—an interactive math exhibition which engaged visitors in exploring algebraic relationships and functions—the study was designed to add to the scant existing literature about the impact of staff facilitation on visitors. The study also aimed to
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resource evaluation Public Programs
This summative evaluation report details the Broad Implementation of the Living Laboratory model--an initiative to promote partnership between museums and cognitive science researchers in order to promote professional learning and involve the public in scientific research. The evaluation investigated the extent of the dissemination effort’s depth, spread, sustainability, and shift in ownership, based on Coburn’s criteria for scale-up (2003). Evaluators collected data from surveys, interviews, focus groups, document review, and observations. Findings about depth suggest that adopters fully
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resource research Media and Technology
This guide is intended to provide a starting point for those developing proposals and projects designed to broaden participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) through informal learning experiences. It is an outcome of an Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC)/Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) digital resource curation workshop (August 5, 2016) where participants identified relevant projects from the InformalScience.org database. This digital resource complements the synthesis report of the Leadership Workshop for Achieving Scale
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TEAM MEMBERS: Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) Association of Science-Technology Centers David Ucko Tricia Edwards Leah Golubchick Neda Khalili Andrea Motto Mariah Romaninsky Meeta Sharma-Holt Gary Silverstein Jeanette Thomas Don Wittrock Margaret Glass Michelle Kenner Lesley Markham Grace Troxel
resource research Professional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This brochure provides overview of work accomplished during the one-year planning grant period, and includes a proposed research agenda related to whole body interaction. The Move2Learn planning effort was a collaboration between museum practitioners and researchers in the United States and the United Kingdom, who represented the spectrum of science education, embodied learning, interactive exhibit designers and technology specialists. The overall goal was to begin the process of identifying relevant research questions related to the design of physical and digital exhibits for young children
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TEAM MEMBERS: Judy Brown
resource research Public Programs
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. Native Universe (NU) was designed to build institutional capacity in leadership and practice among scientific museums, in order to increase public understanding of environmental change and the human relationship to nature from Indigenous perspectives, while also providing access to science as practiced in the established scientific community.
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TEAM MEMBERS: Nancy Maryboy Laura Peticolas Leslie Kimura