Summative Evaluation of Soundprint’s Out of This World Project

This report presents an evaluation study of Soundprint Media's project, Out of This World (#0741737), which was funded by the National Science Foundation's Informal Science Education Program. The mission of the project was to introduce adult radio listeners and youth participants in museum events to the historical context and challenges faced by African-Americans and women who were involved as professionals in the United States' space program in the 1960's. The project website, capecosmos.com, included an interactive menu of activities set within the context of a NASA mission control center, an archive of the radio programs, video portraits of some of African American engineers or women featured in the radio programs, and activities introducing some science principles involved in the space program (e.g., launching a rocket). The project resulted in a number of positive impacts for listeners who participated in the evaluation and participants at museum events combining live or video interviews with related hands-on events. Reports from event coordinators indicated that, overall, the events had a positive impact on the sponsoring organizations.