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Zoë Elizabeth BuckOctober 19, 2011
Special thanks to Joel Primack, Doris Ash and Nina McCurdy
Planetarium Audiences and Cosmology Visualizations
Introduction and Context
• Effective teaching, curricula and interventions• Equity• Cosmology is coming of age, but it’s not in K-12 curricula
Why do this kind of research?
Introduction and Context
• State of the art theater• “Road trip of the Universe” (show
director)• Real data visualizations
– large scale dark matter evolution, galaxy merger, type 1a supernova, star passing by a super-massive black hole
The Adler creates a visitor experience.
“[T]he educators think the curators just want to teach all their obscure scientific points, and the curators think the educators just want to dumb everything down, [in a whisper] and they really do want to dumb everything down.”
-Adler Astronomer
Tension: curators and educators
The new show
Introduction and Context
Children Entertainment/Experience Content/Learning Family time Other0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Entrance Survey (Open)Written Survey (MC)Total
Visitors want to “experience space.”
Research Methodology
• Education research uses a variety of methods taken from anthropology, psychology, sociology and political science, among other fields
• My methodology is interpretive – although I enter into the research with broad questions, my hypotheses are formed inductively, after data collection has begun
• My research uses a mixed methods approach - data is both quantitative (surveys), and qualitative (interviews, stimulated recall, and observations)
• I spent a month at Adler Planetarium in Chicago observing, giving surveys, and interviewing staff and visitors
Methodology and Methods.
Research Methodology
• Show is dynamic – it has been shaped by producers, writers, artists and scientists working with the Adler, and each visitor is making sense of it using the resources at their disposal– (MacDonald, 2002)
• Learning is social and situated – (Vygotsky, 1978; Lave & Wenger, 1991)
• Equity as a lens– Valuing informal knowledge (Lemke, 2011)– Viewing learners as inherently intelligent, trying to make sense of
what they experience (diSessa, 1993)– “[E]xploring ways in which…competence can be supported to promote
development of robust understanding of the physical world" (Warren et al., 2005, p 122).
Theoretical framework.
Research Methodology
• How are visitors to the Adler Planetarium interacting with cutting edge cosmology visualizations in a new planetarium show?
Research Question.
Findings
• Inspiration as a worthy outcome• The “inspiration index” – series of Likert scales• n=23
People are being “inspired.”
0
1
2
3
4
5
Inspiration Index Histogram
More inspired……………………………………………………………………………….…..less inspired
FindingsVisualizations are sticking with people.
Stars
Gravit
y
Search
/Search
er
Black hole
Supern
ova
Galaxy Collis
ion
Galaxies
General S
pace
Nothing
Visual m
odels to su
pport exis
ting knowledge
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
FindingsVisitors are drawing on visualizations over narration.
General Formation/Origin Relation to life0
1
2
3
4
5
Supernovae
Formation Many > MW Motion0
1
2
3
4
Galaxies
FindingsVisualization details affect interpretation.
F4W: Are those all galaxies there that we are looking at? I'm not sure...
F2M: I'm seeing two or three stellar nurseries right now, this would probably have been at the early stages, the later stages of the big bang, possibly
Z: What do you think the white stuff is made of?F4G: Stars?Z: What makes you think they are stars?F4G: Cuz stars I look at up at the sky from my house and I see stuff like that, it looks like minature Suns, which…are bulbs of light
Conclusion
• The closest thing to really “experiencing space”
• Visualization content is sticking with people
• Artistic decisions matter (color, speed, transitions, etc)
• Using resources and making connections to construct new knowledge
What this means for cosmology visualizations.