Summative Evaluation of Journey into Amazing Caves with a Student Audience

With funding from the National Science Foundation, MacGillivray Freeman Films has produced an IMAX® film titled, Journey into Amazing Caves. The 40-minute film follows two women cavers on an expedition as they explore limestone caverns of the Grand Canyon, underwater caves of the Yucatan and ice caves of Greenland. Multimedia Research implemented a summative evaluation focused on the following major outcomes: To what extent and in what ways did the film appeal to eighth grade viewers? To what extent did the film achieve its intended viewing goals? Did exposure to a web-based school activity after viewing affect learning outcomes? What did viewers perceive that they learned from the film? What new information did viewers learn about scientists? A quasi-experimental pretest/posttest non-equivalent comparison group design was planned with middle school students to evaluate the film and an ancillary web-based activity. Intact school classes were assigned to one of two treatments: viewing the film only (FILM) and viewing the film followed by completion of a content-related web-based activity (FILM + ACTIVITY). Journey into Amazing Caves was rated as moderately appealing by eighth grade viewers and influenced 40% of the audience in terms of their understanding of scientists. Seeing the film with or without doing the web activity significantly improved eighth graders' knowledge about cave life, cave exploration techniques and cave formation. However, exposure to the web activity did not significantly add to the film knowledge base. An analysis of test questions relating specifically to the web pages indicates that doing the web activity did not add to student knowledge about ice caves or underwater caves.