The Yellowstone Park Foundation is partnering with Yellowstone National Park (YNP) to develop and build a visitor education center at Old Faithful. Selinda Research Associates (SRA) worked with staff from Yellowstone's Division of Interpretation to plan and conduct a front-end evaluation of the exhibits for the new center. The evaluation was grounded in naturalistic methodology and used a variety of methods to triangulate on park visitors understanding of and reactions to a variety of issues. These methods included in-depth interviews with visitors both before and after their visits and card
This evaluation of Mysteries of Çatalhöyük was commissioned by the Science Museum of Minnesota to provide objective feedback about the character of visitors’ experiences in this exhibition. The process of investigating visitors’ experiences included assessing and analyzing the extent of their use of the exhibition, awareness and perception of the interpretive messages presented, reactions to selected exhibit features, satisfaction with the experience, and characteristics of the audience who chose to see it; of these topics, the analysis of interpretive messages was considered to have primary
Traditionally, collaborative technologies are intended to directly support joint, collaborative activity, taking their cues from communication and media. Here, empirical findings are presented about the types of information needs associated with the formation of a knowledge-building community among professional learning technology researchers. Several issues are outlined in designing, facilitating, supporting, and measuring knowledge-building activity in such as community of practice. It is argued that, rather than communication tools, a knowledge-building community is better served by
In this chapter, we argue that the understanding of objects that children of different ages brings to the museum setting offers a unique perspective. Little direct work on this topic has been conducted in museums. However, there is a body of related work to be found in contemporary studies of children's emerging understanding of the natural and artificial worlds that can be used to develop a framework for understanding how children might approach the world of museum objects. Recent evidence on the development of children's thinking on this subject is presented in the larger context of the
This chapter discusses learning through the manipulation of three-dimensional objects. The opportunity to touch and interact with objects is helpful for young children as they attempt to understand abstract concepts and processes. How might parents guide children in coming to understand the complex and abstract symbolic nature of representational objects?
In the increasingly fierce competition for leisure time and educational spending, museums are seriously challenged by edutainment, the Internet, CD-ROMs, and 500-channel satellite TV. For example, if a child is interested in dinosaurs, 20 years ago a parent would have been likely to take her to the museum to see some fossils. Today, many parents would probably begin by taking her to the computer to search the World Wide Web, where a quick search reveals thousands of dinosaur web pages. If the family did not find a site among these thousands that satisfied the child's curiosity - or if they
The Research Centre for Museums and Galleries in the Department of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester was commissioned by Resource: the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries to research ways of defining and assessing the learning outcomes in museums, archives and libraries. This paper is intended to provide the context for the development of generic learning outcomes that can be used in all three domains.
What information are virtual visitors looking for on museum Web sites? This paper is a first step in a larger investigation into the informational value of museum Web sites. Scholars, teachers, students, museums staff, and museum visitors are the main categories of visitors examined in this study. Questions were asked of these museum audiences about their use of museum Web sites, museum databases, and other aspects of virtual visits.
To date, the major emphasis of educational technology researchers has been the development and use of educational technologies within school settings. Noticeably absent has been research and considerations that focus on the home as a computer-based learning environment and potential connections between school and home learning. Given the increasing prevalence of computers in homes, the authors argue for an explicit research focus on the various ways that computers in homes can be used to create rich learning environments or extend school-based learning environments. To that end, this article
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Yasmin KafaiBarry FishmanAmy BruckmanSaul Rockman
Designs for CSCL (Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning) applications usually presume a desktop or laptop computer. Yet future classrooms are likely to be organized around Wireless Internet Learning Devices (WILD) that resemble graphing calculators, Palm, or Pocket-PC handhelds, connected by short-range wireless networking. WILD learning will have physical affordances that are different from today’s computer lab, and different from classrooms with 5 students per computer. These differing affordances may lead to learning activities that deviate significantly from today’s images of K-12 CSCL
In this chapter we introduce the notion of islands of expertise, explore links between related socio-cultural and information processing theory, and overview a study of family conversations while parents and children look at authentic and replica fossils in a museum.