Search Results – Repository and Website Combined

This is a request to the National Endowment for the Humanities for funds to support the production of Panama Canal, a two-hour special presentation of American Experience, for national broadcast on PBS. Focusing primarily on the decade-long American construction effort, it places the American Canal against the backdrop of the calamitous French effort that preceded and haunted it. It traces...

For more than 100 years, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) has been opening science—opening pathways to discovery, opening greater awareness to address climate change, opening greater collaborations to lead to solutions and opening the fields and professions of science to a whole new age of justice equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging. This year’s theme is: Wide. Open. ... Read more

The American Horticultural Society presents their Centennial Year National Children & Youth Garden Symposium on July 13-15 2022 in Richmond, Virginia. The theme is “nature as healer, teacher, and mentor.” More information is here. Do you work with young people in a garden- or nature-based space such as a community garden, nature center, or green ... Read more

The American Indian Science and Engineering Society 2022 Leadership Summit is on April 10 – 12, 2022 in Temecula, California. The goal of the Leadership Summit is to build the skill and aptitude levels of AISES members in the realm of professional and career development. More information is here. This popular AISES program is perfect ... Read more

As the world’s largest library event, the American Library Association (ALA)’s Annual Conference & Exhibition brings together thousands of librarians and library staff, educators, authors, publishers, friends of libraries, trustees, special guests, and exhibitors. ALA Annual offers educational programming; important announcements and updates; relevant legislation and policies; and discussions that majorly impact libraries, their roles, and their ongoing transformation. Learn more and register.

2025 AMMC Cleveland is back to a four-day format with many opportunities to connect with colleagues including informative sessions, unlimited networking opportunities, evening receptions, and more!

AAAS describes public engagement with science as intentional, meaningful interactions that provide opportunities for mutual learning between scientists and members of the public. Through the Alan I. Leshner Leadership Institute for Public Engagement with Science, AAAS empowers scientists and engineers to practice high-impact public engagement by fostering leaders who advocate for critical dialogue between scientists and the public and lead...

The historian Marshall Berman wrote that living in modern times means "to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation [...] and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know"....

Sage is a robot that has been installed at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History as a full-time autonomous member of the staff. Its goal is to provide educational content to museum visitors in order to augment their museum experience. This paper discusses all aspects of the related research and development. The functional obstacle avoidance system, which departs from the...

Increased access to mobile phones and other internet capable devices has created new opportunities for adult learner audiences to engage in community science programs, which rely on volunteers to provide a large amount of data for analysis. But the lack of scalability of volunteer training is a limitation on community science programs. Volunteers may come to the activity with varying...

In this article, Alan J. Friedman, a consultant on museum development and science communication, details his experience working on the development of the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie (Center of Science and Industry) in Paris, 1981. Friedman describes lessons learned including the value of planning, the role of evaluation and prototyping, and comparisons between American French exhibit development....

Spatial ability has been shown through numerous studies to be a strong predictor of student success in STEM fields. Despite the focus on spatial ability in engineering education research, members of the blind and low vision (BLV) population have largely been omitted from research in this area, likely due to the lack of a nonvisually accessible instrument for measuring spatial...

Historically, spatial ability assessments have been used to measure spatial thinking on specific constructs in students participating in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses. High spatial ability is linked to greater performance in STEM courses and professional STEM career fields. A spatial ability test used commonly for this measurement is the Mental Cutting Test (MCT) developed in 1939 by...

This is a brief abstract of Steve R. Hage's Master's Thesis at the University of Minnesota. Hage conducted an ethnographic study of family groups at the Japanese Snow Monkey exhibit in the Minnesota Zoo. Hage confirmed prior research that concluded visitors appear to be more interested in viewing active, attractive animals than learning about the natural history of animals....

In this chapter, I offer the National Black Male College Achievement Study (NBMCAS) as an example of how to explore and better understand the enablers of minority student achievement in STEM. Methods employed in the national study are described in the next section, followed by the presentation of an anti-deficit achievement framework for research on students of color at various...

This paper discusses the history of museums as cultural institutions and presents the Model of the Dynamic Museum Environment as a useful method to help provide an understanding of what is happening in a given museum as well as a planning tool for designers. This model links the characteristics of the visitor, the museum environment, and the specific visitor-related goals...

Collaborative Information Retrieval (CIR) is the process by which people working together can collaboratively search for, share and navigate through information. Computer support for CIR currently makes use of single-user systems. CIR systems could benefit from the use of multi-user interaction to enable more than one person to collaborate using the same data sources, at the same time and in...

In this article, science center and museum professionals, artists, and educators from around the world share their projects, programs, exhibitions, and initiatives that combine science and art....

As the maker movement is increasingly adopted into K-12 schools, students are developing new competences in exploration and fabrication technologies. This study assesses learning with these technologies in K-12 makerspaces and FabLabs. Our study describes the iterative process of developing an assessment instrument for this new technological literacy, the Exploration and Fabrication Technologies Instrument, and presents findings from implementations at five...

This article outlines the attention-value applied to museum visitors. The model describes value as a three-level continuum (capture, focus, and engage) and assumes that the primary motivation for paying attention is perceived value. Bitgood discusses each stage of the visitor attention continuum with respect to the response indicators or behaviors that are associated with the stage, a description of variables...

This is a brief abstract of Suzanne Hodges's Master's Thesis at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Hodges researched the influence of enlarged signs and less label copy on visitors' behavior at a small children's zoo in Virginia....

Recently, John Falk (CAISE Co-PI) and Lynn Dierking, Sea Grant Professors of Free-Choice Learning at Oregon State University (OSU), delivered a distinguished lecture on behalf of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR). Professors Falk and Dierking presented on several research projects that they have recently completed, as well as ... Read more

The Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program assists universities and colleges in diversifying the STEM workforce through their efforts at significantly increasing the numbers of students from historically underrepresented minority populations to successfully complete high quality degree programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The LSAMP Bridge to the Baccalaureate (B2B) funding opportunity provides support for...

John Ziman with his old-fashioned ways, was a real British gentleman of the colonies. Born and raised in New Zealand, Ziman belonged to that large group of men and women that went back to their fathers’ land in the last century from the Commonwealth countries. In many cases, they were individuals with an outstanding intellect and, therefore, a real tresure...

In this paper, Kersti Krug of the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver explores how hypertext can contribute to postmodern issues of visitor research. Krug argues that hypertext has potential to present new ways of "seeing and influencing change by enhancing access to knowledge about visitors."...