An official website of the United States government
This study investigates the interactions between informal educators and adolescents during math walk activities at an art museum. “Math walks” are activities where students notice and wonder about mathematics in the world around them, often creating their own “math walk stops” where they ask and answer mathematical questions. Drawing upon theories of informal math learning, scaffolding, and problem-posing, our research aims to enhance understanding of math walk implementation. Through video content, interaction analysis and artifact analysis of participants’ iPad photos, we explore students’ mathematical learning processes and the role of adult facilitators in guiding these activities. Results from a three-day summer camp are given, and findings offer implications for designing effective informal math education programs and fostering meaningful student engagement with mathematics in real-world contexts.
more »
« less
Scaffolding a Science Museum Exhibit through Signage
Scaffolding learning in science museum exhibits can be a challenging endeavor. Learning in these settings is self-directed, sporadic, and lacking in structure (Falk, Dierking & Semmel, 2013). Museum educators and exhibit designers struggle to provide the appropriate types and amounts of scaffolding, where too little scaffolding can result in suboptimal learning outcomes while too much scaffolding can result in an “over-formalization” of the exhibit (Yoon et al., 2013). This study examines the use of signage in scaffolding students’ engagement with a science exhibit about light. Twelve students were asked to engage in four activities within the exhibit. Videos of student behavior were recorded and thematically coded. Findings indicate that textual scaffolds, as they were implemented in this exhibit, may have missed opportunities to promote meaningful engagement with exhibit activities. Implications for exhibit design practice and research are discussed.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1906686
- PAR ID:
- 10347033
- Editor(s):
- Langran, E.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference
- Volume:
- 2022
- Issue:
- 1
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 951-959
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
The majority of Computer Science courses frequently use out-of-class activities to promote skill-building. Yet, the shortcomings of these activities limit their applicability in improving students' skills. This poster presents an innovative mobile-app-based approach to engage students in out-of-class activities. The app - Dysgu - builds on the theories of social learning and enables instructors to break regular out-of-class activities into smaller and interactive entities with instructional scaffolding. Dysgu allows students to compare their progress with their peers and provides personalized notifications and feedbacks to keep students engaged. The goal is to improve student's self-efficacy and engagement in out-of-class activities.more » « less
-
Intelligent science exhibits: Transforming hands-on exhibits into mixed-reality learning experiencesMuseum exhibits encourage exploration with physical materials typically with minimal signage or guidance. Ideally children get interactive support as they explore, but it is not always feasible to have knowledgeable staff regularly present. Technology-based interactive support can provide guidance to help learners achieve scientific understanding for how and why things work and engineering skills for designing and constructing useful artifacts and for solving important problems. We have developed an innovative AI-based technology, Intelligent Science Exhibits that provide interactive guidance to visitors of an inquiry-based science exhibit. We used this technology to investigate alternative views of appropriate levels of guidance in exhibits. We contrasted visitor engagement and learning from interaction with an Intelligent Science Exhibit to a matched conventional exhibit. We found evidence that the Intelligent Science Exhibit produces substantially better learning for both scientific and engineering outcomes, equivalent levels of self-reported enjoyment, and higher levels of engagement as measured by the length of time voluntarily spent at the exhibit. These findings show potential for transforming hands-on museum exhibits with intelligent science exhibits and more generally indicate how providing children with feedback on their predictions and scientific explanations enhances their learning and engagement.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)We worked with local K–6 teachers to develop lesson plans that would connect a 50-minute engineering design challenge, completed during a field trip, to the students’ classroom learning. The result was a model for designing pre-visit classroom activities that develop students’ familiarity with phenomena, tools, and processes that will be used during the field trip and post-visit classroom activities that provide students with opportunities to reflect on some of their field trip experiences. While the field trip activity alone is an exciting and productive learning opportunity, students who complete the full set of classroom and field trip activities participate in a richer experience that engages them in more of the practices of science and engineering and more fully develops the disciplinary core ideas related to engineering and physical science. Each Engineering Exploration module includes four activities: an engineering design activity completed during a field trip to an interactive science museum, accompanied by two preactivities and one post activity done in students’ classroom and facilitated by their elementary school teacher. While each classroom activity was designed to take no more than 50 minutes, many teachers found it valuable to extend each lesson to allow for deeper discussion and engagement with the activities. The classroom experiences presented here are associated with a field trip program in which students iteratively design a craft out of paper and tape that will hover above a “fire” (upward moving column of air) while carrying a “sensor” (washer). The classroom activities surrounding this field trip help students develop conceptual understandings of forces to navigate the engineering design challenge.more » « less
-
Science and engineering museums must leverage a variety of pedagogical strategies to facilitate STEM learning for a public audience. Complex, abstract concepts such as reliability engineering and risk analysis are difficult to convey in a technical manner to non-technical visitors without losing fidelity. Techniques such as exhibit interactivity, open-ended tinkering, and competitive games are frequently used to hold visitors’ attention and draw analogies to more familiar concepts. Reliability engineering principles are vital to the growth and continued safety of the nuclear energy industry. General knowledge of risk as it applies to nuclear energy can be expanded by disseminating this information to the public via engaging educational content. In this paper, we present the design of an interactive, game-based museum exhibit developed through iterative collaboration between exhibit designers and reliability engineering researchers at the University of Maryland, curators at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History (Nuclear Museum), and media design students and faculty at the New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU). Museum visitors have frequently asked how the risks of nuclear power compare to other energy sources, and to date, no museum exhibit at the Nuclear Museum has answered this question. This work presents examples of museum exhibit content, artifacts, and graphics to convey concepts in probabilistic risk assessment at a level accessible to the general public. In addition to the physical exhibit installation, the game will also be available on the public-facing museum website to increase the breadth of outreach. Finally, a proposed questionnaire method for evaluating exhibit efficacy and public engagement is presented. Feedback obtained will allow for periodic revisions of exhibit content.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
