Ice Planet Earth: Summative Evaluation Report

Ice Planet Earth (IPE) was a three-year NSF-Funded grant, with a focus on building awareness and understanding of polar processes and designed to coincide with the International Polar Year, which took place from March 2007-March 2009. A key feature of the IPE project was the development of 'Ice Worlds', a planetarium style film designed for both general audiences and for students/youth. IPE was a collaboration between the University of New Hampshire, and the following institutions: The Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh; the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences; the Louisiana Art and Science Museum in Baton Rouge; the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord, NH, and the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland, Oregon. IPE was designed to stimulate interest in the International Polar Year through: community lectures and forums with a polar researcher scientist--these took place in New Hampshire, Pittsburgh, and Baton Rouge; The development and presentation of the Ice Worlds film and related products. Project evaluators found that the film was engaging to museum/planetarium visitors in a range of settings. The film appealed to both adults and youth, and did appear, to varying extents, to stimulate visitors' interest in learning about polar processes, and the impact of climate change on the poles. The related website was somewhat difficult to use, and appeared to function best when used with teacher guidance. Finally, the project appeared to be successful at creating a relatively new model of using museum planetariums for an educational film dealing with Earth processes. In addition, the project enabled several participating museums to develop new connections with scientist/researchers, who spoke to audiences at their institutions about their work. The appendix of this report includes surveys and interview protocols used in the study.