Summative Evaluation of Design Build Fly / Sophia Rowen

Rowen, Sophia 

4/29/19 

Summative Evaluation of Design Build Fly 

Prepared for Exploration Place in Wichita, Kansas 

By RK&A [impact planning, evaluation, audience research]

http://www.informalscience.org/summative-evaluation-design-build-fly-exhibition-and-program-series
http://www.informalscience.org/sites/default/files/2018_RKA_ExplorationPlace_DesignBuildFly_Summative_final.pdf

Goals 

            The goal of the summative evaluation was to determine the successes and challenges of the Design Build Fly exhibition and programs as compared to Exploration Place’s intentions. The objectives of the summative evaluation were to:

1.    Understand visitor’s motivations for visiting the exhibition and participating programs

2.    Identify how visitors are using the exhibition space overall and what programs they participate in 

3.    Explore what meaning visitors make from their experience and to what extent visitors’ meaning-making aligns with the exhibitions and programs intended outcomes 

Methods 

            Two methods were employed: timing and tracking observations and in-depth interviews between March and May 2018. Timing and tracking observations consisted of seeing which components visitors use, for how long, and how visitors behave. They randomly selected visitors who entered the exhibition and used the method of imagining a line that the visitor would cross. The observations were unobtrusive. The in-depth interviews were open-ended and encouraged interviewees to express their opinions, understandings, and meanings. Participants in this evaluation were asked what the most enjoyable aspect of the exhibition was, the least enjoyable aspect, the confusing aspects (note: they have signage), what ideas they took away about exhibition, what processes they took away, and if they had a desire to learn about careers in STEM. 

Findings 

            They included visitor background characteristics, gallery contexts (what components of the exhibit were down or unavailable during observation), time spent, where visitors entered the exhibition, total number of stops throughout exhibition, stops and time spent by section, behaviors, social behaviors (conversing aloud, pointing). 

            They found that the exhibition and programs measured up against the intended outcomes they had for visitors. They found from the interviews that one of their intended outcomes (visitors from Wichita feeling pride in how the aviation industry has shaped their family members’ lives) was not met. They found that a lot of their visitors were not Wichita residents so meeting this achievement was limited. They learned that perhaps bolstering visits to the Wichita stories component of the ground floor could help drive up feelings of pride. 

Something interesting 

They conducted another set of interviews strictly with adolescents that had attended the Aviation if Awesome family event (this event allowed them to interact with the same exhibition that was being evaluated). They asked them what their motivations for attending the event was and categorized them into five categories: something fun, interest in aviation and industry, school invitation, someone else wanted to come, and an interest in Design Build Fly (exhibition). 

They have different audience outcomes based on different audiences. For example, they categorized their audiences into 1. Children on school field trips (3^rd-8^thgrade), 2. Families (casual walk-in visitors), 3. Out-of-school time adolescents, 4. Aviation professionals (current and retired). This reminded me of our age specific learning outcomes in the curriculum we have in the Innovation Workshop. 

This evaluation can be compared to staff at MOXI interviewing guests as they exit and observing guests on a weekend in a specific track. One cool thing that RK&A did was they developed an observation/reflection guide and trained their staff to use it to conduct their own formative evaluation of the programs in Exploration Place.