Summative Evaluation of Portal to the Public Programs at Five Science Museums - Sam S.

My capstone project is related to an existing program called Portal to the Public developed by the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, which partners informal education teams with professional scientists to create programs for science outreach. I searched the evaluations and found their summative evaluation for their pilot program, which concluded in 2009. Pacific Science Center contracted with an evaluation consulting firm to conduct the evaluation. They were trying to answer three main questions:

1) To what extent and in what ways were the PoP guiding framework, materials, and approaches implemented and adopted at the five sites?
2) What factors affected implementation and adoption?
3) To what extent and in what ways was the PoP approach effective in A. Building partnerships with scientists and science-based organizations? B. Providing professional development to scientists? C. Communicating current science to museum visitors?

The evaluation consisted of surveys of three populations: informal science educators, participating scientists, and groups of general public museum visitors. They also collected data through passive observation and in-depth interviews. They were able to survey 13 informal educators, 38 scientists, and 16 visiting groups which consisted of 69 museum visitors.

On the preparation end of the survey for the informal educators and scientists, they found that formal experience in professional development and development of public programs helped with implementing the program, as well as robust existing relationships between institutions and scientists. They also found that participating scientists who attended professional development workshops associated with the program were much more understanding of the overall mission and more prepared to conduct science outreach.

All five institutions reported that finding partner scientists took longer than they anticipated (I've already found this myself). For scientists that did participate, the primary motivation they cited was to "communicate work and raise public awareness of science" with the second most being to "encourage young people to enter science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields."

On the museum visitor side, the evaluators found a positive response. They noted that the design of each scientist's teaching tools, as well as their vocabulary, greatly affected how accessible their science was to adults or to children. Many visitors expressed enthusiasm and reported learning about new science careers about which they were previously unaware. Most notably, those programs with dynamic interactions between scientists and visitors, and those based around hands on materials, seemed to induce the most learning.