Through its traveling exhibition program, the Association of Science-Technology Centers worked for many years to advance the culture and practice of hands-on science learning, with support from the National Science Foundation. This article describes workshops, staff exchanges, and apprenticeships that accompanied a number of exhibitions, beginning in 1973. The community website ExhibitFiles, which opened in 2007, served the same purpose, as an archive of community-contrbuted case studies and reviews of science exhibitions.
This report aimed to measure the impact of a unique professional development program entitled Project ASTER III (Active Science Teaching Encourages Reform) on teachers’ self-efficacy and perceptions about inquiry-based science teaching. Project ASTER III enabled teachers to explore inquiry-based science teaching through exhibit-based hands-on/ minds-on investigations at a science museum and to develop a science curriculum aligned with museum exhibits and state and national science education standards. Quantitative data indicated that teacher beliefs were positively and significantly impacted
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Emilio DuranLena Ballone-DuranJodi HaneySvetlana Beltyukova
The Dynamic Earth: You Have To See it To Believe It is a public exhibition and suite of programming designed to educate and excite K-8 students, teachers, and families about weather and climate science, plate tectonics, erosion, and stream formation. The Dynamic Earth program draws attention to the importance of large-scale earth processes and the human impacts on these processes, utilizing real artifacts, hands-on models, and NASA earth imagery and data. The program includes the exhibition, student workshops, family workshops, annual professional development opportunities for classroom teachers, innovative theater shows, lectures for adults by visiting scientists, and interpretive activities. The Montshire Museum of Science has partnered with Chabot Space and Science Center (CA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (NH) on various components. The project has broadened our internal capacity for providing quality earth science programming by greatly expanding our program titles and allowing us to create hands-on materials for use by our educators and to loan to schools in our Partnership Initiative. Programming developed during the grant period continues to reach thousands of students and teachers each year, both on-site and as part of our rural outreach efforts.
The University of Washington’s Museology Program, in partnership with the Woodland Park Zoo and the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments Research Center is developing a model of university-community collaboration where students work with client museums, zoos and aquaria to evaluate exhibits and programs under the guidance of a research mentor. Students will gain experience in audience research and evaluation, as well as in project management, collaboration, and leadership. Staff at participating museums will advance their personal knowledge about visitors and the field of museum evaluation. The project will prepare a new generation of evaluators and museum practitioners through an innovative apprentice-styled laboratory that integrates the strengths of mentoring, fieldwork, academics, and client-centered experiences. Project Advisors include John Falk, Julie Johnson, Randi Korn, Marjorie Schwarzer, and Patterson Williams. Project started January, 2009 with 24 graduate students in the first cadre.
The National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED) is a Science and Technology Center focused on understanding the processes that shape the Earth's surface, and on communicating that understanding with a broad range of stakeholders. NCED's work will support a larger, community-based effort to develop a suite of quantitative models of the Earth's surface: a Community Sediment Model (CSM). Results of the NCED-CSM collaboration will be used for both short-term prediction of surface response to natural and anthropogenic change and long-term interpretation of how past conditions are recorded in landscapes and sedimentary strata. This will in turn help solve pressing societal problems such as estimation and mitigation of landscape-related risk; responsible management of landscape resources including forests, agricultural, and recreational areas; forecasting landscape response to possible climatic and other changes; and wise development of resources like groundwater and hydrocarbons that are hosted in buried sediments. NCED education and knowledge transfer programs include exhibits and educational programs at the Science Museum of Minnesota, internships and programs for students from tribal colleges and other underrepresented populations, and research opportunities for participants from outside core NCED institutions. The Earth's surface is the dynamic interface among the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere. It is intimately interwoven with the life that inhabits it. Surface processes span environments ranging from high mountains to the deep ocean and time scales from fractions of a second to millions of years. Because of this range in forms, processes, and scales, the study of surface dynamics has involved many disciplines and approaches. A major goal of NCED is to foster the development of a unified, quantitative science of Earth-surface dynamics that combines efforts in geomorphology, civil engineering, biology, sedimentary geology, oceanography, and geophysics. Our research program has four major themes: (1) landscape evolution, (2) basin evolution, (3) biological sediment dynamics, and (4) integration of morphodynamic processes across environments and scales. Each theme area provides opportunities for exchange of information and ideas with a wide range of stakeholders, including teachers and learners at all levels; researchers, managers, and policy makers in both the commercial and public sectors; and the general public.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Efi Foufoula-GeorgiouChristopher PaolaGary Parker
This Communicating Research to Public Audiences project focuses on the Reedy Glacier Antarctic research of Brenda Hall (OPP 0229034) and its relevance to the residents of and visitors to Maine. Collaborators include the University of Maine, the Maine Discovery Museum, the Acadia National Park and Cadillac Mountain Sports (an environmentally active retail company with several stores around the state). The primary deliverable is the development of an interactive software program that presents information and experiences in a two-tiered concept approach -- on the Reedy Glacier and its connection to Maine and on the process of science. The software is being configured into kiosks at the three partnering organizations, into a DVD format for informal and formal settings to be distributed at cost and onto a University of Maine Climate Change web portal currently under separate development. The project web site will provide source code for the portal design so others may use it to create portals and modules of their own. The Maine Discovery Museum intends to create additional exhibitry on the topic with resources outside this proposal, and the Acadia National Park will use the programs in teacher education workshops.
CENTC's (Center for Enabling New Technologies Through Catalysis) outreach is focused on partnerships with science centers. Initially we worked with the Pacific Science Center (PSC) to train our students in effective communication of science concepts to public audiences. Later we developed a short-term exhibit, Chemist - Catalysts for Change in the Portal to Current Research space. As part of the CCI/AISL partnership program, we partnered with Liberty Science Center to create an activity on a multi-touch media table, "Molecule Magic." We are currently developing another exhibit with PSC.
The Boston Children's Museum will collaborate with Action for Boston Community Head Start Programs and Evergreene Research and Evaluation on an integrated research-to-practice project whose focus is science learning by pre-school age children. It will produce the following deliverables: a research-based Adult-Child Interaction Inventory (ACII) cataloging a spectrum of nonverbal and verbal interactions that occur during science engagement between parents, grandparents, or caregivers and young children; an ACII User Guide for museum professionals detailing how the inventory can be used for exhibit and professional development; a 2,800 sq ft Peep's World permanent exhibition informed by the ACII research; and a best practices survey highlighting effective strategies for eliciting positive adult-child interactions derived from a Community of Practice established by this project. The project will apply the research findings on nonverbal adult-child behavior to designing exhibits eliciting interactions supporting early childhood STEM learning. Project outcomes will benefit museum exhibit and program developers, preshool educators and families with children ages 3 to 5.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Gail RingelTimothy PorterAnn Marie StephanLorrie Beaumont
The Golden Gate Bridge Highway Transportation District (GGBHTD), in collaboration with the Consortium of Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering (CUREE), and in partnership with Princeton University, Stanford University, San Jose State University, the Sciencenter (Ithaca, NY), the Exploratorium (San Francisco), Eyethink, West Wind Laboratory, EHDD Architects, the American Public Works Association, and the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association, is conducting a multi-faceted project about the science and engineering of the Golden Gate Bridge and about how public works facilities around the country can potentially become sites for public understanding of and engagement with science and engineering. GGBHTD, which operates and maintains the bridge, ferries and buses, hosts over 10-million visitors annually to their current visitor center at the south end of the bridge (San Francisco), serves an additional 2-million users of their ferries, and hosts a popular Web site (http://goldengatebridge.org/). The project deliverables are scheduled to coincide in 2012 with the 75th anniversary of the 1937 opening of the bridge. Educational products include: outdoor exhibits at the Golden Gate Bridge; exhibits about the bridge on the District's ferries; indoor exhibits at the Exploratorium; an expanded Web site with educational material about the bridge; an international conference in San Francisco around the time of the anniversary about public works as sites for informal science education; educational documents and a professional development program for public works staff from around the country; and a suite of publications for the public and professionals on public works research. The project involves a coordinated evaluation effort. Front-end and formative evaluation activities are being conducted by Inverness Research Associates. Summative evaluation will be conducted by David Heil & Associates.
The Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC), in collaboration with the Yale Project on Climate Change and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, is conducting a three-year project whose goal is to build the capacity of twelve science centers as well as of twelve NSF-funded Long-term Ecological Research Centers (LTER) for the purpose of engaging the public in climate change science. The twelve sites span the USA from the east coast to Hawaii. The goal of these simultaneous projects is to illustrate local indicators of global change. Additional partners include ScienCentral, Inc. (TV media producers), the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, the American Geophysical Union, NOAA, Natural History magazine, and a national board of advisors. Deliverables include: (1) twelve local demonstration projects with launch programs, exhibits/programs, TV spots, citizen science activities, and an interactive map illustrating the work of the twelve sites, (2) professional development for informal STEM education professionals and LTER research faculty, (3) a national survey to assess the USA population's climate literacy, and (4) a culminating workshop for the ISE field, a permanent resource database, and a final publication. Evaluation processes are being conducted by David Heil & Associates.
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) will create a 5,000 sq ft traveling exhibition designed to engage families with children ages 10-14 with concepts of algebra. Access Algebra will increase visitor awareness of the role of algebra in everyday life and help them to develop algebraic thinking skills. This exhibition will travel to 21 science centers, reaching some 3.5 million visitors on its national tour. It will be accompanied by an Educator's Guide, Family Guide, and complementary web activities. Access Algebra incorporates testing and implementation of an innovative model for professional development for museum exhibit, program, and interpretive staff. It links the exhibition tour to training at each venue designed to increase knowledge of algebra concepts and to develop facilitation skills in family math learning. The package includes workshops, training DVD, printed guide, Math Toolkit, and website support. Project partners include TERC, Oregon State University College of Education (OSU), and Blazer Boys & Girls Club (BBGC). The BBGC members will participate in exhibit development over an extended (12-week) period, helping to create an exhibition that will engage a target audience of underserved low-income youth. The strategic impact of Access Algebra derives from the development and testing of effective strategies for engaging audiences in exhibit-based informal math learning, along with increasing the capacity of the field for facilitating these kinds of experiences through a new model for professional development.
The importance of Ice Stories derives from its creative use of the latest communications media to convey the latest polar research. By teaching scientists to communicate, by establishing a Web site devoted to polar research, Ice Stories humanizes science and brings it to a broad, diverse audience with unprecedented immediacy, thanks to the growth of digital media. This project comes when the stakes—posed by planetary warming— have never been higher, when the techniques of media production have never been more accessible, and when the potential audience—fueled by public concern and IPY activity—has never been larger. The Exploratorium will train scientists as correspondents, shape and channel their work, and create the Web site that will be a major international hub showcasing the range of IPY research and commentary. The training and production phases of the project were field-tested with polar scientists in 2006, and the museum is an experienced producer of Web and live programs from the poles. Ice Stories conceptualizes a new model of communication with great implications for informal science education. Scientists can now bring their research directly to the public, instead of having it filtered through traditional journalistic media. Ice Stories achieves this new model by organizing three innovative components: intensive media training for polar researchers; a museum-based production unit; and the project’s informal-education Web 2.0 portal. Scientist-produced video, audio, photo-essays and blogs will be accessed free via the Web site and such technology platforms as downloadable podcasts, vodcasts, RSS feeds and by posting on popular Web sites and by dissemination through journalistic media. Deliverables include (1.) Correspondent Training—week-long workshops in media for a minimum of 20 scientists in spring and fall 2008. (2.) Productions—STEM content from correspondents, each spending 5-10 hours a week producing from the field. (3.) Media Assets Database—fully accessible correspondent productions plus material from other polar projects and collaborating institutions. (4.) Exhibits—IPY Production Studio at the Exploratorium and project material used internationally in IPY exhibitions. The project design benefits from the museum’s 30 years of making science accessible to visitors, its 22 years of creating professional development courses for educators, and its use of scientists as research guides in previous Webcast projects. Project leaders have polar experience and have collaborative relationships with researchers. Instructors for media workshops include top professionals, and project partnerships encompass major projects at both poles.