Blog Week 3

Class review: Using the floor-specific data you looked at in class, how would you apply some of this information to design an evaluation? What types of questions would you ask and why? Are there specific exhibits you might look at? 

I wasn't in class last week so I wasn't part of the discussions, but I read most of the floor-specific data and it was very interesting. I think it could be helpful to combine some of the data, like can we compare the dwell time at each exhibit to the popularity and primary audience of the exhibits? 

Readings: What are some of the challenges of measuring learning in MOXI? What kinds of evaluations do you think would be the most helpful in assessing learning in this space and why?  

Measuring learning at MOXI outside of the Engineering Explorations or the IWS is naturally challenging. In the IWS, you can see when a guest has learned something because they usually can walk away with something they've made through a new technique they've learned, and the EE curriculum is more like a classroom experience than a museum visit, so it is easier to measure learning there than on the floor. Some of the challenges for evaluating learning at MOXI are just observing/evaluating a guest. Sometimes on the floor I'll interact with a young guest at an exhibit, and sometimes we can have an awesome conversation and I can use some of that conversation as a way to measure their learning later, but sometimes, the guest does not want to talk to a stranger and stops interacting with the exhibit. That problem isn't common with older guests, but just by observing them at an exhibit, their behavior might change.

Asking questions is a good way to measure learning at MOXI, asking the younger guests things like "what do you think is happening here?" at program carts before and after they test out the experiment can provide a good idea of what they have learned there. 

Another evaluation we might try could be to observe a guest or family without directly interacting with them at first so that we don't interrupt their experience at MOXI, and ask the guests before they leave some questions about the exhibits they spent the most time with. Ask them what they learned there, what they knew about that specific phenomena or scientific concept before their visit, and what they can tell us about it now.