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Change Your Game | Cambia tu juego (CYG) is a 3,500 square foot bilingual exhibition located in the Lemelson Hall of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. The exhibition explores invention and technology in sports with embedded research into visitors’ exploration of inventive identity. Uniquely, CYG aims to support history museum visitors to move beyond passively consuming information to make meaning about ways in which the exhibition is personally relevant and to (re)consider inventiveness within their current and future life roles. This research report summarizes how the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI) theoretical model and the Visitor Identification and Engagement with STEM (VINES) design principles were applied to the design of the exhibition, and provides an empirical study to address two research questions: RQ1. What theoretical model of inventive identity can we formulate from an analysis of inventive identity indicators and their shifts among diverse visitors? RQ2. What can we conclude about exhibition design principles that the field can use to promote inventive and other STEM identity exploration and change among diverse groups of visitors? A key finding was that CYG supported diverse visitors to construct personal relevance, learn to “re-see” inventiveness as an accessible everyday concept, consider the implications of their inventive experiences in the exhibition to their roles outside the museum, and explore their own identity as an individual with inventive capacities in a variety of life domains. The DSMRI provided a theoretically robust, complex, and dynamic framework to conceptualize inventive identity as a network of invention-related beliefs, goals, self-perceptions, and perceived action possibilities that manifests within a person’s role identity in their lived context (e.g., athlete, parent, student, engineer, citizen). The VINES framework provided a comprehensive set of design principles for the effective operationalization of features in very different types of exhibits (e.g., personal inventor stories, artifacts, interactives) that, across multiple exposures and variable contents and exhibit types, promoted diverse visitors’ inventive identity exploration. We have shared this research report with the informal science learning (ISL) community at informalscience.org. 

The Change Your Game | Cambia tu juego (formerly Game Changers) project has developed an Inventive Identity Toolkit for wide distribution across the informal science learning (ISL) community. The toolkit is aimed at exhibition designers and informal science educators; it provides practical tips to help visitors explore their inventive identities so they can see themselves as creative problem solvers. The toolkit first offers background on Joanna K. Garner and Avi Kaplan’s theoretical frameworks, the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI), and the Visitor Identification and Engagement in STEM (VINES) model. The toolkit then includes design tips for applying the DSMRI-VINES models and encouraging visitors’ inventive identity exploration in unstaffed exhibition galleries. Similarly, the toolkit offers specific facilitation techniques (and associated training exercises) to help educators encourage inventive creativity in informal learning spaces staffed by facilitators. The toolkit also provides a catalog of verbal and behavioral indicators that signify when a visitor has activated their inventive identities; this will help researchers and evaluators measure the efficacy of exhibitions, learning labs, and other informal learning environments that strive to foster these kinds of identity shifts. Finally, the toolkit provides a template for designing public programs and community events around inventiveness in sports. We have shared the Inventive Identity Toolkit with the informal science learning (ISL) community at informalscience.org. 

The Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History (NMAH) will unveil its Change Your Game | Cambia tu juego exhibition in March 2024. The bilingual English-Spanish exhibition introduces the central role of inventors, inventions, and technology in the history of sports with an unexpected goal: to empower diverse visitors–with a special focus on adolescent girls, African American youth, and people with disabilities–to explore their own inventiveness and identify themselves as inventive problem solvers who can become "game changers" in their daily lives. In this lightning session on "Games and Play," Garner and Grahn will illuminate the thinking that led to shaping Change Your Game | Cambia tu juego around inventive identity. The conversation will describe how the central concept of identity exploration has informed the design and interpretive strategy of the exhibition, and how these ideas will come to life for the exhibition’s millions of visitors and for those who experience its suite of public programs nationally and internationally. The panelists will detail how the exhibition and its activities provide people of all ages, backgrounds, and interests the opportunity to learn STEAM-related content and practice inventive skills and habits of mind, such as collaboration, creativity, problem-solving, risk-taking, and critical thinking, as tools to explore and develop their inventive identity. Designed to include generative discussion, the session will allow participants to glean principles and concrete strategies for designing environments that aim to shift people’s identities in their own institutions. 

IntroductionThis paper describes an initial phase of research to inform the design of Change YOUR Game—an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH) that aims to promote visitors’ inventiveness in STEM and in other life domains. The exhibition’s content focused on the history of inventions and innovations in sports. The research was framed by the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI) and by a set of design principles for promoting visitors’ agentic identity exploration: The PRESS Principles. MethodsFive data collection sessions engaged participants in a virtual, simulated visit to an early rendition of the exhibition. Diverse groups of participants were prompted to consider the self-relevance of the exhibition content to their identities and how they have been and can be inventive in their lives. ResultsFour themes captured participants’ museum visitor role identities, varied readiness to engage in identity exploration of their inventiveness, and how these provided affordances and hindrances to participants’ engagement in identity exploration in the context of the simulated visit. The themes served as bases for design recommendations. DiscussionThe study highlights the potential of the DSMRI and PRESS design principles to address conceptual and methodological challenges of research that aims to inform environmental design of a context that is not yet in existence and that will be relatively fixed. The findings suggest recommendations for design as well as theoretical insights about museum visitor role identities and the contexts that may promote visitors’ active and agentic engagement in exploring their identities. 

This paper describes the conceptual framework, methodology, and findings from an initial phase of research to inform the design of an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH)on the history of invention and innovation in sports. Organized by the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, the goal of the exhibition is to promote inventiveness among visitors, with a particular emphasis on those from groups underrepresented in the NMAH visitor population and in the invention ecosystem: adolescent girls, African American Boys, and people with disabilities. The research is framed by the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity(DSMRI)—an integrative, complex dynamic system model of identity, motivation, and action—and by a set of design principles for promoting people’s agentic identity exploration. The paper describes the conceptual challenges posed by a situative identity perspective for research that aims to inform environmental design of a context that is not yet in existence and that will become relatively fixed. The paper also describes the conceptual rationale, methodology, and first phase findings from experiential focus groups and interviews with participants from the target audiences, and their implications for the exhibition’s design. 

This study examined identity processes among early-mid adolescent girls as part of an experience designed to promote their identity exploration around being inventive. Data were collected through virtual focus groups where participants assumed the role of a museum visitor in an exhibition about inventiveness in sports. Data analysis was guided by the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI) and explicated the participants’ beliefs, goals, self-perceptions, and action possibilities around being inventive in their lives.