Search for: All records

With funding from a National Science Foundation (NSF) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) grant #2005404, the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) launched a bilingual exhibition project called Change Your Game / Cambia tu juego. The project developed a STEM exhibition for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History on invention and technology in sports with embedded research into visitors’ exploration of inventive identity. This summative evaluation explores the impact of the exhibition on walk-in visitors and the project’s priority audiences: girls/young women ages 10-17; African American boys/young men ages 10-17; people with disabilities of all ages; and Spanish-speaking Latinx visitors of all ages. The summative evaluation of the Change Your Game / Cambia tu juego exhibition indicated that project team members did a good job at identifying stories that represent many different people and sports. Visitors found it novel to consider invention in relation to sports and games, thus serving as an entry point to inventive identity exploration in terms of ontological-epistemological beliefs within audiences’ role as a museum visitor. The exhibition was especially impactful for youth audiences; approximately half of visitors aged 10-17 said they felt more inventive after seeing the exhibit (p. 48). Beyond ontological-epistemological beliefs, the evaluation results are indeterminate about how the exhibition affected audiences in other areas of identity exploration. The evaluation raises questions about inventive identity to be considered along with the research findings for further exploration. We have shared the summative evaluation with the informal science learning (ISL) community at informalscience.org.