September 1st, 2014 - August 31st, 2019 | PROJECT
EvalFest (Evaluation Use, Value, and Learning through Festivals of Science and Technology) will test innovative evaluation methods in science festivals that are being held across the country and assess in what ways and how effectively they are used. Morehead Planetarium and Science Center (at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) and the University of California, San Francisco, in collaboration with over twenty science festivals, will (1) investigate whether a multisite evaluation approach is an effective model for creating common metrics for informal STEM education, (2) develop common methods to measure the effects of Festivals, (3) create a query-able database of 50,000 Festival attendees to share with the informal STEM learning field, and (4) document whether these efforts also result in new knowledge related to informal STEM education. The project will develop the Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) system and query-able database for the festival community. EFMs are systems, including processes and software, that enable groups (such as the festival network) to collect, organize, analyze and share data. The EFM system will be designed to integrate data across sites and to allow users to extract data of interest. The project will refine evaluation tools currently used within the Science Festival Alliance that assess self-reported festival learning, and the effects of festival attendance, motivation, and future science participation. It will collect economic impact data and longitudinal festival attendee data. The project will also develop some new evaluation tools such as secret shopper observational protocols. Data from festival attendees will be collected onsite at participating festivals.
Project Website(s)
(no project website provided)
Project Products
Poster - Evalfest
evalfest.org
2017 Science Festival Alliance Annual Report
Shared Measures for Evaluating Common Outcomes of Informal STEM Education Experiences
New, Not Different: Data-Driven Perspectives on Science Festival Audiences
Team Members
Denise Young, Principal Investigator, University of North Carolina, Chapel HillKaren Peterman, Co-Principal Investigator, Karen Peterman Consulting, Co
Katherine Nielsen, Principal Investigator, University of California, San Francisco
Emma Horesovsky, Project Manager, Morehead Planetarium
Amy Grack Nelson, Contributor, Science Museum of Minnesota
Funders
Funding Source: NSF
Funding Program: ISE/AISL
Award Number: 1423004
Funding Amount: 796524
Funding Program: ISE/AISL
Award Number: 1423050
Funding Amount: 68683
Tags
Audience: Educators | Teachers | Evaluators | General Public | Museum | ISE Professionals
Discipline: Computing and information science | Education and learning science | General STEM
Resource Type: Project Descriptions
Environment Type: Professional Development | Conferences | Networks | Public Events and Festivals | Public Programs | Resource Centers and Networks