Understanding Physics through Collaborative Design and Play: Integrating Skateboarding with STEM in a Digital and Physical Game-Based Children’s Museum Exhibit

This is the summative evaluation report for the “Understanding the Physics of Collaborative Design and Play,” a collaboration between researchers and children’s museum practitioners to design and build a physics-based children’s museum exhibit to provide opportunities for children and their caregivers to tinker with play related to the STEM concepts of momentum, mass, velocity, friction, and balance in the context of informal learning related to skateboarding. The exhibit, “The Science of Skateboarding” at the Iowa Children’s Museum, was designed and fabricated as a result of this grant.

In “The Science of Skateboarding,” children engage in active STEM learning. Uniquely, researchers focused on digital game design and play through an exhibit-based skatepark “videogame” using a large, multi-player touch table to examine physical-to-digital learning. In the digital context, child and adult players work collaboratively to build and test ramps and bowls in the skatepark and to select avatar skaters to test their designs. This element of the exhibit is particularly novel because it encourages those interacting with the exhibit elements to transfer physical learning in the exhibit (e.g., friction with “Friction Hill,” balance with fixed but flexible skateboards, momentum with ramps and balls) to a digital, 2-dimensional platform. A range of research projects investigated digital tabletop use, transfer of learning from physical to digital experiences, game play positioning and stance, adult-child interaction, adult-child communication and affect, and science talk.

The project also made significant contributions to the process of developing STEM exhibits for informal learning environments. First, the project produced a system for designing and evaluating exhibits at children’s museums by adapting the Dimensions of Success (DOS) STEM Program Evaluation Tool created by the PEAR Institute. Specifically, the project-developed adaptation – DOS STEM Exhibit Development Analysis Tool – is for use by children’s museums to evaluate iteratively the use and effects of exhibit components. By using the DOS STEM Exhibit Development Analysis Tool to evaluate exhibit intentions and goals in the context of use and outcomes, ongoing revisions can be made to exhibits so that actual use and outcomes meets intentions and goals. Second, the project engaged in significant outreach across the state of Iowa to implement programming with underserved populations of youth.