Museum of Science Design Challenges Observation Instrument

This tool was created by Museum of Science, Boston Design Challenges educators and the Research and Evaluation team, intended to record observations of children’s engagement in the engineering design process during participation in design-based activities in a science museum setting. It consists of a checklist of behaviors corresponding with steps of the engineering design process, previously developed for the program based on state and national standards, educator input, and past evaluator observations. The behavioral checklist matches to parts of the engineering design process, including planning activities (e.g., brainstorming ideas), creating activities (e.g., building prototypes), testing activities (e.g., testing prototypes), and improving activities (e.g., comparing to previous performance/record). This tool was discussed in the Crowdsourcing the Continuum session at the 2014 ASTC Conference.