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Eric,
Check out Ed Rodley's case study on ExhibitFiles and the remedial and summative
evaluation of Star Wars. The Engineering Design Labs that are part of that
traveling exhibit are the next generation of workbench and APE exhibits. These
labs have multiple stations at which visitors design and test their designs of
magnetically levitated trains and robots. The team at MOS prototyped these
thoroughly, working out exhibit label text and sequence--there are pictures of
this in the evaluation report.. In the remedial and summative we have focused
observations. Checkout the descriptions of how they handled naming parts on
labels, placing parts for easy access, and provided multiple stations for
simultaneous design and conversation. The mag lev train exhibit offered the
opportunity to move to successively t harder challenges as the moved through the
three stations in the lab as a whole. This sequence was highly informed by that
first stage in an inquiry learning process "Learn the materials and parts."
The observations in the APE remedial and summative and those for Star Wars are
parallel and have useful categories to consider in design. They are based on
Deborah Perry's theory. The consider physical, social, emotional, and cognitive
engagement at each exhibit as well as design feature that appear to support each
aspect.
Star Wars evaluations are on ExhibitFiles and the APE studies are on
Informalscience.orgi
Also, MOS was building on the experience of workbench and APE, but also their
own experience in Investigate! Remember that cool solar cars that could be
designed to race?
Hope these help and for anecdotes, please call or email! These were fascinating
to study and also to look at universal design features that MOS was using.
Best Regards,
Carey
Carey Tisdal
314-496-9097
Tisdal Consulting
________________________________
From: Eric Siegel <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sat, April 2, 2011 6:59:31 AM
Subject: workbench-style activities
ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
*****************************************************************************
Hello, all:
I am looking for research on workbench/lunch counter type activities, where
visitors gather at a table of "loose parts" and engage with them. We are
curious about facilitation, operational aspects, visitor engagement, duration of
participation, oh, and [can of worms alert] "learning" too. Also different
degrees of open ended-ness, from a table full of zoobs to an earthquake table to
a circuit building table...
I know about the APE report, and the PIE activities/web site, both of which are
very useful (anyone not familiar with either of these, I recommend checking them
out at the explo site). Any other actual research would be greatly appreciated.
Also, if people have particularly cool versions of these types of activities, or
anecdotes about successes/failures I'd be glad to know about them.
Thanks!
Eric Siegel
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For information about the Association of Science-Technology Centers and the Informal Science Education Network please visit www.astc.org.
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