WGBH received funding to develop and create NOVA Labs, an online environment that provides teen audiences with an online research lab, educational content, and the opportunity to engage with authentic data, tools, and processes to investigate scientific questions. This work has begun with the development of a first pilot lab, called The Sun Lab. NOVA Education created and launched this lab in early summer 2012. Examining the site in its pilot form, the Lifelong Learning Group (LLG) engaged in a formative evaluation to support refinements and improvements in the design of subsequent NOVA Lab
NOVA Labs (www.pbs.org/nova/labs) is a web-based platform designed for use by educators, students, and teens to engage learners with authentic data, processes, and tools of working scientists. The present evaluation study sought to investigate the outcomes achieved by users of the third NOVA Labs platform developed: Cloud Lab. The intended outcomes identified for student users were that they would: • Be able to successfully work with the real data provided in the Cloud Lab; • Demonstrate ability to interpret and use scientific data and tools; • Engage with real scientific data through the
Rockman et al (REA), in partnership with Marti Louw and the University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments (UPCLOSE), conducted a summative evaluation in Fall 2012-Spring 2013 of a temporary museum exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH) in Pittsburgh, PA called, Stories in the Rock. The exhibition highlighted CMNH researchers’ documentation of ancient petroglyph sites in Saudi Arabia using GigaPan technology to capture high-resolution, zoomable images of the rock art. The exhibition centers around an activity called the Explorable Image, a
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University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School EnvironmentsCamellia Sanford-Dolly