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As mobile devices are increasingly merging into our daily lives, exhibition services are also facing innovation based on the newly available technologies. Our project addresses these new circumstances. We developed...

The New York Hall of Science (NYSCI), in collaboration with O\'Reilly Media will host a two-day workshop to explore the potential for the kinds of making, designing, and engineering practices...

This article presents examples of practical strategies for developing a positive and productive working relationship between museum clients and outside design firms contracted to develop exhibits. Authors include Donna R....

"Making and Tinkering" links science, technology, engineering and mathematics learning (STEM) to the do-it-yourself "maker" movement, where people of all ages "create and share things in both the digital and...

This paper summarizes key design elements for programs for middle-school-aged children, addressing issues of relationships, relevance, reinforcement, real-life projects, and rigor. The authors argue that these five components take into...

In this paper, our collaborative project team shares design principles and lessons learned from research for designing an app to support families’ joint engagement with media and promote powerful shared...

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework for initiatives focused on supporting learning across settings in the domains of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The...

Conclusions Design Decisions Models Intended to Engage Populations Further Reading Blog Post Evaluators have shown the strength of summer camp as an intervention. With such rich possibilities, more studies and evaluations could assess and reveal the impact of facilitators and presenters. They can show how different the outcomes are when scientists practicing scientists present and ... Read more

Conclusions Design Decisions Models Intended to Engage Populations Further Reading Blog Post Camp experiences are time-limited, some as short as a partial week. Nevertheless, they promise transformative experiences. Below we discuss several projects with different audiences and priorities. By design, they seek to increase knowledge and facilitate career exploration among other goals like developing participants’ ... Read more

Conclusions Design Decisions Models Intended to Engage Populations Further Reading Blog Post There are several articles on the subject of summer camps in a variety of journals. For example, Kong, Dabney, and Tai examine the relationship between students’ participation in science summer camps and their career interest in science and engineering across 5 states and ... Read more

Conclusions Design Decisions Models Intended to Engage Populations Further Reading Blog Post Girlstart Insights See project page Girlstart offers engaging, impactful STEM-focused week-long summer day camps for girls entering 4th-8th grade in Austin and several cities around the country. In an effort to interest girls who haven’t already decided they want to be in STEM, ... Read more

Future educational robots are emerging as social companions supporting learning. By socially interacting with such a robot, learners can potentially reason and talk about the things they are learning and...

One of the problems in science education is students' low motivation and difficulty to see the connection between science learning and their daily life. In addition, many science concepts are...

Classic article from the Journal of Visitor Behavior (1994) which discusses different approaches to exhibit design. The author cites considerable historical research, including one of the earliest visitor studies from...

In this article, Jacksonville State University's Stephen Bitgood discusses three aspects of designing effective exhibits: (1) the possible criteria for assessing the success of an exhibit; (2) common exhibit design...

In this article, Suzanne Gaskins, Professor of Psychology at Northeastern Illinois University and researcher at the Chicago Children's Museum, discusses how museums should design exhibitions to support and encourage family...

This research investigated gender equitable exhibit development by enhancing a geometry exhibit with several female-friendly design features and analyzing video data to determine the effects on girls' engagement and social...

The author presents a list of ten points for designing engaging experience-based exhibits. ...

Research shows that science centers and museums play an important role in giving youth STEM learning opportunities (Hamilton, Nussbaum, Kupermintz, Kerkhoven, & Snow, 1995; Salmi, 2001, 2002). These informal learning spaces...

This is a Knowledge Base article, designed to streamline access to and share evidence about informal STEM learning. Knowledge Base articles are evidence-supported claims about what is new and emerging in the field that you can reference when you develop a proposal or “make the case” for a strategy or approach to funders and stakeholders.  Veronica Garcia-Luis co-authored this article. Research ... Read more

This article was migrated from a previous version of the Knowledge Base. The date stamp does not reflect the original publication date. Overview  Researchers and evaluators have studied how social interactions around exhibits influence learning, and exhibit developers have experimented with design strategies to facilitate conversations and social interactions at exhibits. Findings from Research and ... Read more

This article was migrated from a previous version of the Knowledge Base. The date stamp does not reflect the original publication date. Overview  Note, this Wiki content is based on a manuscript in preparation for publication. Designing exhibits to support family learning is a widely shared goal among museums. Thus, there have been many efforts ... Read more

With the acceleration and increasing complexity of macro-scale problems such as climate change, the need for scientists to ensure that their work is understood has become urgent. As citizens and...

By pursing delight as a design goal in the creation of exhibits about science and nature, we can solve the 'edutainment' dilemma that plagues producers of informal educational media both...

Dancu, Gutwill, and Hido describe a process for designing science museum exhibits to create playful learning experiences. They outline five characteristics of play: It is structured by constraints, active without...