Guests visit the autopsy room in CSI: The Experience to examine the victim's head injury.
Finding creative ways for people to learn about science outside the classroom is the stock-in-trade of a range of professionals—scientists, museum educators, exhibit developers, and media producers—who work in so-called “informal” science education.
Such out-of-school education takes advantage of familiar characters and situations to bring to life the science in dramatic television shows, for example. Non-scientists can also better understand science concepts through an interest or hobby, such as sports or cooking, that has a scientific component. Indeed, a recent National Research Council report concludes that informal-learning settings such as science museums and the media are important because they stimulate both motivation and interest.
According to Charlie Walter, chief operating officer at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, market research gathered by a collaborative between the Fort Worth museum and other science museums showed the popularity of forensic science even before the CSI television show hit the airwaves. The collaborative had already developed a forensic science exhibit back in the early 1990s. With the popularity of the TV show, Walter and his colleagues saw an opportunity to bring science to museum visitors via the back door of popular culture.
Visitors to “CSI: The Experience,” which is both a traveling museum exhibit and an interactive Web experience, are quickly drawn into a crime scene, moving through various stations that look and feel like the TV show to gather evidence and ultimately work to solve a murder.
“The process of solving a crime mirrors aspects of scientific inquiry so well,” said Walter. “And since the earlier exhibit, we could take advantage of what had changed in the field, including advances in fingerprinting and DNA analysis. But so much of this is about observation – with all the technology, it still boils down to gathering evidence in a methodical way.”
The Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning at Rice University is currently evaluating the knowledge visitors to “CSI: The Experience” take away. An early finding: the “stay-time” at the exhibit is an average of 44 minutes, compared to a national average of about 13 minutes for similarly sized exhibits.
“We are going to learn things that will help advance the field of informal science education,” Walters said.
The Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE Net), a national network of science museums, led by the Museum of Science in Boston, the Science Museum of Minnesota and the Exploratorium ins San Francisco, is developing and testing methods for increasing public understanding of nanoscience. In addition to demonstration exhibits that include juggling “electrons” on unicycles, balloon sculptures and shrinking students, planners have discovered that understanding the impact of the technology is based not just on science but also on community and cultural values.
“Moderated discussions and forums where people can learn about the potential societal implications and take a position have been really important,” said Larry Bell, senior vice president for exhibits and programs at Boston’s Museum of Science.
At the Exploratorium, a Web-based project called the “Accidental Scientist” draws people into science through hobbies or vocations that have a scientific element to them.
“We looked at what we could do that would relate to people’s everyday lives,” said Rob Semper, executive associate director of the museum. “We’ve tried to connect with a topic that we knew was a popular hobby and had professionals in that field who could talk about the science,” he said. “We work to find someone in the field who is credible and passionate about the topic.”
The project first tackled the science behind various sports and has expanded to include cooking, music and gardening.
For the “Science of Baseball” Web site, that meant getting participation from players with the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A's. For the cooking site, it meant enlisting popular chefs and food critics to tell the story of the science behind bread, cheese, wine, and Thanksgiving turkeys. Participation took place through webcasts, question-and-answer pages, articles and games. The effort brought in a new group of people to the Exploratorium site, who provided great feedback on what they learned.
Visitors to the “Science of Music” Web site can learn how opera singers hold notes for so long, and why we all sound better when we sing in the shower. They can also listen to instruments created from found objects and create their own audio mix from a virtual toolkit of sounds.
According to Web statistics, accidental science is popular. The “Science of Cooking” Web site has logged 12 million visits since its launch 7 years ago (currently hosting 250,000 visits per month), while the music site has logged about a million visits in 6 years. The gardening site has had half-a-million viewers in 5 years.
Future plans include a site on the science of spirits.
“We did a webcast on wine, which was very popular,” says Semper. “We would like to do more of this.”
These informal education projects are supported by the National Science Foundation.
—By Maria Zacharias/NSF.
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