Summative Evaluation of Black Holes Exhibit Gallery

Goodman Research Group completed the summative evaluation report of the Black Holes Experiment Gallery (BHEG), a traveling exhibit by the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which aimed at engaging museum visitors in the topic of black holes. One of the innovations of the project included the inclusion of significant input from youth collaborators in the exhibit's design and development phase in order to achieve improved audience impact and the other innovation was a Black Holes Explorer's Card which visitors used to collect digital artifacts at the museum and could access the information they had collected at home on the BHEG website. The museum visitors showed an increase in knowledge and interest in black holes and astronomy based on their experience with the exhibit. Moreover, GRG found that use of the card enhanced these visitors' outcomes. The use of the card made a difference in visitors' time spent, their interest, and their learning at the exhibit.This innovative networked technology helped optimize the exhibit experience for visitors and at the same time functioned as a tool for embedded assessment. The appendix of this report includes interview protocols and surveys.