March/April 2008
In This Issue

Is membership the key to moving “beyond the gate”? Should we be building deeper relationships with our most loyal customers? In recent years, ASTC Dimensions has examined such audience segments as early learners, female visitors, teachers, and adults aged 50+. In this issue, we focus on a group often taken for granted: the individuals and families who join our science center as members and renew their memberships year after year. Articles highlight member audience research and approaches to membership fulfillment across a spectrum of ASTC science centers. Together, contributors examine what turns a casual visitor into someone who speaks with pride of “my museum.”

CONTENTS
• Breaking the Mold: The Science of Retooling a Membership Program, by Heather Calvin and Deborah Kulich
• Passport to Science: Member Benefits That Travel, by Diane Frendak
• The Continuum of Museum Membership: What Research Tells Us, by Susie Wilkening
• Value Added: Membership Strategies That Work, by Kelly Brault, Michael Conley, Tara Keblish and Steve Jacobson
• A Member-Shaped Museum: The New Science Center of Iowa, by Sara Scallon
• It Feels Like Home: The Core Value of Community, by Paul Tatter and Kristin Leigh
• Membership Resources

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“This is a wonderful atmosphere. Can I live here?” (Visitor comment card)

At Explora we think of membership as a sense of belonging. “Belonging” comes from an old English word meaning a close and secure relationship. Relationships of belonging are personal. They are about you, me, and the stuff of the world that is the medium of our activity.

Being a member has deep roots in belonging, trust, comfort, genuineness, safety, acceptance, and sharing resources. Developing personally meaningful relationships takes time, as reflected in these notes from visitors: “My husband and I have come here before and couldn’t wait for our daughter to be born so that we could share with her what fun we had! She’s now two years old, and we all had a blast. We’ll be back!” “Siempre estamos encantados” (“We’re always charmed”).

Perceiving membership as relationships that develop over time is different from viewing it as a commodity. We see membership as a layering of mutual commitments with other community organizations. Our local adoption exchange uses Explora as a place where children can comfortably meet prospective parents. In this example, membership also involves commitments with informal social groups, families and individuals. Collectively, all of these relationships define the membership.

Members of Explora feel they belong to something larger, like the neighborhood, and to something smaller, like their family or friends. A staff member observed, “One family set up dim sum in our picnic area, with a tablecloth, and a centerpiece they made in our workshop exhibit.”

Explora is a member of the community and, reciprocally, the community belongs in Explora. It’s not irrelevant that every staff person becomes a member when he or she is hired, and everyone in the community can be a member (because they don’t pay if they can’t*). For all of us to be members, we really do need regular visitors to develop relationships with each other, with the staff, and with exhibit and program materials. One visit isn’t enough to develop these relationships. Membership requires durable, mutual commitments. In this broad context of community life, four widely shared commitments are participation, trust, acceptance, and respect.

Perhaps the most important commitment is to participate in the life of Explora as part of the life of each person, family and the community, and, over time, to develop new relationships with the physical world, self, and others. These relationships develop in unpredictable ways, uniquely to each person, with no expectation of ending. For our visitors, this means contributing to Explora through their presence, being willing to engage in inquiry with us, honestly revealing their thinking, and making themselves at home. To ask for this participation, we must be committed to access for all the diverse members of the community; a comfortable, safe, bilingual environment; and a friendly, diverse staff genuinely interested in learning. We design programs and exhibits for repeat visitors and their recurring participation.

A staff member describes how relationships change with regular participation: “‘Rickie’ is 11 now. He and his family have been coming to Explora regularly since I started working here. As I have gotten to know the family better, our relationship has become more informal, and I enjoy seeing them—like one might enjoy having friends come over. Rickie brought a plant he’d started from a seed to contribute to the Experiment Bar. Every time he comes, he wants to check on his plant.”

Similarly, a grandmother describes her grandson: “Diego is 8 years old. He started coming to Explora four years ago. He first spent all of his time at the ball run. Later it was one or two hours in the water area, then Shapes of Sound, then Systems in Motion. Today, Diego talks about Explora as his second home. He knows the staff and every change. Everywhere he goes is his favorite. Now he brings his friends to show them around.”

Another commitment members must make is trust. We ask visitors to trust us enough to take intellectual risks, to believe that we won’t embarrass them, and to embark on explorations for which the outcomes are unknown. At the same time, we trust visitors to use our many loose materials in creating their own learning experiences.

A staff member describes such an experience: “In November families from two Title I schools spent una noche especial at Explora. They brought all the kids, from 20s to babies. There were about 350 people. Most of Explora’s bilingual staff came. Parents spontaneously helped serve food and assisted the staff. I sat down with a teenager at the Magna-cam. We magnified money. He was so interested that I gave him a dollar to examine. In half an hour, he found me to return the dollar. Later, he saw me across the room and brought me to meet his older brother.”

A child attending the same event wrote, “Querido Explora, a mi me gusta ir a Explora mucho, mucho, y mucho. Después yo voy a ir otra vez.” (“Dear Explora, I like coming to Explora a lot, a lot, and a lot. I will come again later.”)

Members also make a commitment to accept each other. Explora often serves as a meeting place. “I began coming to Explora as a mother with two children. I have many friends with children that have come to Explora for as many years as me. Now I work here. Increasingly, conversations have led to child development, what parents have observed their children doing and learning at Explora, and conversations about their families. Parents are increasingly trusting, and I have observed parents who had been ‘hands off’ begin to interact with their children and the activities.”

Many members meet the same people here each week, and this notion of Explora as a meeting place rubs off, even on people who didn’t intend to attend the meeting. Explora’s staff and environment support an inclination to see others around you, even strangers, as belonging to your community. Homeschool parents find each other and share ideas. Adoptive parents meet regularly to create peer groups for their children and support networks for themselves.

With acceptance of other community members comes respect. “I think that being here makes me feel like I can make anything” (visitor comment card). Whether it’s the grandmother who, over the years, taught all of her grandchildren to walk in Explora’s Knee-Hi-Sci area, teens from different parts of town working together in our Youth Program, or hundreds of families from underserved neighborhoods at a family night, all of these community members respect each other’s presence and the commitment manifested through that presence.

A school principal sent this note: “WOW—that was truly a wonderful, powerful, exciting, and so engaging evening. There were so many moments I observed last night—two students talking about vibrations, delighted laughter about air pressure, a little ADHD girl focusing on water flow for 20 minutes, parents and students building marble tracks together. My heart was full with the vision of what learning and exploring the world together can be.”

Membership comes back to one of Explora’s six core values, the value of community: “…We value the diverse community in which we live, to which we strive to make a positive contribution and to create an environment where all members of this community feel a sense of comfort and belonging.” Or, as one visitor wrote on a comment card, “I love this place…it makes me feel right at home.”

Paul Tatter is associate director and Kristin Leigh is educational services director at Explora, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Footnote:
* Explora’s Family Membership is available at no cost to families whose children qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches. Applications are distributed through schools and selected social service organizations.

IN THIS ISSUE
January/Febuary 2008

Much of this issue is devoted to the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE Net), a National Science Foundation-funded initiative intended to foster an informed U.S. citizenry and a competitive workforce in the emerging field of nanotechnology. Articles from the Museum of Science, Boston (lead institution), Science Museum of Minnesota, Exploratorium, and others describe network members’ progress in creating new public programs, exhibitions, media, online resources, and professional development opportunities based on the latest in nanotechnology. Of course, NISE Net was not the first to tackle the nano challenge. Here, too, are stories of pioneering exhibitions about science at the nanoscale and a preview of projects now done in development.

CONTENTS
• A Very, Very Small Opportunity, by David Rejeski
• Thoughtful Decisions: The Evolution of the NISE Net Forums, by Larry Bell and Troy Livingston
• RISE: A Community-Focused Strategy for Public Engagement, by Carol Lynn Alpert
• Scientists Speak about Nano: Nanoscience and the Public, by Bob Westervelt
• Visualizing the Invisible: At the Frontier of Art and Science, by Tom Rockwell
• Scientists Speak about Nano: Capturing the Public Imagination, by Krishna Madhavan
• Too Small to Grasp? Lessons from Formative Exhibit Evaluation, by Kirsten Ellenbogen
• Scientists Speak about Nano: Nanoscale Science and the Science Curriculum, by M. Gail Jones
• Scientists Speak about Nano: Nanotechnology as a Catalyst for Change, by Ainissa G. Ramirez
• A Nano Sampler: Exhibiting Emerging Technologies, by Natasha Waterson, Darrell Porcello and Catherine McCarthy
• Resources for Nanoscale Science and Technology Learning

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Though scientific research may at times appear removed from the daily concerns of life, the development of new technologies based on that research inevitably has societal implications. Decisions about technological development, therefore, require input beyond scientific knowledge, as the authors of Science for All Americans, a 1989 report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), pointed out when they wrote that “engineering decisions, whether in designing an airplane bolt or an irrigation system, inevitably involve social and personal values as well as scientific judgments.”¹ Technically Speaking, a 2002 report from the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), suggested a role for the public in decisions about technology: “In a democratic society, people must be involved in the technological decisions that affect them . . . .”²

Committed to public participation

What does this call for civic engagement with new technologies mean for informal science educators? At the Museum of Science, Boston, it was not until 2002 that we began to take education in technology and engineering as seriously as we do education in science. At the AAAS conference in Boston that year, several of us heard professors from North Carolina State University talk about their experiments with Citizen Consensus Conferences. These public events were modeled on forums conducted by the Danish government to get ordinary citizens’ advice on matters of technology policy.

After the AAAS conference, we asked ourselves if we could develop a similar model, a program that would address technological literacy goals cited by the NAE while incorporating the social and personal values called for by AAAS. One influence on our decision was an article by Jon Turney of University College London, in which he argued that “a host of experiments with consensus conferences, citizens’ juries, (and) deliberative polls . . . all show that people involved in such discussions quickly become adept at quizzing experts, mastering a brief, asking questions, and unmasking political assumptions masquerading as scientific conclusions.”³ Not only do participants become scientifically literate, Turney concluded, but they do so “under conditions in which they decide what they need to know.”

To several of us, this sounded like an interesting parallel to our museums’ interactive exhibits, which allow visitors to explore scientific phenomena and practice inquiry skills. In our new model, it would be interactive programs that would explore the societal implications of new technologies and offer participants the chance to practice decision-making skills. And so we set out to offer museum visitors a means to engage in dialogue and deliberation around emerging technologies.

The NISE Net platform

We soon had an exciting opportunity to experiment with programs that feature dialogue and deliberation. In January 2005, the National Science Foundation (NSF) solicited proposals for a science center collaborative that would focus on informal science education (ISE) approaches to the new field of nanotechnology. The solicitation cited the economic, environmental, social, and ethical dimensions and issues associated with nanotechnology; advanced the need for an informed citizenry; and encouraged the creation of science cafés and other forums that would address its implications and potential consequences.

Partnering with the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) and the Exploratorium, the Museum of Science, Boston, submitted the winning proposal and became lead institution for the new Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network.

NISE Net launched in the fall of 2005. Soon after, we put together a group of five museums to experiment collaboratively with the public forums format. Joining the three original partners in this effort were the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), in Portland, and the Museum of Life and Science (MLS), in Durham, North Carolina.

MLS is located in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park region, a hotspot for empty nesters and retirees looking for meaningful learning opportunities. Staff at the museum were already looking for new ways to attract adult audiences to the science center. At their suggestion, the group decided to develop a series of nanoscale science and technology forums that would target adults and encourage them to become more involved with science topics.

NISE Net Forum programs focus on a hot current science topic and typically begin with a question or problem that participants will grapple with during the event. Because a central goal from the start was that participants would engage in dialogue not only on the science itself, but also on its societal and ethical implications, organizers regularly invite social scientists, ethicists, and regulation experts from local universities, as well as nanoscale science and engineering researchers, to join the discussion. After hearing from both kinds of experts, audience members engage panelists and one another in small-group discussions on questions like “Who should decide how much risk is acceptable?” and “What role should the public play in shaping discourse on regulation?” Afterwards, each group reports out on the decisions that were reached.

Programs like these are easy to conduct and relatively inexpensive, and they connect scientists with the public and participants with one another in enjoyable, meaningful ways. Over the past two years, we have formally evaluated 20 forum events developed by our five museums. The majority of participants in all locations reported that they enjoyed the experience, felt more informed as a result, and felt comfortable expressing their opinions. Forum attendees also routinely report that they value the small-group discussions as much as the expert presentations. These are gratifying results for a program designed to reach adults and get them more involved in issues of science policy.

Larry Bell is senior vice president for exhibits and programs at the Museum of Science, Boston, and principal investigator for the NSF-funded Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network. Troy Livingston is vice president for innovation and learning at the Museum of Life and Science, Durham, North Carolina.

Notes
1. AAAS, Science for All Americans, 1989, p. 40.
2. National Academy Press, Technically Speaking, 2002, p. 36.
3. The Guardian, “How Greenfield Got It Wrong,” April 17, 2003,
www.guardian.co.uk/life/opinion/ story/0,12981,937901,00.html

From the January/February 2008 issue of ASTC Dimensions.

About the image: Participants in a June 2007 NISE Net forum at the Museum of Science, Boston, ponder the medical applications of nanotechnology. Photo courtesy Museum of Science

In July/August 2006, ASTC Dimensions examined new social technologies—blogs, podcasts, wikis, RSS feeds, and other “Web 2.0″ communication tools that allow Internet users to personalize their online experiences. That was then; this is now. Moving past MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, the buzz today is about immersive digital experiences, mixed realities, avatars, and the 3-D Web. Researchers document the benefits of video gaming and design “serious” games to support educational or therapeutic ends. In the multi-user online world Second Life, your custom-designed alter ego can visit a museum, take a class, view a webcast, or interview for a job. Seniors can’t get enough of digital brain games, second graders play Zoo Tycoon, and Nintendo’s whole-body Wii gaming console flies off the shelves. How does all of this relate to learning in science centers? In this issue, we’ll explore the new digital immersive technologies and learn how museums are using them to create experiences for the tech-savvy audiences of the 21st century.

CONTENTS
• Immersive Digital Interactives: An Emerging Medium for Exhibitions, by Eric Siegel
• Digital Games as Learning Platforms, by Heather Choy
• Magical Science: Evaluating the Impact of Immersive Exhibits, by Daniel Tan and Sharlene Anthony
• From 2-D to 3-D Web: The Science Center in ‘Second Life,’ by Paul Doherty and Robert J. Rothfarb
• Embedding Virtual Reality in Exhibitions: A Perspective from Paris, by Marc Girard
• Digital Planetariums for Astronomy Education, by Ka Chun Yu and Kamran Sahami
• Virtual Reality and Immersive Environment Resources
• Changes in Attitudes: Designing for Visitor Expectations, by Nina Simon
• Otronicon: Celebrating Digital Media, by Jeff Stanford

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Museums are already using 3-D visualization, animation, and even single-user virtual worlds in their real-world exhibits and programming. Why then go to the trouble of creating multi-user, online virtual spaces? Is there something about these social 3-D spaces that enables online visitors to experience science exhibits differently than via 2-D web sites and interactives?

Designing for multi-user-enabled web sites requires consideration of real-time interpersonal communication. In the context of current Internet methods, this could be user-created personas/identities, chat, messaging, videoconferencing, and/or games. And even if you don’t attempt to create games or game-like experiences online, you will need to think about online content and exhibit design in the context of how multiple visitors might experience those things together.

Despite those concerns, and others related to costs and technical requirements, many museum professionals feel a need to create a more social Internet and to widen their online exhibit aesthetic to include more of this element. Multi-user 3-D virtual worlds allow “face to face” interaction between web users around the world, in spaces that are representational, abstract, or completely imaginary. They also offer a way for museums to stay in touch with community members and casual audiences and to design and present content that’s relevant for and interesting to those audiences in a personal way.

Predating Web 2.0, most 3-D virtual worlds have, at the core of their user-experience design possibilities, built-in tools and methods for collaboration and user-created content. As a developer of content and experiences in virtual worlds, you will need to think about balancing the elements of 3-D interaction, real-time communication, and user-created content. Each of these elements is familiar and powerful by itself. By bringing them together, and by designing content and experiences that leverage how they work together, you can create personalized and social experiences and learning opportunities for your online visitors.

At the Exploratorium, media creators and educators have been experimenting in Second Life (SL), a rapidly growing (9 million+ registrants to date), massively multi-user, 3-D virtual world and online community. This unique space is not a game, but an open-ended environment where all the content is created by the members of the community, or “residents.” (Note: To access the secondlife:// URLs referenced in this article, you must have the SL client software installed on your computer.)

SL makes experiences of the 3-D Web accessible not only to content creators, but also to a web-savvy public. In SL, users navigate their “avatars” (virtual-world characters) through the world’s virtual landscape. Through a spatialized audio system, SL residents can now speak to one another using microphones connected to their computers. This mix of real-world and virtual-world realities allows participants to further personalize their experience.

Moving into Second Life
On March 29, 2006, the Exploratorium presented a live webcast covering a total eclipse of the sun as viewed from Side, Turkey. Telescopic views of this rare sun/moon/earth alignment, created in collaboration with NASA’s Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum, were broadcast with scientific commentary via satellite, television, and Internet streaming to hundreds of thousands of viewers worldwide. We also created an overnight program at our museum in San Francisco where the public came to view the live eclipse webcast.

This event seemed a perfect opportunity to try our first venture in Second Life. We streamed the program into several locations in SL and created a companion set of in-world exhibits. The combination of live streaming video, a unique viewing environment, interactive exhibits, and in-world hosts to answer questions provided a virtual-world experience that mirrored our real-world museum programming. The 65 SL residents who attended remained actively engaged throughout the one-hour presentation. This showed us that a live webcast-viewing experience in-world could attract and engage SL visitors.

Our next SL undertaking was to create the ’Splo, an industrial-looking space in an in-world urban setting filled with more than 100 3-D exhibits (secondlife://Midnight City/ 176/58/26). Some of these exhibits were new to the Web; many would be hard to make in a real-world museum.

Encouraged by positive visitor experiences at the ’Splo, as well as by the response to the eclipse event, we were inspired to establish a larger SL presence for the Exploratorium and develop relationships with other educational content creators working in-world. We have since built an entire island called Sploland (secondlife://Sploland/ 175/75/25), filled with both serious and humorous exhibits, and have hosted two more live SL events.

The first of these, in November 2006, was an astronomy presentation offered in conjunction with the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) at Kitt Peak, Arizona. We offered a live streaming webcast of telescopic views of the transit of Mercury as it crossed the face of the sun. In SL, the event was hosted at the International Spaceflight Museum (secondlife: //Spaceport Alpha/48/78/24/) by ’Splo avatar-scientist Patio Plasma (an Exploratorium physicist and educator in real life), who demonstrated the phenomena using an interactive, 3-D planetary-orbit model.

We also presented a Pi Day event on March 14, 2006, jointly celebrating Einstein’s birthday and the number pi (3.14). In the real world, the Exploratorium has hosted Pi Day events for more than a decade. This year, staff built dozens of Pi Day exhibits specifically for SL, including PiHenge (like Stonehenge, but with pi-lithons replacing trilithons) and a giant Pi sculpture that spit out cherry pies. Avatars could try “hands-on” activities, such as building a Pi glass, a cylindrical drinking glass as tall as its circumference. Exploratorium visitors could watch the SL goings-on in our real-world theater and ask questions about the virtual world, and Pi Day events at the museum were streamed into SL, where avatars could query staff avatars about them. In San Francisco, visitors were served slices of pizza and dessert pies; in Second Life, avatars received free Pi Day T-shirts.

Most recently, we have launched Exploratorium Island (secondlife:// Exploratorium/163/124/23), a multipurpose space where we plan to build and prototype exhibits, present public programs, and offer workshops from our teacher-education programs. Exploratorium Island and Sploland are part of a group of science-technology-themed SL locations called SciLands (http://scilands.wordpress.com), a sprawling campus where avatars can stroll (or fly!) around and engage in experiences across a range of topics. SciLands includes both real and virtual institutions; it has a governing board to oversee the addition of new content areas.

What you can do in SL
So what kinds of online exhibits can a virtual-world science center offer that visitors can’t get in real life? Here are a few ideas we’ve tried with success.

1. Move the visitor around
In the real-world Exploratorium, there’s an exhibit where visitors walk up to an upside-down photo of TV personality Vanna White. At first, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with Vanna, but when you rotate her photo, you see that her eyes and mouth have been cut out and placed upside-down in her otherwise right-side-up face. The effect is grotesque and disturbing. The exhibit shows that people analyze pictures of faces in pieces, looking at the eyes and mouth independently. In our SL museum, we’ve made two copies of the exhibit. In one, the viewer rotates the photograph as in the real world; in the other, the avatar gets rotated instead—a memorable experience for SL residents.

Another exhibit allows avatars to either watch the orbit of Comet Halley, or ride the comet as it races away from the sun, slows near aphelion, and finally plunges back toward the sun. Most choose to ride the comet.

2. Change the scale of objects
Unlike in the real world, it’s easy to change the scale of natural phenomena in the virtual world. For example, to help visitors understand eclipses, we built a scale model of the earth/moon system in SL. We hung an earth model in space (easier to do in a virtual world!) and, at the same scale, hung a moon model 30 meters (100 feet) away. People visiting the exhibit, including real-world astronomers, have noted that they had no true appreciation of Earth’s scale relative to the moon before encountering this exhibit.A virtual world can also offer access to the very small: One inspired SL resident built a model of the Brownian motion phenomenon, which describes the random motion of particles. In his model, four cubes that would be a few nanometers across in the real world tumble and spin inside a transparent cube 10 meters on a side. Taking advantage of what we’d learned about a virtual visitor’s scale-of-reference experience, we suggested allowing avatars to ride the cubes. The view from a particle undergoing Brownian motion and rotation in 3-D makes for a wild ride.

3. Make exhibit information portable
Museums in the real world often struggle with how to present interpretive materials with their exhibits. Too much information for one visitor might not be enough for another. In a virtual museum, you can create rich textures offering visual or textual information adjacent to or on exhibits, or you can attach “notecards” that avatars can read and discard or save in an “Inventory” file. Notecards can be linked to other notecards or to web pages, offering deeper levels of detail, examples, references, or links to real-world museums.Both notecards and objects can have scripts attached that offer mementos or artifacts. You can give a visiting avatar a talking book or a T-shirt or hat customized with museum graphics. The ability to integrate textual and other external web content into the virtual experience is an active area of development for Linden Labs, creators of SL.

4. Let visitors experience dangerous situations, or take them to remote locations.
It can be tricky to explore the inside of a nuclear reactor core in real life, but avatars in Second Life need have no fear flying around inside a 3-D model of a working nuclear reactor. Bringing live audio and video from expeditions into SL simulations offers a unique way to engage visitors and connect them to activities at inaccessible locations.

Exhibits and social interaction
Visitors to virtual-world museums are more than just usernames; they’re “residents” who can express an identity and demonstrate interest in a museum’s ideas and exhibits. Through design, voice, chat, and gesture, this persistence of identity and level of expressiveness allows both museum staff and visitors to make important social connections that, for many, are not as easily made or maintained on the 2-D Web.

Because virtual-world audiences typically enjoy interacting with one another, public programs that offer shared experiences add an important dimension that can increase your level of contact with the SL community. And watching residents interact with your content in real time opens an opportunity to prototype exhibits and spaces and get important feedback about use patterns and good design. Although audience numbers in virtual worlds are not yet as large as those on big web sites, the time that individuals spend with in-world content can be significant. Visitors to the ’Splo, currently about 200 per week, spend a lot of time viewing and playing with exhibits—more if they visit with other avatars, a trend we plan to study.We’ve found that ongoing interaction with other residents—including other museums and educators—is important to staying in touch with the community and keeping content and programming relevant. New members can take advantage of guilds, groups, and communities of interest already organized in SL, or start their own. In addition, designing exhibits and programs that allow tech-savvy content makers to build things, share images and video, or make machinima (movies created entirely in virtual worlds; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima) can keep visitors returning to your space.

Paul Doherty is co-director of the Teacher Institute, and Rob Rothfarb is director of web development at the Center for Learning and Teaching, the Exploratorium, San Francisco, California. This article is adapted from “Creating Museum Content and Community in Second Life,” in J. Trant and D. Bearman (eds), Museums and the Web 2007: Proceedings (Archives & Museum Informatics, March 2007.) The Exploratorium has set up the Museum Virtual Worlds web site to share information and resources with museums and other educational institutions about theory, design, and practices of developing content and experiences in multi-user virtual worlds.

(more…)

September/October 2007
IN THIS ISSUE

The IMLS-funded VolTS (Volunteers TryScience) project described in the September/October 2007 issue of ASTC Dimensions is a recent U.S. effort aimed at helping ASTC members forge better relationships with practicing scientists and engineers. But collaborations among content experts and museum educators are nothing new. Such partnerships date back to the founding of the field and continue to strengthen our institutions. Whether as museum volunteers or as partners in grant-funded projects, scientists and engineers welcome the chance to tell the public about their work and contribute to the goal of a “science-literate” society. In this issue, we share some examples of successful projects and examine the factors that make for success (or challenges) when two cultures—research science and informal science education—meet.

CONTENTS

• Where Science Meets the Public: Remembering the Founders of the Field, by Wendy Pollock
• Content and Commitment: Insights from the VolTS Front-End Study, by Renee Miller
• A Passion for Public Engagement, by Eric Marshall
• In the Comfort Zone: Working with Scientists on Exhibition Design, by Sheila Grinell
• The Universe in a Cell: Partnering in a SEPA Project, by Roberta Cooks
• Better Communicators: Postdocs at the Exploratorium, by Kristin Abkemeier and Carolyn Sutterfield
• Portal to the Public: Bringing Scientists and the Public Together, by Lauren Russell and Dennis Schatz
• Making the Right Match: Four Approaches to Collaboration, by Theresa Mattei, Carolyn Sutterfield, Kathy Patterson, and Missy Miller
• Attracting Faculty: Getting Researchers Involved with a University Museum, by Beryl Rosenthal
• Spotlighting Research at Universum, by Cristina Heine

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In November and December 2005, Randi Korn & Associates Inc. (RK&A) conducted a front-end study for the Volunteers TryScience (VolTS) project (see sidebar at end). The evaluators conducted and analyzed 26 in-depth telephone interviews with members of three groups:
• scientists and engineers who volunteer in educational programs outside of science centers
• scientists and engineers who currently volunteer in science centers
• science center staff who work with volunteers.

The volunteers came from both academic and corporate backgrounds; some were retired from full-time employment. Discussion groups were also held with science and engineering professionals who attended a 2006 IEEE conference; these findings, though not presented officially in the RK&A report, did inform the analysis and recommendations.

This article is based primarily on the interviews done with the volunteers and staff who work in science centers. Museums were picked by location, size, and range of volunteer opportunities they offer. The kinds of collaborations represented ranged from advisory panels to one-time lectures to exhibition development. From the observations and recommendations in these interviews emerges a summary portrait of the characteristics that make for a healthy partnership.

Attitudes and motivation

Why would busy scientists and engineers take time out to share their expertise with science center audiences? Most volunteers we interviewed had only positive things to say about informal science education. They praised the inquiry approach of science centers and their outreach to general audiences:
“The value is in the hands-on nature….”
“Science centers do a good job of just giving people access.”
“I know that they have a commitment to the community, so I was happy to get involved when they asked.”

Volunteers expressed a desire to “give back” to the community, but they also saw their role in the museum in specific terms. Some had come to the museum to share their expertise in a certain area of science:
“They asked me to be the champion for that volunteer activity.”
“My role was basically in an advisory capacity, for the science end of things.”

Others saw an opportunity to educate the public about what scientists do:
“I think people think of engineers and scientists as boring; the science center helps the public interact with people doing the jobs.”
“It is all about networking; You’re meeting people and getting to talk about your passion.”

Even for those who, like one NSF-funded researcher, came because their particular project required community outreach, the social element was an important factor:
“Otherwise, I don’t have the opportunity to talk to people about my work outside of work.”
“It made me realize how good it was for me, from a job perspective, to talk to the people you’re trying to serve.”

Interviews with volunteer coordinators revealed that they value equally the role that these expert volunteers play in the science center. “They are able to make real-life science connections,” said one staff member. Said another, “It is extremely important to … show that we are in contact with people doing real work, real research, right now.” In general, museum staff value in their scientist/engineer volunteers what one coordinator called their “instinctively higher regard for and understanding of science and the science process.”

Recruitment

Scientists often have difficulty finding volunteer opportunities aligned with their interests and expertise, tending to rely on word-of-mouth or personal connections. Some suggested that recruiting efforts should come from the top, be explicitly supported by the top, and be addressed to the top:
“You have to have people on the same level talking.”
“Let them meet and talk with the director. Let them know that they’re being invited to be part of a collaborative team.”

Others recommended going through existing channels, such as corporations, graduate-degree programs, or professional societies:
“You’ve got to get people to start volunteering by the time they’re grad students. Make it part of their education.”
“Go speak to the engineering society meetings. African-American graduate fraternities and sororities are typically active in large cities.”

Almost all of the scientists/engineers we interviewed are employed either full- or part-time. With little time to spare, they value clarity about their role in the science center:
“How many hours, what are my interactions, what am I going to get, what do you need from me? Scientists love it if you spell it out…. Then they can actually use it in the grant-writing process, in their annual reports.”
“I need to know exactly what’s expected of me. If [the museum representative] can say, ‘This is the commitment I want; this is your role,’ then the scientist can say, ‘I can do this’ or ‘No, I can’t.’”

Volunteer coordinators identified as major recruiting challenges a lack of funding (“Publicity and marketing … is staff-intensive work.”) and turnover in personnel at partnering companies and universities (“I may have a contact from one year who may not be the same person the next year”).

Like scientists, museum staff saw partnerships with graduate students and postdocs as a promising direction: “There is some leverage that could be gained from giving young scientists in training more interest and skills in communicating more broadly…. We would be moving toward the larger goal of having a more science-literate society.”

Training

Interviews with scientists and engineers revealed a general level of resistance to formal training by museum staff and a lack of interest in direct interaction with museum visitors:
“First of all, [we] don’t believe in training. Scientists have never heard the words ‘professional development.’ Personally as a scientist, I don’t know what that means.”
“Being a scientist, I wanted to just deal with the science…. There was just so much other stuff that went along with it. I wanted to help them deal with the science, interpret the science—nothing more, nothing less.”

Museum staff are aware of these attitudes. “Certain scientists and engineers are great with people,” said one coordinator, “and certain ones are not. What we take advantage of is their interest level … and desire to share knowledge.” Another acknowledged that “there is a perception that we cannot ask them to commit to many hours of training.”
Some scientists admitted they need help in approaching new audiences. “It’s easy to … make assumptions that are invalid simply because you’re not used to speaking to such an audience,” one confessed. “That’s a challenge the museum can help you meet.” But instead of classroom-based training, several suggested a partnering relationship, in which the volunteer would contribute knowledge and passion about content, and the staff person would contribute knowledge about museum practice.

This idea makes sense to museum personnel, too. Some favor “face-to-face” training for scientists and staff on how to collaborate successfully; one wished for an online “repository of great exhibits … or case studies [to show] potential volunteers about successful experiences.” Unlike the volunteers, some staff members expressed a desire for related professional development, particularly in keeping up with science research and best practices.

As with recruiting, finding the time and resources to manage volunteers is a challenge for museum staff, “not so much because of the volunteers but because of the work load and how thin we are spread right now.” As one coordinator said, “Staff do not necessarily have the time to get to know them [the scientists] the way we do with our regular volunteers.”

Nurturing the relationship

Most of the collaborations involving study participants were time-limited. Short-term projects appeal to volunteer scientists because they are manageable and to coordinators because they provide a positive initial exposure to museum culture.

But even more rewarding, some said, are relationships that are sustained and long-term—the kind that become, as one coordinator put it, “necessary to daily operations.” To achieve that goal, mutual understanding and respect are essential. “There are some cultural barriers between museums and scientists, but I think these can be breached,” said a volunteer. “You have to know how to interact with each other.”

One thing on which most agree is the importance of recognition, regardless of the scope of the activity. One scientist said, “It’s the little things that let people know they’re valued…. Once an exhibit is up, bring us in and show it to us. Put our names on a plaque. It’s just a nice gesture.” Another stressed the significance of feedback: “It’s important to have some sense of accomplishment, some evidence….
I’m a scientist. [We like] to know that what we’re doing with our free time matters.”

For staff, appreciation consists not only in providing appropriately challenging work and recognition, but also in demonstrating a commitment to ongoing relationship. “Our volunteer program has a full-time manager, a volunteer association, formal events … all signifying that [they] are a serious business to us,” said one coordinator. “The most important thing for me,” said another, “is to … get buy-in from the volunteer. It is important that the volunteer see what the science center is doing, and what its purpose is, to give them that ownership.”

Formerly a senior research associate at Randi Korn & Associates Inc., Alexandria, Virginia, Renee Miller recently accepted a position as an elementary and middle school science teacher at the Langley School, McLean, Virginia.
Volunteers TryScience: A Fresh Look at a Longstanding Relationship

Scientists and engineers have participated actively in science centers for decades. But many of these partnerships have occurred in isolation, with little chance for others to learn from their example. Even within a given organization, there may be roadblocks to learning from experiences with content experts.

VolunteersTry Science (VolTS) is a partnership among the New York Hall of Science, IBM, ASTC, the Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEEE), and the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) that seeks to facilitate more involvement of scientist and engineer volunteers with informal science education institutions through better communication, training, and resources. Funded in 2005 by the Institute for Museum and Library Services, VolTS represents an opportunity to share stories of exemplary accomplishments and ongoing projects and to initiate a broader conversation, from the perspective of both sides, about effective ways to manage those relationships.

For more details, or to participate in VolTS, contact Eric Marshall, emarshall@nyscience.org.

Researchers who study the human brain and nervous system continue to find connections between environmental sound (both ambient and organized) and behavioral and emotional response. Anthropologists and neuroscientists alike tell us that music has been and remains critical to the development and survival of our species. It seems that people are hard-wired to respond to the quality of sound around us. Yet the auditory environments of science centers do not always reflect that understanding. The July/August 2007 issue of ASTC Dimensions draws on research into acoustics, the brain, and learning, as well as current museum practice, to explore the effect of sound on human experience—with implications for the design of both exhibits and the larger museum environment.

CONTENTS

• Wild Music: Making the Most of Sound in an Exhibition, by Wendy Pollock and J. Shipley Newlin
• Sound Advice: Acoustic Considerations for Exhibit Design, by Andrea Weatherhead
• Designed for Attentive Listening: Dealing with a Challenging Environment, by Eric Dimond
• Wired for Music: The Science of Human Musicality, by Donald A. Hodges
• Composing an Exhibition, by Philip Blackburn
• Heureka’s Music: Sound with a Sociocultural Perspective, by Mikko Myllykoski
• Science Sonatas: Listening to Data, by Stephen Pompea
• Sound Resources

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Sound in an exhibition? Most of the time, exhibition planners think of sound as something to be dampened, controlled, or contained. The very term “sound bleed” suggests exhibits battling for attention in an atmosphere of cacophony.

In planning Wild Music: Sounds & Songs of Life, the exhibition team—an unusual partnership among ASTC, the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM), and the Music Research Institute at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro—decided to approach sound from an alternative perspective. We would treat it as an element to be tuned and composed, as well as an opportunity to enrich the experience for visitors who are blind or have low vision. Funding from the National Science Foundation, Harman International, and NEC Foundation of America ensured that the team was well positioned for this task.

We also were encouraged by what we were learning from our science advisors who study natural sounds as “soundscapes” (the acoustical equivalents of biomes), not just birdsong extracted from its context or a frog’s call minus its chorusing kin. Why not regard the exhibition in a similar spirit, with an overall and positive approach to acoustics paralleling traditional approaches to visual and spatial design?

Of the many people who provided advice and expertise to guide us on this path, two were especially important in our experiments with sound: Walter Waranka, an access advisor we invited to serve on the exhibition planning team, and Philip Blackburn, the musician who ultimately composed the exhibition’s overall soundscape.

Strategies for interpreting sound

An employment consultant and president of the Minnesota chapter of the American Council of the Blind, Wally Waranka had participated in an ASTC Accessible Museum Practices workshop in 2002. His regular attendance at Wild Music planning sessions helped maintain a focus on the experiences of people with disabilities.

Waranka could see the potential of the subject for people who are blind, as he is. Whale song, bird and insect calls, human music, the physics of sound—all are part of the study of the biological origins of music. There would be plenty to listen to. But assuming we could achieve high-quality sound, how could we ensure that the sounds would make sense to those who can’t read signs? And what experiences could be meaningful for people who are deaf or hard of hearing?

With Waranka’s advice, the developers devised an array of strategies for
interpreting sounds. These included
• Braille and acoustic labels. Standardized locations make these easy to locate.
• Tactile relief models. In one exhibit, for example, whale models are associated with buttons that activate different species’ songs.
• Tactile diagrams. In an exhibit about animal vocalization, visitors can select a tactile sonogram of a bird, mammal, or insect song and insert it into a slot, activating an audio recording. In an exhibit about the human voice (see above), tactile diagrams illustrate the shapes of anatomical airways and working mechanical analogs.
• Experiences of sound as vibration. A spectrum analyzer that works through vibrating metal reeds allows visitors to both feel and see that single sounds are often composed of several frequencies. In the exhibition’s small theater, “bass shaker” speakers bolted under the seats let visitors feel low-frequency parts of the soundtrack, while limiting the spread of these hard-to-contain sounds into the rest of the exhibit space.
• Visual representations of sound. In a working model of a larynx, a fan blows low-pressure air through rubber flaps. By pulling on a control knob, visitors can stretch the flaps and bring them together, producing a sound that varies in pitch with the tension applied. Strobe LEDs help visitors see how vibrations make the sounds they hear—or to see sounds they can’t hear.

After constructing a series of prototypes with Waranka’s advice, we tested them with other consultants who had developed exhibits with people who are deaf and hard of hearing. We also tested prototypes during a session focused entirely on accessible design. This was attended by members of several Twin Cities groups that represent people who have personal and professional experience with disabilities.

Containing and controlling sound

In addition to making individual sound experiences intelligible to a wider range of users, we were committed to creating an overall sound environment that was meaningful and harmonious. With 32 interactive exhibits in a 4,000-square foot space, this required a variety of sound-containment strategies.

From among the more familiar, we adapted several that were best suited to the exhibition’s intent:
• Headphones. Although headphones have drawbacks, our musical consultants persuaded us that there was no way to achieve enough high-quality sound experiences without them. We were encouraged by the example of Seattle’s Experience Music Project, which makes extensive use of headphones. We chose lightweight AKG headphones and, to counter the potentially isolating effect, provided them for the most part in pairs.
• Near-field speakers. We mounted high-quality speakers at about ear height for an adult seated on a stool, and provided start buttons and volume controls to reduce unnecessary sounds when an exhibit is not in use.
• Enclosures. We constructed three types of enclosures: a professional music practice room; open, roofless carrels with nonparallel, insulation-filled walls to reduce internal reflection and sound bleed; and a theater that uses hanging baffles with other acoustic elements.

A positive experience for all

It was important to the Wild Music team that an exhibition about the deep roots and universality of music be broadly accessible and offer a rich and positive sonic experience. Not content with containing, controlling, and interpreting a collection of sounds, we decided to approach the entire exhibition as a soundscape—or, more exactly, three interconnected soundscapes.

Because the songs of birds, whales, and people are key strands in the biology of music, we organized much of the exhibition into thematic areas we called the Edge of the Forest, the Town, and the Ocean Deeps. Each is anchored by a schematic “set” and distinguished by a composition by environmental sound artist Philip Blackburn. The compositions create an acoustic niche both for exhibits that can be heard at a distance (such as a giant wooden xylophone) and for visitors’ conversations.

These themes were extended in a teacher workshop and public programs held when Wild Music opened. Whale expert Roger Payne, one of the project advisors, spoke about his research and played recordings of whale songs; we had to rent speakers capable of transmitting the vibrations of their deep bass notes throughout the museum. A local gamelan performed bird-related Indonesian compositions, and SMM’s teen volunteers shared pocket science demos with visitors.

Work in progress

Wild Music opened at SMM in March 2007. As it moves to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in June, we are just beginning to explore the possibilities for reaching new audiences through its rich sound experiences and themes. Evaluation suggests some fine-tuning that will help improve the visitor experience, but in general the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Visitors are telling interviewers that they appreciate the tactile experiences and the presence of Braille and acoustic labels, even though most haven’t used them themselves.

Wally Waranka reports that this is the first exhibition he feels he can navigate and enjoy almost entirely on his own. In fact, he has brought his colleagues in the employment agency to visit, hoping to inspire their approach to workplace accommodations.

From the July/August 2007 issue of ASTC Dimensions.

Wendy Pollock is ASTC’s Director of research, publications, and exhibitions. J. Shipley Newlin is program director for physical sciences at the Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul.

More about Wild Music and the exhibition tour