Creating Museum Media for Everyone is an NSF-funded collaborative project of the Museum of Science, the WGBH National Center for Accessible Media, Ideum, and Audience Viewpoints, to further the science museum field's understanding of ways to research, develop, and evaluate digital interactives that are inclusive of all people. As a part of this effort to enable museums to integrate more accessible media into their exhibits to make them more welcoming and educational for visitors with disabilities as well as general audiences, this paper provides an overview of approaches to media accessibility
Museums are increasingly engaging with their communities in understanding and addressing the complex questions of our society. How is this effort manifested in museum practice, and what is the impact of this work? Our study attempted to explore the boundaries of these questions by reviewing and synthesizing reports on InformalScience.org. The work was part of the NSF-funded Building Informal Science Education project (BISE). We selected a small set of reports of projects that aligned with our definition of social issues as conditions that are harmful to society, complex and characterized by a
Twenty-four Learning Labs in libraries and museums across the country are engaging America’s youth in learning settings where they gain skills and following their passions. A new publication, Learning Labs in Libraries and Museums: Transformative Spaces for Teens, describes these innovative teen spaces. The report details the research behind the labs, the practices that support meaningful learning, and the impacts of a movement that grew with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and its private partner, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
This report provides background information about the Flathead Watershed, the people responsible for funding the project and an depth description of Phase I, the Delphi Survey. The report includes participant information, methodology, data acquisition and findings.
This catalog details the extent of NASA’s game portfolio, so that others developing new games are able to build upon the lessons learned from the past. Enclosed herein are details on fourteen individual games that have been created by or for NASA as well as two collections of hosted Flash games. Each entry has information about the game, including a screen shot, point of contact (if available), and a link to the game’s site. The games are identified by genre, NASA content or contribution, and intended audience or Entertainment Software Review Board (ESRB) rating.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Daniel Laughlin
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This White Paper summarizes the work of C-COVES, a two-year IMLS-funded project designed to Create a Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Experience Studies. Specifically, C-COVES was intended to research the feasibility of creating a multi-institutional network of science centers across the country united in studying the visitor experience within and across organizations nationwide. In August of 2013, 27 museum professionals from 11 science centers ranging in size, community context, and evaluation capacity, as well as 3 consulting or industry organizations, came together to elaborate the
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Museum of Science, BostonRyan Auster
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
In December, 2013, a group of leaders of six informal science education (ISE) assessment projects met in Palo Alto, CA for a 2-day exploration of the state of the art of measuring the impact of informal STEM education experiences. The goals for the meeting were to explore in depth the technical and practical details of the assessments, share and critique findings, and review plans for ongoing work to validate and refine measures.
As part of the Oakland Museum of California’s (OMCA) Hotspot California project funded by NSF, Garibay Group conducted research investigating whether habitat dioramas contribute to visitors’ development of Sense of Place. The main research question for the study was: What role does sense of place play in visitors’ experiences with habitat dioramas?
SRI’s Afterschool Science Networks (ASN) study provides new insights and empirical findings regarding the offering of science learning opportunities at scale. Four meetings of afterschool and informal science stakeholders were held in March and April 2014 to discuss the ASN findings generated from 5 years of research (see research summary on page 12). These stakeholders helped SRI Education researchers generate a vision of science in afterschool settings, as well as recommendations for strengthening the field. This document presents this vision of powerful afterschool science and provides a
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ann HouseCarlin LlorenteTiffany Leones
The days of desktop dominance are over. Mobile has swiftly risen to become the leading digital platform, with total activity on smartphones and tablets accounting for an astounding 60 percent of digital media time spent in the U.S. The fuel driving mobile’s relentless growth is primarily app usage, which alone makes up a majority of total digital media engagement at 52 percent. In this report we let the numbers and charts do most of the talking, as the story of today’s app landscape is told through the visualization of comScore’s mobile data.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Adam LellaAndrew Lipsman
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This report presents the findings of a two-day invitational workshop held at MIT on September 23–24, 2013 as part of the Evolving Culture of Science Engagement Initiative, an ongoing collaboration between a new nonprofit organization, Culture Kettle, and several MIT departments led by the Program in Science, Technology & Society and the MIT Museum. The initiative explores a new wave of public science engagement activity that appears to be dissolving the once-bright line between science and popular culture.
If the science research and education community is to increase the number and degree of commitment of scientists who participate in public engagement activities, we must understand their perceptions of values, obstacles, and incentives in the science academic environment. This document contains a preliminary distillation of the results of two surveys (2012, 2014) that begins the process of understanding attitudes of science academics and science administrators.