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The National Building Museum (NBM) contracted RK&A, Inc. to conduct a summative evaluation of the Why Engineering? distance learning program.  The goal of the evaluation was to assess program operations and explore the extent to which the program achieved its intended outcomes for students and teachers. How did we approach this study? RK&A used three methodologies for the study: online program observations;...

RK&A conducted a summative evaluation of five climate change and resiliency programs at the Science Museum of Virginia (SMV).  The summative evaluation was the culmination of a three-year grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—front-end and formative evaluations were completed in the two years prior. The goal of this evaluation was to test the extent to which the...

Informal STEM education (ISE) organizations, especially museums, have used evaluation productively but unevenly. We argue that advancing evaluation in ISE requires that evaluation capacity building (ECB) broadens to include not only professional evaluators but also other professionals such as educators, exhibit developers, activity facilitators, and institutional leaders. We identify four categories of evaluation capacity: evaluation skill and knowledge, use of...

Informal STEM education institutions seek to engage broader cross sections of their communities to address inequities in STEM participation and remain relevant in a multicultural society. In this chapter, we advance the role that evaluation can play in helping the field adopt more inclusive practices and achieve greater equity than at present through evaluation that addresses sociopolitical contexts and reflects...

The free‐choice nature of informal STEM education (ISE) makes rigorous and contextually appropriate evaluation of outcomes challenging. Traditional measures such as surveys and interviews have been widely used in ISE evaluations, but they have limitations: They are typically self‐reports that are susceptible to the reactive effects of measurement, and they tend to intrude upon the participant's learning experience. The ISE...

We define "informal STEM education" and explain some of the reasons its outcomes are so inherently challenging to evaluate, including the critical need for ecological validity and the fact that many informal learning experiences are low-visibility and opportunistic. We go on to highlight significant advances in the field, starting with the fundamental embracing of learning outcomes that go well beyond...

The STEM Interest and Engagement (STEM IE) Study was a four-year project funded by the National Science Foundation under the auspices of its Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program that was designed to better understand what types of practices, supports, and opportunities afforded to early adolescent youth: (1) Are especially effective in helping youth experience in-the-moment engagement while participating in...

Parents are vital players in raising youth’s awareness of the value of STEM and in brokering their participation in activities that build STEM competencies. STEM Next Opportunity Fund is committed to ensuring that every child – especially girls, youth of color, kids in low-income communities, and youth with disabilities – has access to STEM experiences and the social capital that lead to greater...

‘6 Degrees of Connection’ is an informative and memorable program that combines a one-hour Science On a Sphere® interactive presentation with a follow-up creative art activity – each aspect of which encourages middle school students to think of interconnections among phenomena on the planet, including the natural world and human activity.  The ‘6 Degrees of Connection’ program was developed by the...

In informal STEM education, thinking about engagement has evolved from a focus on innovative ways of attracting the initial attention of science center/museum visitors or media consumers to strategies for designing environments and activities that foster deeper experiences such as experimentation, skill development, and contemplation in a variety of settings. In the science communication field, engagement increasingly refers to “two-way”...

The landmark 2009 National Research Council consensus report Learning Science in Informal Environments, posited that learners in informal environments “experience excitement, interest, and motivation to learn about phenomena in the natural and physical world” as one of six strands of informal science learning. In 2016, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Center for Public Engagement with Science and Technology identified “increased...

In everyday language, one might define “identity” as the way that people answer questions such as: “Who do I think I am, or who can I be, where do I belong, and how do I think other people see me?” The concept of identity has become an increasingly important factor in the study of informal science, technology, engineering, and math...

The Field Museum contracted RK&A to conduct a summative evaluation of the Grainger Science Hub and the Discovery Squad Carts, two museum experiences facilitated by educators or trained volunteers.  The goals of the study are to explore the extent to which visitors interact with programming in the Science Hub and at Discovery Squad Carts and the nature of those interactions,...

The HOWL science team set out to analyze the quality of the Hofmann Forest’s watershed in order to understand the Hofmann’s place in the coastal ecosystem as a whole and how its quality would affect the surrounding human and ecological community. However, we realized quickly that we would need help collecting hundreds of stream water samples and observations, and so...

The Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Experience Studies (COVES) aims to help science centers gather and share data to better understand visitors’ experiences. For the summative evaluation of COVES, the Museum of Science’s Research and Evaluation Department studied the program’s impacts on participating museums and museum professionals. Specifically, this evaluation was designed to: Examine participants’ overall satisfaction with the collaboration and their...

Citizen science, also known as participatory research, combines the efforts among professional researchers and community volunteers to collect data. We have established a collaborative project in eastern North Carolina, near the 79,000-acre Hofmann Forest, comprising of 55,000 acres of planted forests and 24,00 acres of deep pocosin natural forests. The White Oak River, New River, and Trent River all flow...

“Reclaiming Digital Futures” is a free guide and associated website for youth organizations to use as they integrate digital learning into their programming and practices. The report is available at DigitalLearningPractices.org. The report and the associated DigitalLearningPractices.org site contain a cross-section of resources to aid organizations and educators in developing quality programming that integrate technology and youth development. Rather than focusing...

This is a summary description of the 2018 Summer Science Camp offered by the Morgridge Institute for Research at the Discovery Building on the UW-Madison campus. The camp has been offered annualy since 2007, and the 2018 evaluation produced some specific ideas for improving the camp. Since 2007, more than 300 students from rural Wisconsin high schools have attended the camp. This population...

Since 1992, the WSU Math Corps, a combined mathematics and mentoring program, has worked to make a difference in the lives of Detroit’s children—providing them with the love and support that all kids need in the moment, while empowering them with the kinds of educational opportunities and sense of purpose, that hold the promise of good lives for themselves and...

This poster shows an overview of the The Designing Our Tomorrow (DOT) project. The project aims to develop a framework for creating exhibit-based engineering design challenges and expand an existing model of facilitation for use in engineering exhibits. DOT seeks to broaden participation in engineering and build capacity within the informal science education (ISE) field while raising public awareness of...

This poster was presented at the 2019 AISL PI Meeting, and describes the the ongoing research questions and goals of the Ute STEM Project, which explores the integration of the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of the Ute Indians of Colorado and Utah and Western science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). ...

This guide describes what took place during NYSCI’s Big Data for Little Kids workshop series, Museum Makers: Designing With Data. In addition to detailed outlines of the activities implemented during the program, this guide includes a glossary of recurrent terms and resources used throughout the workshops. In 2017, as part of a National Science Foundation funded project, the New York Hall...

The Computational Thinking in Ecosystems (CT-E) project is funded by the STEM+Computing Partnership (STEM+C) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the integration of computing in STEM teaching and learning. The project is a collaboration between the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI), Columbia University's Center for International Earth Science Information Network, and Design I/O....

This report summarizes evaluative findings from Computational Thinking in Ecosystems project, and the resulting product, i.e., a functional draft of a game called “The Pack.” Evaluative efforts included gathering feedback from key stakeholders—including members of the design based research (DBR) team members at the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) along with advisors and project partners— about the game and the...

The is the poster presented at the 2019 AISL PI Meeting about a project that explored ways to create conversations between scientists and publics that both groups value and learn from. The content focus was the emerging field of synthetic biology and two methods were developed. Hands-on activities like those developed and distributed by the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network...